How to improve employer branding with visual storytelling

Knowledge

8 Dec

We are The Loves Creative Director Jules Love tells us why the strongest employer brands are built on great stories. Watch the video or read on below.

Here at We are The Loves we firmly believe the strongest employer brands are built on great stories - from stories about heroic founders all the way down to the stories about the people that that work at your organisation day to day. It's something I learned a decade ago when I stepped away from being a management consultant to being an advertising photographer and film maker.

I spent the first 10 years of my career as a management consultant, helping companies make big decisions about their strategy and organisation. If you've ever worked with consultants, you'll know their presentations are dense with diagrams, charts, data tables and 8 point text. I was trying to get senior executives and board directors to make big decisions about the company's future, supported by data and analysis. And I did that by engaging their rational brains.

When I switched careers and started working with advertising agencies, I realised they were also trying to get people to make decisions - about what to buy. Whether it was to grab a snack off the supermarket shelf, or which company to chose to mange your pension, they were trying to get consumers and businesses to make choices. But they did it in a very different way. They didn't make powerpoint slides. Instead they made engaging adverts using film and photography to directly appeal to our emotional brains.

So why do advertisers appeal to our emotional brains? Let's borrow some stories from the advertising world I inhabited for a long time.

Rooftop campaign shot by Jules Love, We are The Loves Creative Director

Corona doesn’t tell you that a 6-pack of beers is only £12. They tell you how Jack met the girl of his dreams at a rooftop party in LA where they danced the night away after he shared the last ice cold Corona with her.

Brompton Bikes shot by Jules Love, We are The Loves Creative Director

Brompton Bikes don’t just tell you your bike is made of steel because it's strong and absorbs vibrations. They show you the person who made it, brazed every join at the factory in London, and trained for 3 years to learn how to do it. Suddenly you want a Brompton and are happy to pay extra for it because you appreciate what went into making it.

We are The Loves McKinsey Recruitment photograpghy — McKinsey Recruitment shot by Jules Love, We are The Loves Creative Director

And McKinsey don’t have the CEO telling you it’s a great place to work. Instead you see images real employees collaborating on a cool project, and you want to go and work there and be surrounded by the best bright young minds in the country.

What they're doing is telling stories. They're still based on facts, but they're dressed up with human emotion. Because storytelling is how we connect with each other and relate to other people, especially people we don't know. Because they engage our emotional brain, not just our rational brain.

So when it comes to your employer brand, it's not enough to tell the facts - tell stories. Because when people make decisions about their careers they think with their hearts, not just their heads.

What has storytelling got to do with HR?

Good question. Well it turns out that when we're making decisions about our careers - whether to apply to a particular company, or whether to stay where we are - it's our emotional brain that prevails. It's the same in many workplace situations, so we can use storytelling in HR all the time:

To attract great talent by showing why you're a great place to work
To get people behind change programs by winning over their hearts and minds
To improve company culture by showing examples of what good looks like
To make a success of new systems and processes by changing ways of working
To bring two companies together after a merger or acquisition by showing how they are stringer together and greater than the sum of the parts
To motivate people around your strategy by showing the part they can play

So how can you use these ideas to build a great employer brand?

Unilever recruitment photoshoot by We are The Loves — Unilever Recruitment shot by Jules Love, We are The Loves Creative Director

First, put real people at the heart of your message, like Sulyiman here who joined the Unilever graduate programme and has now worked his way up to run a whole factory in Hamburg. Don’t make it about a goal, make it about a person who strived to reach that goal and the support you gave them to get there.

Second, don’t assume you know what makes people tick – ask them instead. For a recent recruitment campaign we ran an internal survey at our client to find our what people valued about working there – what came back was way more authentic and relatable than anything the leadership team came up with.

Third, make the abstract real. A company's purpose and values can sometimes be hard for people to relate to in their every day work. So show examples of what it really means to be "entrepreneurial" or "innovative" to someone in accounts, or in sales, or on the shop floor, and how it improves both their working life and the company as a whole.

Finally - use more engaging media. Powerpoint is boring. Instead use videos, photo stories, social media posts, flyers on desks, poster campaigns around the office, town hall meetings, focus groups, and interactive websites. Most of all, use your imagination - and tell stories.