Civeo Pty Ltd (‘Civeo’) is a leading provider of workforce accommodation and hospitality solutions, dedicated to helping people maintain healthy and productive lives while living and working away from home. With approximately 30,000 rooms globally, the company has over 9,000 permanent rooms in regional and remote locations across Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia.

Best-in-class food safety, housekeeping, and maintenance programs ensure a comfortable, healthy environment for every guest. With its focus on food safety and quality, Civeo is always looking to recruit qualified chefs and general hospitality workers to permanent positions.

In 2020 the recruitment landscape changed significantly due to COVID-19 impacts. Closed state and international borders, and the introduction of the JobKeeper Program, meant the pool of available candidates shrank considerably. Civeo’s traditional advertising channels including Seek, Indeed, and Jora weren’t driving much traffic. Civeo identified a new approach was needed and decided to develop and launch a new initiative: The Chef & Hospitality Worker Recruitment Campaign. The issue the Campaign needed to solve was to significantly increase the number of applications received from suitably qualified candidates for permanent chef and hospitality positions at their remote villages in the Bowen Basin of Queensland.

Civeo’s Marketing team worked collaboratively with the HR team to produce an action plan that included a concise, well-thought-out marketing brief. This included a review of competitor activity and clearly defined the campaign objectives, target audiences, and Civeo’s unique selling points relevant to those target audiences.

Civeo’s Sydney-based Marketing team knew that reaching the regional target audiences effectively, including piquing interest amongst an audience who probably weren’t aware that such roles in regional and remote villages existed (e.g. those who were out of work due to COVID-19 impacts) would be critical to the success of the Campaign. While Civeo’s Marketing team had a number of Sydney-based agencies they could use, they felt a regional agency located close to the Bowen Basin, would be better placed to provide strategic insights into the regional media landscape and the target audiences’ ‘watering holes’ i.e. where and how they consumed media. Subsequently, the Marketing team found and appointed a Mackay-based agency.

From the competitor activity review, Civeo’s Marketing team identified the industry-wide trend was for recruitment communications to feature copy, one brand colour, and images of staff. There was therefore the opportunity to use creative differentiation to generate cut-through for the Campaign.

Based on the marketing brief, budget, and Civeo being largely unknown amongst the target audiences, Civeo’s Marketing and HR teams, and the agency, all agreed the campaign concept had to be unique. This would help build engagement, drive awareness and start to create a following. To reach the audiences effectively it was decided to use geographically targeted Facebook advertising and a regional 7Digital Media buy (15 second Ad on desktop, tablet, mobile and Commercial TV). The visual component of the campaign had to be relevant to the hospitality industry, visually ‘hook’ the target audiences in and educate those who weren’t aware of Civeo and the space they operated in. Humour and bold iconic imagery were needed to create intrigue, to differentiate, and to stand out on potential candidates’ Facebook feeds and devices.

The Chef & Hospitality Worker Recruitment Campaign concept that was subsequently implemented took everyday objects found in kitchens and presented them in a visual manner that gave them a hero feel. A seemingly non-related headline drew the viewer into the advertisement.

After launch, a review of The Chef & Hospitality Worker Recruitment Campaign results showed the Campaign successfully met the defined Campaign objectives. The number of suitably qualified applications received for positions increased by 20%. The Facebook Ads Campaign achieved a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 7.4%. To put this into context, the average CTR for Facebook Ads across all industries is 0.90%, as of August 2020*. In addition to positive Campaign performance metrics, many Facebook users posted comments on the Ads and shared them with their friends. This successfully amplified the campaign to a wider audience at no cost to Civeo. The Campaign also delivered unexpected secondary benefits for Civeo including positively impacted budgets, increased brand appeal, and improved competitive differentiation.

* Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks