LSBF?s #BeatPhil careers marketing campaign
Can you #BeatPhil for LSBF's careers campaign?
Campaign name: #BeatPhil
Brand: London School of Business and Finance (LSBF)
Audience: Full-time employees / workers
Regions: London and Manchester, United Kingdom (UK)
Duration: 21/04/2014 - 08/05/2014
Channels: Mobile, online, outdoor and social media
Social Media Portal (SMP): The brand London School of Business and Finance (LSBF): The
London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) is a A business school offering undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education courses
SMP: What regions is the campaign for?LSBF: London and Manchester, United Kingdom (UK)
SMP: The official campaign name and why was it chosen?LSBF: #BeatPhil was chosen as the name for the campaign because our message revolves around ?Phil? ? who represents the colleague in everyone?s office who speaks in buzzwords, doesn?t seem to have any real substance, and yet makes more money than you. It?s about helping people to #BeatPhil.
SMP: What was the start and end of the campaign? LSBF: The duration is from 21/04/2014 to 08/05/2014 and was chosen to kick off the summer with a really engaging campaign, helping to swell enrolment numbers for our June and September course intakes.
SMP: The target audiences of the campaign, who are you trying to reach and why?LSBF: We wanted to reach people who might be interested in our executive education programmes. The target audience for these programmes is primarily UK/EU residents who are currently employed full-time and will be able to relate to office ?Phils?. We want to reach this audience to let them know they can fit relevant, industry-focused studies around their schedule, without interrupting their career ? helping them to beat Phil.
SMP: Briefly, tell us about your campaignLSBF: Phil is the guy at work who everyone loves to hate - style over substance - yet he somehow makes £10K more than you. He might have managed to get where he is via any number of routes ? nepotism, luck, being a ?yes man? - the possibilities are endless. But luck runs out without industry-relevant skills. With a course from LSBF, you?ll move up at work and #BeatPhil!
SMP: How did you choose the name Phil for this campaign and why Phil (and why that persona)?LSBF: The name isn?t as important as the persona. Every office has a Phil, and we want people to do better than him. No longer shall offices be run by people who have no idea what they are talking about! We want people to learn the skills to run the office and get rid of Phil.
SMP: What are the goals of the campaign and why is it different? LSBF: Our main goal was to reach as many people as possible that want to advance their careers. We also wanted people to be able to identify with wanting to #BeatPhil so we tried to make it as engaging as possible ? and it worked! Love him or hate him, everyone has an opinion on Phil. It?s different because the artwork is very unique, standing out against other ads on public transport and also because someone is finally speaking out against the Phils of the world!
SMP: What are the channels, platforms and methods you?re using?LSBF: We are using outdoor, online, mobile and social media channels to engage with our audience. We specifically chose outdoor media because of the huge footfall traffic, with the majority of these people being within our target audience. We have tried to drive them to the landing page and to Twitter to maximise engagement with the campaign. It?s our most engaging campaign to date.
SMP: What do you hope to achieve?LSBF: We have already achieved more activity on social media than any other campaign. One week after launch we have already had 200 tweets with the hashtag. We?ve had almost 5,000 (unique) people try and find out how they can
Beat Phil so far, and we?re confident that the desire to put him in his place will never fade.
SMP: What were the challenges in creating the campaign and how did you overcome them?LSBF: The biggest challenge was communicating the message so that everyone would understand it immediately. We all loved the concept and we wanted it to come across as clearly as possible, and I think we achieved that in the end.
SMP: What are you doing to measure the campaign and what measurement tools do you have in place to do this?LSBF: We are measuring the campaign based on unique visits to the landing page, social media engagement and also through leads coming in. We have analytics in place to track the visits and to see which pages are performing the best and also to track leads coming through. We are tracking the
#beatphil hashtag with hashtracking.com and monitoring the interactions on Phil?s Twitter account itself. People are talking about it!
SMP: How are you going to compete with other careers advice at this time of year, what?s different here?LSBF: We?re offering careers advice based on the candidate?s current CV and we?re also advising them on the best courses to take to enhance their skills. We tailor all recommendations for each candidate for a more personal approach, which makes us different. There?s also a sense of humour running throughout everything, helping to make our careers advice more memorable and engaging.
SMP: What is the budget used for the campaign?LSBF: We can?t share any specific information on the budgeting for this campaign. However, what we can say is that this campaign has generated more customer engagement than any other campaign of the same or similar budgets.
SMP: How are you making the campaign social and shareable?LSBF: The first step was creating a character that a lot of people can relate to and that also caught people?s attention. We?ve tried to humanise him as much as possible so people create an opinion on him ? they either love him or hate him!
We decided to do a Twitter account from Phil?s perspective (
@philsfeelings) to give him a tone of voice and an extra dimension for people to see. After the campaign had been live for one week, we had more than 6,500 views of his Twitter feed, 140 followers and more than 40 retweets. The hashtag has been used almost 100 times in a week.
People are passionate about the campaign, one way or the other, but we?ll share some of the positive comments here:
SMP: Are there any dedicated hashtags or social media profiles for the campaign and how/why did you chose these?LSBF: We are using #beatphil because it?s easy to remember and everyone wants to beat him! Phil?s Twitter feed is @philsfeelings https://twitter.com/philsfeelings because they are his own musings. There is also a
campaign Facebook page.
SMP: How long did it take to build the microsite and how are you promoting it?LSBF: It took us about two weeks to build the microsite because it contains a few different development components, like the course selector quiz. We had to load all of our courses into the quiz and tag each one to tailor the answers for each candidate, which proved time-consuming. We are promoting it on the print ads, through the Facebook page and
@LSBF?s Twitter feed. Phil hasn?t promoted it himself yet.
SMP: You?ve created a Twitter account for the campaign, when did you do this and how are you maximising its potential?LSBF: We actually put the account live about a week before the campaign was live and started interacting with people and gathering a following. Now we try to tweet at least five times a day and engage with followers, as this was the point of the account. We try to embody everyone?s ?Phil? with this account.
SMP: What happens to the microsite and Twitter account after the campaign has ends?
LSBF: After the print campaign has ended, we will still keep the site live and will keep up with the tweets as well ? we?ll never run out of business jargon or examples of cringe-worthy office behaviour. This is not to imply we have any ?Phils? at LSBF!
We also have online banners, emails and other media featuring Phil, so we will keep the page live as long as we are still driving traffic there and the content is relevant.
SMP: Is there anything else we should know, or is there anything in particular that you?d like to share about the campaign?LSBF: We'd like to make sure people know about the bespoke CV advice that our Careers and Employability Services team is offering for the duration of the campaign. People can submit their CVs for review, and the Careers team will look over it and offer advice on how to improve it. This is also available at the
Beat Phil website.
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