Match Your Future

An image campaign meant to attract skilled workers to a region starts from a different position than recruitment advertising for a single job. What is advertised is not a workplace but a place. The decision at the end of it concerns where someone lives, and with it their surroundings, their free time and their everyday routine.

The first question is therefore how to reach people at all. Anyone not already considering a move is not looking for arguments in favour of a city. A campaign has to create the occasion itself instead of meeting an existing search.

Then there is the sheer amount a region has to offer. A location consists of many things standing side by side, and they matter to different people in different ways. A list quickly feels arbitrary because it weights everything equally. For Bielefeld Marketing the focus was therefore on combining playful discovery with the region and its numerous offers.

Visitors to the campaign site matchyourfuture.de can determine their own Bielefeld type through interactive matching and get to know the city as a possible future home. The idea behind it is to reverse the perspective. The place does not introduce itself; visitors answer questions about themselves and get back what fits them.

For a location campaign that solves two problems at once. The abundance of offers is sorted by personal relevance instead of being laid out in full. And the entry point works without prior knowledge, because the first question assumes nothing about the city.

Interaction of this kind only carries, though, if the result says something. A type that every path leads to is seen through quickly. The questions have to distinguish in fact, and the outcomes have to be backed by concrete offers from the region. The campaign was played out online and offline across several advertising channels and media.

As soon as a campaign runs across several channels, the connection between them becomes the actual task. A poster, an ad and a digital placement reach people in entirely different situations, yet they all lead to the same destination. Recognition then comes from imagery, tone of voice and a name that works without context.

For the campaign site this means it has to withstand arrivals from outside. Anyone coming from an offline motif brings no prior story. The site has to explain in seconds what this is about and lead straight into the interaction, without an explanatory text placed in front of it.

Finally, it pays to plan a location campaign from the outset as something that can outlast its first campaign period. Content tied to concrete offers of a region ages when those offers change. A structure that keeps questions, outcomes and offers apart can be extended later without rebuilding the campaign idea.