How Boston Consulting Group Developed and Deployed a New Global Employer Brand at Scale

When Boston Consulting Group (BCG) set out to modernize their employer brand, they faced the challenge of reaching top-quality talent across the globe with the kind of personalized, authentic messaging that resonates with today’s candidates.

With a refreshed brand, impactful creative, and an omnichannel campaign, BCG achieved head-turning results, including a 118% increase in career site traffic and a 40% applicant conversion rate.

BCG’s Jordan Benard, Recruiting Solutions Specialist, and Emily McMichael, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist, shared an inside look at the technology and creative strategy that made their rebranding campaign so effective.

We’ve got the highlights for you below, or you can watch the session here.

Aligning Employer Brand with Current Workforce Values

BCG partners with clients to solve complex business challenges — and that requires top talent. Post-Covid, they knew an employer brand refresh was essential to meet the changing expectations of job candidates.

“With the competition for talent becoming increasingly complex, BCG embarked on this mission to launch our new employer brand, to fuel growth, and to help position ourselves as a premier employer of choice,” said McMichael, who manages the global side of the BCG career site.

With hundreds of locations worldwide, that would require a campaign to generate awareness of BCG’s employer value proposition on a global level, but with localized messaging that would resonate with regional markets while staying on-brand.

Beyond Is Where We Begin

The first step? Research — a lot of it. To reshape BCG’s employer brand, the team gathered data on perceptions, aspirations, and preferences from both external and internal audiences.

“We really set out to not just launch a new brand to help us distinguish ourselves from competitors, but to provide authentic proof to candidates that at BCG, you can learn and grow and thrive without sacrificing your well-being,” McMichael said.

To generate awareness and excitement, BCG developed a recruitment marketing campaign that encapsulated the new brand by showcasing BCG’s unique offerings, culture, and values.

The campaign, “Beyond Is Where We Begin,” tells the BCG story through the eyes and experience of employees. “Through this campaign, candidates hear directly from BCGers. They see our employees’ passions and action. They discover how they go beyond for each other, for our clients, for society, and for the world,” McMichael shared.

Compelling Creative Puts the Spotlight on Employees

Next, the team focused on developing creative assets that would show BCG as an innovative employer of choice dedicated to employee purpose and well-being.

They chose to use human-centric images depicting BCGers both in the office and in their own environments doing work-related activities or things they enjoy doing on their own time.

BCG also capitalized on the power of the word “beyond,” using it consistently in copy and messaging to establish brand awareness and convey the company’s high standard of work. Other key elements of creative assets include:

• Localized imagery that supports region-specific branding

• Photos that represent the range of BCG employee demographics

• Personal stories that convey employee pride and purpose

• Employee-generated photos and video that boost authenticity

“All of these elements combined ensure that every visual aspect of our brand communicates our values and stories in a unique and localized way,” said Benard, who manages content for BCG’s local career site and campus recruiting pages.

Using Tech To Streamline and Scale

BCG used Phenom’s Intelligent Talent Experience platform to execute the campaign. The corporate career site draws candidates in with engaging content and imagery as well as easy-to-use personalized job recommendations, and a chatbot that’s there for 24/7 site navigation help and FAQs.

Other key features include:

Content Management System (CMS). The Phenom CMS stores recruitment marketing assets and templates in a centralized branding portal. This gives local teams the ability to update their sites with fresh, brand-compliant content on their own, saving time and cost. “We're constantly reviewing and refreshing our content to really ensure a great experience for our candidates. And everyone takes great pride in creating the content and in sharing their personal stories,” McMichael said.

Talent CRM. Phenom’s Talnet CRM allows recruiters to store, track, and sort candidate information in real time. That means recruitment marketers can create segmented campaigns with tailored content that sparks engagement.

A Smart Campaign Strategy

In collaboration with internal partners, the TA team developed a targeted, omnichannel media strategy that leveraged a combination of paid media, social media, and employee advocacy. This approach gave BCG the market visibility they needed to significantly boost the flow of qualified traffic to career sites. “We don't just want to have an influx of candidates. We want to have an influx of the right kinds of candidates,” noted McMichael.

Through the use of a UTM coding strategy, the team gained valuable real-time insight on campaign performance. Each UTM source contains multiple variables, including source category and source detail with the following parameters:

• Source: Includes both the channel and type.

• Medium: Captures geography, whether the channel is paid or organic, and the date the link was posted.

• Campaign: Includes the topic or content (e.g., "climate sustainability"), the target audience, and the asset description (e.g., “video”).

This multivariable UTM strategy ensures an automated flow of data into the platform’s analytics function, allowing BCG to generate monthly reports on campaign traffic by region that have become invaluable to campaign planning.

“We could know exactly how many profiles were created by the campaign, how many visits to their specific landing pages, all the apply clicks, etc. We even were able to break down … application screens, interviews, and office hires. With a really good UTM strategy, you can get incredible amounts of data about your campaigns,” Benard said.

Related: Recruitment Marketing Guide: Everything Needed to Build Your Strategy

Far Beyond: Results to Celebrate

With their tech and the success of the Beyond Is Where We Begin campaign, BCG has been able to achieve its overarching goals to increase brand awareness for better attraction and conversion of top talent. Here are some KPIs the team is particularly proud to share:

• 50% increase in career site traffic

• 80% net new visits from diverse pipelines

• 118% increase in career site applications with a 40% conversion rate

• 50% growth in the BCG Talent Community

Tips from the Trenches

Thinking about launching an employer re-branding campaign of your own? Benard and McMichael have these insider tips:

• Research: Secure campaign buy-in by conducting thorough research to gather both external perspectives as well as those of internal employees.

• Collaboration: Involve teams across the organization, as well as leadership, in planning.

• Training: Plan to upskill local teams on using career site technology.

• Consistency: Avoid catering to local requests to customize platform widgets — there will be many, BCG emphasized. They’ve learned it’s preferable to stick with the standard.

• Campaign evaluation: If your career site uses NPS functionality to gather feedback, dig into qualitative data to uncover meaningful insights behind NPS scores.

Want more on irresistible employer brands? Check out DHL’s story!