The festival Jobs. How to start a career in retail by going to a festival?

Theme/ Opportunity

Annually, the company hires around 5.000 employees, 95% being blue collars acting as commercial workers.

Presently, Romania is facing the hardest workforce crisis in recent history making Kaufland face quite the business and HR challenge – how to get personnel on board even for those easy and lower level jobs like store worker. These jobs don’t require experience or specializing, yet they have the biggest rate of fluctuation and candidates are really hard to find.

Kaufland had to do something about it – the lack of human resources is a serious threat for any company on the medium and long term. Something had to change in the HR approach and an employer branding campaign was badly needed.

Therefore, the main objective of our campaign was to raise awareness of Kaufland as an employer of choice among the fresh and young generation.

Audience

Traditional employment strategies don’t work when in crisis – so we had to change the way we look at the challenge. And it all started with shifting the optics on our audience – we needed to identify a different segment of public and tap into that.

This new audience fits right in: young (finishing high school or starting college), no work experience, starting out, willing to work and in need of money and time to finish their studies or go have fun. A Kaufland store worker job offers just that: a flexible, part time program, good money and no need for experience.

Planning

Now that we had the audience we had to get them thinking about our jobs. There is some bias as to these kinds of jobs in Romania but with the right arguments with the right tone of voice, said at the right time and the right place, they can be turned into quite the seductive offer. Like at music festivals. In the summer. When you’re not thinking about work but the fast depleting financial resources start getting you into a creative mood for alternative solutions.

Also, we mapped the typology of the company’s potential employees against the typical festival attendees, based on statistics provided big local festival organizers.

Creative idea

So, here we are. Untold Festival. Neversea Festival. SummerFest.The biggest festivals in Romania and one in the Republic of Modavia chock-full of party goers looking for awesome experiences.

And in comes Kaufland with an employer branding campaign like no other: The festival job! Fun, interactive, memorable – the experience should only enhance the freedom and good vibes. And although the name is job, the game is festival – we had 6 jobs available: the Cocktail Taster, the Selfie Assistant, the Shoulder Lifter, the Mobile Charger, the Refresher, the DJ Tag-Alonger.

Implementation

The Non-Interview: All party-goers had to do was come to the Kaufland activation tent, express their desire to get hired and after filling-up the form, they got the job kit: a very cool illustrated badge, a lanyard of their choice, stickers and the equipment (for the jobs that required them – like the Mobile Charger).

The Pay: The jobs weren’t for free of course, certain compensations had to be made – part-time party-going employees got free drinks, fanny packs, portable speakers or fitness wristbands.

The Hashtag: The hashtag #jobdefestivalbykaufland was used to get the young Kaufland temporary employees share their experience. Photos and comments made the fun activation reach all festival goers and soon enough there was no shortage of people to refresh the dancers or cocktail tasters to ensure the drinks were done right.

Much fun, many work, Kaufland style!

PLAY ME!

Communication channels used during the campaign: dedicated careers platform (microsite), Facebook page, Instagram profile, YouTube channel.