Challenging Everything. Ourselves included

[DISCLAIMER: This is a post about a communications campaign, not an revolutionary art movement. Thank you.]

The number one global insurance brand — for the 7th consecutive year. 103 million clients. 166,000 employees. A presence in 64 countries. Total revenues of Euro 91,988 million in 2014.

Fair to say, AXA is big. But big in the global graduate recruitment game? While it depends where you are in the world, AXA isn’t the destination employer that it should be. We set about helping them do something about it.

2015 was the year that AXA brought all of its graduates programs together under one concept. A concept we at ThirtyThree developed, tested, further developed, tested again, developed some more, delivered and rolled out — and right across the globe.

We needed a big idea. AXA needs graduates with open, enquiring, curious minds. Graduates who want to Challenge Everything. Challenge Everything is a bold invitation and a promise. A thought-provoking opportunity, a call to action. We’re talking to graduates who want to have an impact, who *apologies* want to make a difference. And graduates who want a purpose, not simply a job. Graduates who want to challenge and, importantly, be challenged.

“ At AXA, identifying high potential talent is something we consider critical as we continue to build and prepare the company for the future. Through this program, we want to attract talent who will be able to help us achieve our business challenges and become our future executives.” Henri de Castries, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

There we had it. A targeted, relevant, insight-led creative idea. An idea which demanded a strong visual treatment. We explored and tried and tested (within the agency, with the client and with a band of AXA grads via Zoomerang) various visual iterations. We came to a conclusion. We had a direction.

We set out to move away from the traditional, corporate look and feel. We obviously had to work within AXA brand guidelines but we worked hard to find the flex within them. Part of our original brief was to use AXA graduates; to show our graduate audience how their peers are challenging norms and doing different — within what could be seen to be a traditional financial services organisation.

We wanted to show their personalities, their enthusiasm, excitement and passion. We wanted to humanise and modernise ALL graduate communications; to show AXA as a dynamic, fast-moving organisation which cares about people and gives its people the freedom to Challenge Everything.

At the heart of Challenge Everything is a series of films. We wanted to create content that would engage and appeal to students and graduates across the world; students and graduates who share AXA’s ambition and mind-set; In AXA’s words, “change agents who care about people”.

We chose real AXA graduates from four global locations. We had 7 different nationalities represented. We used our graduates’ voices for the script voice-over. (Not a single actor was used in the making of these films.)

The films launched in September 2015. They sit proudly on the AXA Global Graduate Program homepage and, of course, on the Facebook and Twitter channels.

All of the countries which run a graduate program have used the videos as a core part of their local campaigns. The look and feel of our Challenge Everything concept, the videos and all the other collateral produced, formed a consistent and flexible global creative platform which could be tailored (and activated on-the-ground) for local requirements and needs.

Our films have pace and energy. They’re not what you’d expect from a “traditional” insurance company. We wanted to show the graduates at AXA who are Challenging Everything. We wanted to capture the spirit of Challenge Everything — not just through the script but in the visual style of the films. Our films are fresh and engaging, there’s a realness to them. The focus is on personality; we want to show the expressions and excitement of your graduates.

As well as our main films, we have re-purposed and edited additional footage to create two new films for social media:

We also produced a narrowcast edit of our hero film for digital OOH at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. Tomorrow & Co, the production company we worked with on the campaign, have blogged about it here.

Of course, the films are just part of the global creative campaign. We created a full suite of digital, print and exhibition/on-campus assets for local activation.

(At the same time as the filming, we had photoshoots happening to ensure a consistent visual approach. The photographer Charlie Clift has written a great blog on the campaign. Incidentally, he’s fantastic to work with.)

And it’s great to see that the message of the campaign has captured the imagination of some senior AXA people.

We’re now gearing up for the campaign’s second graduate season, exploring new ways to bring the concept to live for our graduate audience. Watch this space.

The Adventure continues…

There’s more to AXA Graduates than Challenge Everything. There’s the Great Global Adventure.

The brief was to raise awareness of AXA as a graduate employer and generate applications to their Global Graduate Program. We knew (from our research) that told AXA had little employer brand presence among 18–23 year olds in many of their key locations. So we needed to create a buzz around AXA — while complement the Challenge Everything thinking and creative execution.

The Great Global Adventure was born and with it the most desirable prize in graduate recruitment history: a 12-month trip paid for by AXA complete with two international internships and volunteering work. A prize designed to capture the attention of young people everywhere.

The focus of the campaign was www.greatglobaladventure.com, a game designed to transform the buzz around AXA into a database of highly engaged young people that we could market the AXA Global Graduate Program to.

Of course, the best way to experience the Great Global Adventure is to play it. It’s a Google Maps powered treasure hunt where the player follows clues and completes challenges to earn points.

The challenges have been designed to reinforce AXA’s global, innovative or socially responsible nature. Extra points are earned through sharing their progress on social media.

When The Great Global Adventure closed over 25,000 people had registered their details and 8,149 had completed the game. Video interviews saw these 8,149 reduced to four and then just one. In June 2015, the winner of the Great Global Adventure was announced: Well done, William Moore.

But activity wasn’t just reserved for the game. AXA’s social media channels saw their communities experience phenomenal growth as people took to Facebook and Twitter to discuss, share and celebrate the Great Global Adventure.

The Great Global Adventure by AXA is now in its second year. Question is, who’s next to enjoy the experience of a lifetime.