Using Humor & Social
to stand out in a stale HR benefits market
Purpose Not Perks was developed to ‘shake up’ the rather stale market of employment retention programs. The client, GP Strategies, came to us to develop some humorous ads to draw attention to the ineffectiveness of employee perks. I saw this as an opportunity to pitch (and won) the concept of a new social ecosystem that used humor to draw attention while engaging users to share stories on the topic.
The campaign stars a newly developed character “Pete Purpose”, who highlights the ineffectiveness of perks at his company. His presence is the mouthpiece of the site, as well as the star of a weekly satirical comic series on the topic. We also developed several supporting characters to help build relatability across cartoons and fictitious postings that made fun of bad HR perks. All content was sharable across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; with the website being the main repository for content.
Using humor was a first for this market, and helped the client stand out in a very unique and memorable way.
Client: GP Strategies
My roles in the project:
Strategy & concept, Branding, Web design, Social media, Illustration direction, Copywriting, Managing web development
PROJECT PLANNING
– Created & pitched the overall concept
– Developed the characters and their personas, directed illustrations
– Planned and wrote all site content
– Concept/Created online game show to increase interaction
– Created all UX & Admin functionality plans
Social platforms to drive engagement to the main character site
• Draws attention to the ineffectiveness of perks, allowing people to read and submit their experiences with ‘perks’
• Provides tools to engage management w/new HR products
• Rolled out the Purpose Not Perks theme across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter platforms
