Be Essential

Target Audience: The target audience for this campaign was job seekers. We were interested in hiring for multiple positions such as operators and maintenance staff as well as professional staff that included positions in IT, Finance, HR and management roles. The campaign needed to be scalable to reach multiple audiences.

Strategy Objective:Our objective was to attract quality candidates. We positioned working at the TTC as a way to both grow your career and support the growth if the city. The creative strategy elevated working at the TTC: "Working at the TTC isn't just a job. You're part of a vital team that serves millions of Torontonians every day. People count on you, trust you, put their safety in your hands. The work you do at the TTC isn't just important – it's essential." Our creative was supported with reasons to believe: opportunities for training, tuition subsidies and job security.

Situation Challenge: The TTC had approximately 1000 open positions across union and non-union roles due to natural attrition and retirements. The Be Essential campaign was developed to address this business need and focused on filling priority positions to attract operator and maintenance candidates in Fall 2022. The creative idea was flexible enough to scale to include other non-service roles across IT, HR, Finance and Management.

Results Impact: The campaign rolled out with a full print campaign in the TTC system including postings in bus, streetcar and subway. We also supported with a digital media buy - we needed to be visible at the moment that a potential candidate was searching for a job. Our ads ran in English and multiple languages. The campaign performed extraordinarily well. With a few days in market, the Search Keyword campaigns (Brand and Generic) performed way above expectations. The campaign over-delivered on clicks, with a very high Click Through Rate (CTR) and a low Cost Per Click (CPC). We saw a month-over-month increase of 139% in total applications and a 700% increase in unique views to the jobs page on ttc.ca.

Why Submit: We are submitting this campaign for an AdWheel Award because it was a hugely successful campaign that achieved its goals. We saw an increase in job applications throughout the initial run of the campaign. We continue to expand the campaign with new photography and open positions, which drives home the point that this campaign can be re-worked to address future hiring needs.