It’s a question of Branding

An extended reflexion is always needed, befor taking the decision of going through with a project, or a campaign. Sadly, the need for imediatism, that society has been acostumed to, forces us to take quick decisions whcih, most of the time, reveal themselves as… let’s just say: awkward! however, we have to admire the creativity in them. I haven’t seen such thing since Tezenis decided to make recruiting interviews on the window of a street shop [content in portuguese]. So, dressing up a Branding Campaign as a recruiting campaign ends up behing a breath of fresh air in the dulness of our boring days.

If you’re in the habit of passing through Facebook, you might have crossed path with this:

When I saw this I must confess I was curious. I am a confessed whisky fan and the title was very tempting, right? tempting until you analyse the recruiting process and find out that the recruiting is, in fact, the “excuse” to boost brand awareness on social media, i.e. Facebook, and other media. You get a branding campaign putting fans talking about the recruiting process, creating free content for the brand. Making video, sharing content, participating in questionnaires, always with the excuse of “you need your friends to continue”. While the brand is boosted and an extensive contact database is being built without people even realising it. Soon enough, you’ll be getting emails about stuff you never heard of and you wont realise why this is happenning. So… we start reading the fine print, the terms and conditions, and we find out that, in fact, it’s not Bushmills that is seeking for an ambassador, it’s “Companhia Espirituosa” – the exclusive brand representative in Portugal. Ambassador Requisites?

• Someone passionate about Bushmills and with good knowledge about spirituous drinks in general;
• Extrovert;
• Dynamic;
• At ease with public speaking;
• Good english level;
• user based computer knowledge;
• previous experience as a bartender is valued;

Minimum educational level? Nope.
Previous experience in salse? Nope.
The Companhia Espirituosa only needs someone who enjoys Bushmills and a few other shots and knows how to party and public speaking. Someone who knows a bit of wnglish and it’s way around a computer. So far so good, it’s a “ambassador position”, right? Well… and what about what is expected from this “party-animal ambassador”?

• Keep track and ensure sales objectives, identify and direct the brand to point of sale;
• Represent the brand in every commercial activity, in Marketing and Public Relations;
• Market visits, promote and accompany brand events (involving nocturnal work) and report on these actions;
• Establish new partnerships, suggest improvements, gather new clients, identify opportunities;
• Provide training about the brand to clients and sales team;
• Manage relations with national distributers, under supervision from Companhia Espirituosa;
• Propose and analyse brand activation and visibility campaigns;
• Be the connection between sales team and marketing team;
• Ensure the brand has support on “Horeca channels”, providing support to the team when implementing successful activities;
• inspire Bushmills fans.

But! Wait! What? They want you to keep track of sales objectives, without previous experience in sales? They want you to establish partnerships and brand activation campaigns without any marketing experience? Experience in Advertising? Experience in Public Relations? They want you to provide support to Horeca channels and marketing and sales teams? hmmm…ok! and henceforth things get awkward, I guess! Where do you send your CV and application to? oh! You don’t! You don’t submit an application, you have to get your friends to help you. How? You have to share a post, with the link for the webpage, on your social networks, so that your friends and followers can click, and register, and “recommend you”. You have to gatter support (just like a political candidate!).

So. Let’s go throuhg the “terms and conditions” once again, just to make sure. So, this “recruitment campaign” is destined to “brand fans” (so much to labour law!) and side by side with the Espirituosa Company we see (finnally) another company: DASCAT. DASCAT is a software company which will be in charge of “promoting and managing the online applications”. The campaign goes through 4 stages, in 2 weeks. Durgin these stages, candidates will be provided trainning, by submiting simple quizes which will teach them about the brand, and whisky in general!

“During trainning, candidates will get, 3 times a week and for 2 weeks, a quiz about whisky. Each quiz has 5 questions, all multiple choice, with 1 correct answear and 3 incorrect answers” (my translation)

Candidates will have to make videos, promoting their “candidature” which then will be available for the brand to use as they please (all the videos, yes!). And so, you get 4 weeks of socialmedia (and online in general) brand buzz, about the “innovative” (abusive, at least) recruiting campaign by Bushmills, to get someone to show their pretty little face around bars and brand activation events.