Group Brand: bridging the HR/marketing gap

A new company?  In recruitment communications?  In summer 2009?  Group Brand's enquiry about advertising on Ri5's prime digital real estate sparked a number of questions.  Especially as Neil Harvey, erstwhile national creative director at TMP, is one of the prime movers.  We put our questions to Neil (right in picture) and partner Dave Kimmer:

Ri5: The first line of copy on your website states that Group Brand is "a conceptual, creative and digital brand partnership."  Can you explain and expand, please?

N: Of course.  Joined-up employment communications are only possible when different functions in the recruiting organisation work together effectively with external advisers.  We work with advertising and communications agencies, clients and suppliers of creative services, to establish strong and meaningful working relationships. We then leverage the very best in new technology and creativity to deliver great ideas across all commercial and public sectors. And that pretty much sums it up.

Ri5: How did Group Brand come about?

N: I guess the proposition came to light thanks to the very best efforts of Mr Goodwin and his golfing friends.  Dave, my room mate at uni and life-long Judas Priest fan, had been running a brilliant digital business (loop360) for 5 years. It wasn't until the spring of 2009 that our ever-talked-about idea of joining forces came to reality. As national creative head for TMP, and some 12 years in recruitment advertising, the idea of creating my own business was the natural next step.  I'd been creative lead on a range of brand-conscious organisations and I could see the importance of aligning any form of recruitment or internal comms to the corporate brand.  It was becoming critical to everything, as the recent McDonald's news showed.  Park, JWT and TMP had given me such a brilliant range of experiences that it was just a case of piecing together the plan.

Not only will Neil's creative and new business background come in handy, but the P&L responsibility he held until recently for a 40-strong ‘business-within-a-business' will be more than useful.

Ri5: So what's the proposition?

D: "Ideas together" although a bit of a Ronseal strapline, best describes how we work. As a Group Brand client you'll have the pick of creative specialists who'll help define and bring to life a recruitment brand or campaign, shape a digital solution and implement the change that'll get you noticed and turn the competition green.

N:  Over the last few years, I've attended brand forums, supplier gatherings and various agency love-in rituals that saw the coming together of the ‘thinkers' behind some of the world's most famous brands. I regularly found myself batting for rec ad in a place where ‘roundel widths' and ‘pack shot lighting' got their own slide deck. HR needs a bigger voice in marketing.

Frequently, Neil would find himself acting as the HR/marketing go-between  And he found that, as trust and understanding started to build, so the quality of approved creative work got better and better.

Ri5: So how does Group Brand intend to overcome the silo culture and, in particular, encourage financial co-operation?

N:  I often found that the door into the marketing dept, via HR was rarely used.  Key battles were being fought regularly on, for example, how to deliver specific yet generic messages to a recruitment audience.  As a creative person I was always scribbling down ideas and working out a format to try and please both sides. Thing is, it wasn't the ideas that were shortcoming, it was purely the relationships. Establishing relationships as a creative thinker and ideas person directly with the marketing departments was the key to delivering on-brand, yet specifically targeted work. Work that really spoke directly to the target group, warts and all.

D;  And that's the basis of Group Brand. We create ideas together that put creative thinkers, alongside resourcing professionals, in front of the senior marketeers to link up the chain in creating the very best intuitive, cost effective and always-measurable creative communications. No cross-selling, no end-to-end requirements, no offsetting the margin of one service against another.  Nice and simple. 

 N:  The beauty is that the concept works just as well when partnering agencies to manage a client's creative communications or attraction strategy, as it does working directly with clients as an extension of the HR team. The lines between attraction, recruitment, assessment and process management are blurring. Ensuring a clients employer brand and EVP messaging is resonating with their target audience is an ongoing job. Therefore having someone to think in conjunction with all the other messaging that's taking place across the organisation, is the proactive, non transactional relationship clients crave. 

Visit the Group Brand website to find out more about "ideas together": click on the logo in Ri5's Advertising Agency listings.