This document summarizes ABB's process of revamping their employer brand from focusing on products to focusing on people. They collected data on candidate and employee preferences, identified their key selling points, and engaged an agency to develop a new concept centered around authentic employee stories. This resulted in a brand new video, imagery, and multichannel activation campaign across social media, websites, and search ads. The campaign generated over 22k new job seekers and saw significant engagement metrics, demonstrating the success of shifting to focus on people in their employer brand.

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From Products to People:
The Difference in Your
Employer Brand
Edoardo Ambrosi
Global Manager - University
Relations, Early Talents &
Employer Branding, ABB

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1. Identify your opportunity and needs
and what you have to offer (USP) –
who are you?
2. How to consolidate it and make it
work holistically – what are you
going to do? And how?
3. Want to be successful? Measure
it☺
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

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About ABB
• > 130 years old (Legacy), leading technology company
• Ca. 105K people in around 100 countries (Global, Diverse)
• 4 leading business areas (Technology Leadership)
• Aiming for carbon neutrality by 2030 and our solutions
have huge impacts on energy consumption (Sustainability)
Let’s write the future. Together.

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Perception is (a person’s) reality
Just do it
— Basically everyone in Marketing/Branding
— Famous apparel/shoes brand

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Where it all started…
1. Opportunity = New CMS and CRM systems
(Phenom People) going live in 8 months
2. Status quo = Website, CX and EB imagery/stories
getting «rusty»
3. Talent Market getting very competitive again
4. Action = We need a new «story» and simplification

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A new candidate and employee
experience
From 70+ external
careers sites and a plain
internal career portal to
22 external and 5
internal full fledged and
AI empowered career
portals.
Refreshed imagery and
candidate experience:
quicker and more
engaging.

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A new perspective
Technology still at the
core but as a result of
people’s actions, passion,
commitment.
Move away from «product
specifics» and focus on
the emotional level,
through people’s stories
and authenticity.

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PRO TIP
Evaluate clearly if and how many
local versions/language versions
you need based on TA data.
How much do you want to tailor
your experience?

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How to convince the business?
1. Data, data, data
2. Show how it can solve a problem, what’s in it for them
3. Show the holistic concept and be realistic
4. Bring examples of other companies

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We are getting
top new
systems – but
are our
messages and
processes good
enough?
Started E2E TA
process review,
candidate
experience
review project
and internal EVP
and selling
points check
Collected data
to understand
the way
forward
EVP still very
relevant. Also
identified key selling
points.
Simplify candidate
experience
Next important questions and actions

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What did we do in practice? Data.
1. Collected External surveys data on candidates’ preferences
2. Conducted internal focus groups/one on one interviews on what
employees value at ABB
3. Used results from internal Engagement Survey also to confirm the
focus
4. Benchmarked talent competitors

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Outcomes of first analysis
How to
Focus
No EVP change
No need to refresh
whole EVP but our
external image
and messaging
needed to be
refreshed
Based on data and
internal alignment
the focus was on
being authentic,
bring our PEOPLE
back to the stage,
without neglecting
the technology
Engage a
professional
agency to come
up with the
“story”

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We identified
OUR selling
points
Edoardo –
do you
have a
higher
resolution
version of
this image?

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Request for Proposal for agencies
Identified 3
brand and
design agencies
Shared the
briefing and
gave 2 weeks to
prepare a pitch
Pitch on
campaign
concept and
assets
Identified
Strichpunkt
(Germany) as
winner
1 2 3 4

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PRO TIP
Have 1 or 2 colleagues from your
corporate MarCom in the project
team. Your Corporate Brand needs
to live in your Employer Brand
concept and viceversa.

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What happened next?

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The concept
was born. A
new story,
“your story”

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Main drivers of the new concept
1. Attract and engage candidates in a direct way
2. Activate emotional level
3. Keep strong innovation and technology aspect
4. Diversity and teamwork

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Brand new
video and
imagery.
#RALLYFWD © 2022

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Our stories
•Creation of local and global
stories for the website
•Leverage same stories on Social
Media in both organic and paid
content

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Multichannel
activation

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Activation
•2 waves paid SoMe campaign in June/July and
October/November after the launch
•Google search campaign from December to
March
•Organic posting of the stories on the Social
Media Channels
•Creation of ready-to-use templates to be used
off- and online and CRM templates
•Distribution of the Employer Branding
«toolkit» to our Talent Ambassadors and
TA team

23. —
Activation examples
Social Media campaign: Instagram example

24. —
Activation examples
Various Templates in the global ABB MediaBank (accessible to all employees)

25. —
Activation examples
Early talent programs marketing and candidates' templates

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PRO TIP
Always ask yourself «why» you are
building a campaign:
- Create awareness?
- Drive applications?
- Get leads and subscriptions?
And measure it accordingly.

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PRO TIP
Measure it via your CRM and your agency campaign reports
Main KPIs to consider:
Social Media
Reach, impressions, CTR, video views, conversions (applications)
Website & applications
Website loading speed, Unique pageviews, bounce rate, time to complete application, job
views, applicants and leads generation over time, applicants drop-off rate

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22k
Job seekers generated by the 2
launch campaigns.
66% new job seekers that had never
interacted with ABB before.
Source: CRM and agency
20k
Job seekers generated by google ad
campaign.
72% new job seekers that had never
interacted with ABB before.

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21.1
million
Page views in the first 10 months
Source: CRM
5.9
million
Job seekers used the Chatbot
360k
Total visits
Interesting facts about the website and the users’ behavior

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LESSONS
LEARNED
•Genuine, authentic
•You are not alone – this is a company
effort, have as many onboard as possible
•Have an holistic, multichannel and
long-term approach
🡪 Keep improving and fine-tuning the concept – don’t be too protective of your «baby»

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EDOARDO AMBROSI
Global Manager - University
Relations, Early Talents &
Employer Branding, ABB
Thank You!
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