Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks
Cost per hire
Targets met.
How SSEN filled linesperson, cable jointer and travelling jointer roles across the South and South West, and held a 33% lower cost per application for three months after the media stopped running.
33%
Lower cost per application, during activity and for three months after it
Targets met
SSEN's technical hiring targets for the South and South West, delivered
25.24%
Click-through rate on paid search. A quarter of everyone who saw it, clicked
The Challenge
A qualified cable jointer is not sitting at home browsing careers sites. They are in work, reasonably content, and not searching for you.
<p>These are the roles that keep the lights on across the South and South West, and they are among the hardest in the country to fill. The brief was to drive interest, engagement and ultimately applications for technical roles across SSEN's areas of operation, with the South and South West licence area weighted hardest.</p><p>This was burst two. It had to beat burst one on a budget that had not grown, which ruled out broadcast and put every pound on performance media.</p><p>And the calendar was hostile. The second activation ran from Boxing Day to the end of January, straddling the fortnight when almost every employer stops advertising and most candidates stop looking.</p>
So we made SSEN the answer.
So we made SSEN the answer.
The loudest voices talking Aberdeen down were Aberdonians. Decades of oil-town shorthand had been internalised by the very people who could most credibly sell the place, so any campaign aimed only at the central belt would be arguing against the city's own residents. We built for both audiences at once.
Young people are not looking for the best skyline. They are looking for discovery, authenticity and things worth photographing that nobody has photographed yet. Aberdeen has all of it. It had simply never been positioned as a place you find things, because it had always been positioned as a place you work.
What We Did
Short form video
Carried the discovery
TikTok, Meta and YouTube ran mobile-first films built around reveals rather than claims. The beach nobody knew was there. The café at the end of the lane. The light on the coast at seven in the morning. Every asset was designed to make a viewer say “that’s Aberdeen?”
Creators
Supplied the proof
Local micro-influencers explored the city’s hidden gems in real time, sharing independent eateries, cliff walks and community hubs with their own followers in their own voice. Peer-led storytelling did what no paid asset could.
Outdoor
Put the argument in front of the doubters
Roadside D6 Adshels, mall screens, and digital outdoor in Dundee and Glasgow. We bought the commute and the shopping trip, hitting young audiences in the cities where the stereotype was strongest.
Co-creation
Gave it legitimacy
Content was built local businesses and city ambassadors, so the campaign reflected genuine local pride rather than a marketing department’s version of it. That collaboration is why the work landed with Aberdonians instead of irritating them.
The Results
Attention
YouTube content passed 170,000 views, with 70% watched on connected TV screens. That is not scroll-past reach. That is families watching a city make its case on the biggest screen in the house, which is why the work moved parents as well as applicants.
Intent
Traffic to destination-specific campaign pages surged, with time on site rising alongside it. People were not clicking and bouncing. They were reading.
Behaviour
We ran a Rubin causal inference model across 36 months of search volume for “RGU” and “RGU Aberdeen”, isolating the campaign period against the underlying trend. The lift attributable to the campaign was 31.2%. Not impressions. Not clicks. Demand.
Outcome (Applications)
RGU reported record application levels following the campaign, with growth in business programmes and a seven-year high in applications across Scotland.
Sentiment
Qualitative feedback from students and residents came back in the language of rediscovery and civic pride. The emotional target was hit as squarely as the numerical one.