First Bus
Applications up 320%. Cost per hire down 74%.
Recruiting bus drivers across every First Bus operating area in the UK, from Glasgow city centre to rural depots, with budget moving between them while the campaign ran.
+320%
Increase in applications across the campaign
74%
Reduction in cost per hire
3,896
Bid and budget adjustments made by iJACK while the campaign was live
The Challenge
First Bus does not have one labour market. It has dozens, and each one competes with local logistics, retail and hospitality rather than with the depot down the road.
A national driver recruitment campaign therefore cannot be a national campaign. What works in Glasgow city centre does not work in a rural depot, and the competition for the same candidate is different in both.
Underneath the media problem sat a perception problem. Driving a bus is a skilled, secure, well-structured career, and it is not what most people picture when they think about their next job. The brief was to reframe it as a modern one.
A national campaign
that behaves like a hundred local ones.
We built behavioural models for three candidate groups rather than one audience: experienced drivers who already hold the licence, career changers and work returners who need convincing the job is a career, and trainee drivers who need to know the training exists at all.
Then we stopped treating the media plan as fixed. iJACK scanned live performance and redistributed budget in real time across Meta, search, programmatic, out of home and audio, so a depot that started converting on a Tuesday afternoon got the money a depot that was not. The plan was a starting position rather than a commitment.
What We Did
Three candidate groups, five channels, 450 poster sites, and a system moving money between all of them while the campaign ran.
Audience profiling came first. Each of the three groups got its own behavioural model, and the model decided the channel, not the other way round.
Creative was matched to the funnel. First-touch video featured real drivers. Mid-funnel messaging carried local depot opportunities by name. Bottom-funnel programmatic served only when behavioural data signalled somebody was ready to apply.
Out of home anchored the local layer. Over 450 sites across city centres, commuter corridors and depot catchments, each carrying a QR code to the nearest location rather than a national careers page.
Digital carried reach and conversion together: Meta video and lead generation, Google Search, programmatic display, BVOD, YouTube and targeted audio.
iJACK ran underneath all of it, making more than 3,896 bid and budget adjustments by device, time of day, weather and local market conditions.
The Results
A national brief delivered through local behaviour, and the cost per hire tells you which half of that mattered.
Applications. Up 320% across the campaign.
Efficiency. Cost per hire down 74%. Not a lower cost per click or a cheaper impression, but a lower cost for the thing First Bus actually buys.
Coverage. Every operating area in the UK, from Glasgow and Bristol to smaller towns and rural depots, each treated as its own market with its own competition.
Optimisation. 3,896 bid and budget adjustments, made while the campaign was live rather than reported afterwards, moving money to whichever depot was converting that day.