Why Indeed finally made the move into TV sponsorship in the UK

It has weaved visual cues from popular E4 shows that are recognizable to the audience into the 10-second clips. 25 channel sponsorship idents will broadcast every day on E4, as well as before all E4 content on All4. It can also describe itself as the ‘Proud sponsor of E4’ off air, which adds a degree of cool to the brand.

From an audience perspective, Indeed sees three types of customers it needs. On the consumer side are the job seekers – it needs as many as possible. On the B2B side, it needs the job postings – some self-uploaded by SMBs, and the rest mass posted by bigger businesses.

Hayes says: “We’ve been in TV for a long time. We’ve got a pretty well-established model for how we think about growing brands. We’ve been in the UK for 14 years now and have been using TV as one of the key ways to drive brand awareness.”

TV advertising is not new for the brand, but it is the brand’s first UK TV sponsorship. Hayes explains: “This is a key audience for us and given shifts in viewing behavior, they are less available to us through sort of traditional linear TV. So we had to think more creatively about that balance [and] long-term shift in behavior around viewing patterns.”

It’s true that youth viewing habits have greatly diverged from older audiences and marketers are having to be smarter to reach them in TV. But they are still watching, and are more likely to be on the VOD services of youth-orientated channels.

Hayes also points out that this segment has been the hardest hit by the pandemic and it is a moral imperative that Indeed firstly reaches them, and secondly helps them.

“Over the last couple of years, the jobs that younger people lean more toward – retail and hospitality – have been disproportionately impacted. We wanted to make sure that we’re as visible as possible for this group, because helping them to be matched with the right jobs is our core mission.”

Indeed launched in the UK just before the 2008 recession and learned lessons from the recovery. It has applied them in some ways today to the post-pandemic bounce back, although the conditions vary greatly.

Hayes explains: “There has been a remarkable rebound in job postings [compared with post-recession]. We saw a steep decline and rebound that’s more than compensated for that. So, 1.25m vacancies in the US came out, which is about 45% above pre-pandemic. It’s a tight labor market.”

With demand at a high, and several economies undergoing what’s been called ‘the great resignation,’ there’s extra pressure on Indeed to stock its aisles with job listings.

And that’s where the creative comes in. The on-air idents were developed by Indeed’s in-house creative team. It wanted assets that would not fatigue viewers, particularly with ad frequency capping still being an often-cited issue in the VOD space. He hopes the ads will last the test of time throughout the year-long partnership, but is prepared to tinker and flip the creative if required.

“This [partnership] is an experiment. We’ll be looking at a number of campaign-specific metrics, as well as how it feeds into the wider goals. We track brand studies in the UK across these three audiences, of course we can divide down a number of demographics. We also have some specific pre- and post-analysis for the campaign in partnership with our media partners, which helps us to understand the specific sentiment.”

Indeed was launched in 2004 and attracts more than 250 million unique visitors every month.

Watch the idents below.

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