Metronom – Employer Branding & Recruitment Kampagne

The Briefing: METRO Cash & Carry approached us to help them find the "crème de la crème" amongst developers for their newly founded digital lab in the heart of Berlin. The Problem: No developer would ever get the urge to work for a supermarket anytime soon, and it’s fair to say that for most people, that’s what METRO is: a B2B-supermarket for professionals. The thing is, it has been developing behind the scenes into the biggest software company you never heard about.

The Insight

If you are planning on winning over the most sought-after developers, you shouldn't dare to approach them with familiar IT-clichés. Developers are curious autodidacts who see digital change as a way to make the world more comfortable, safer and simply put: better.

The fact that start-ups and other tech companies often exploit their commitment has been a hot topic within the industry for quite some time now. That’s why we wanted to bring this status quo out to the streets, using guerilla-tactics and an immense out-of-home presence.

The Idea

Let’s face it: you can only challenge the status quo by calling a spade a spade. The way we did that was to instill a thought into the minds of our beloved target audience: “What if YOU were to take the exit”? Using eccentric visuals, we gave the developers something to think about whilst keeping our client undercover. This was to be an incognito campaign for three weeks, and #TakeTheExit was the only sender in all communication.

The Teaser

#TakeTheExit proliferated within Berlin's tech scene for almost four weeks, and discussions were heating up about who might be behind the cheeky campaign. Who was hiding behind that dark landing page you stumbled upon having followed the #TakeTheExit trail of offline and online breadcrumbs? On it was an integrated shop offering disillusioned programmer merch, as well as a resignation letter generator to inspire their quest for pastures new. And sitting at the top of the page: a page-wide countdown inexorably ticking down. More than 35.000 visitors found their way to what was to be the stage of the big reveal. Or so we thought...

The Clou

As we were approaching the reveal day, the buzz had become so viral that we were slightly caught with our proverbial pants down. A tech journalists’ persistent willingness to research through domain registries led him to pick up the scent of our preceded actions. As he SherlockHolmed his way into figuring out who was behind #TakeTheExit we were forced to step onto the stage a couple of days earlier: TADAAA! May we introduce the newly founded digital spearhead of the Metro Cash & Carry Group with the claim: "Setting the Pace in Food and Technology".

The Reveal

By now METRONOM’s shiny new website had replaced the #TakeTheExit landing page. On it, a plethora of exciting developments that were in store about the present and the future of the company. Center stage was a reveal video in which we saw CEO David Toborek wandering through one of their flagship stores presented the new perspective that a job at METRONOM would open up for potential applicants. Meanwhile, the #TakeTheExit out-of-home posters and billboards had been replaced by a recognizable yet new versions of themselves, only this time with METRONOM as the rightful announcer.