Google: Creative Lab Five Application Site

Credits & Description:

Title: Creative Lab Five Application Site
Agency: Google Creative Lab
Brand: Google Inc
Country: USA
Entrant Company: Google, New York
Advertising Agency: Google Creative Lab, New York
Production Company: Google Creative Lab, New York
Creative Lab: Google Creative Lab (Google, Inc)
Execution:
This is not a traditional job opportunity, so the application itself should be unique as well. We invited applicants to design their own version of the Google homepage with a few simple shapes, encouraging them to "write it, design it, code it, break it" as a kind of cover letter for the application.Applicants can change the shape, position, and scale of the objects. They can animate the shapes on a simple timeline, move keyframes, crop, and delete. They can add and style text, and can use an application console to discover a variety of secret tools and effects.
Strategy:
Appeal to a diverse range of interests and talents.Instead of showing people what we've made, let others share what they can do and what inspires them.Give people an experience worth sharing. Talented people know other talented people.Challenge and inspire the applicant to create without a brief or direction - something that best represents them.
Outcome:
Lots of earned media led to 8.5x more applications than in previous years of the program!
Campaign Description:
Invite designers, coders, writers, animators, and anyone else to design, code, write, animate, and even break the application for the Google Creative Lab 5 program. No instructions, no guidelines, no brief - only a basic set of shapes and tools with a few hidden extras for the intrepid applicant.
Synopsis:
Google Creative Lab is a very small team in a very large company. Every year, we recruit five recent-graduate, early-career creatives for a one-year immersion program. It's hard to reach a lot of people with a traditional recruiting outreach effort, and we worry that we miss out on some great talent that lies outside the net we cast in all the usual places. Additionally, the Creative Lab doesn't have any kind of consolidated online presence that describes what we do and that shows off our work.How do we attract the best, most promising, new talent without a traditional destination, and in a way that is engaging to the kind of people we want on our team?