Babcock is an international defence company delivering engineering, support and critical systems across a number of countries. In 2023, it set an ambitious target to recruit more than 300 apprentices, and even more in 2024, with equally stretching targets to boost gender diversity, increasing female engineer intake to 20%. It needed to overcome a lack of awareness of its brand and explain the specialist nature of its work, roles and skills.

Its creative concept ‘It’s what we do’ was the perfect platform to show what the business does and the activities apprentices would get involved in. Assets included a series of 90-second films, user-generated-style videos, a social media campaign and outreach/events materials. Films covered areas such as the opportunities available, rewards and support, and the workplace culture. Social media campaigns through Snapchat and TikTok offered high click-through rates, there were influencer campaigns targeted at parents, and a range of early careers events at colleges and schools.

The campaign transformed application numbers, which more than doubled year on year, producing thousands of total applications and more than 300 total offers. Babcock also achieved its diversity targets, thanks to support from Socially Recruited software, ManpowerGroup Talent Solutions and We-Do-Co.