WORK

Southbase is one of New Zealand's fastest-growing construction companies, powered by innovation, a unique integrated delivery model, and exceptional talent. With a robust pipeline of high-profile, large-scale projects secured nationwide, they needed a comprehensive recruitment campaign to expand their team of professionals and capable leaders.

The primary objective was to deliver a high volume of quality talent for notoriously hard-to-recruit senior and specialist roles commanding an average salary of $250,000. Concurrently, the campaign needed to leverage high-visibility placements to raise the profile of the wider Southbase brand while maintaining strict cost efficiencies compared to standard recruitment agency fees (typically $25,000 per hire). The challenge was to connect with a straight-up, professional audience without leaning into overly creative gimmicks or corporate "B.S.", ensuring the company stood out as an industry innovator.

The strategy

We began the process with an in-depth competitor review, analysing how major players across Australia and New Zealand approach recruitment. Our research revealed that the industry space was oversaturated with 'same-same' messaging. Competitors relied heavily on predictable construction puns, generic imagery of smiling faces, and business-as-usual (BAU) messaging that failed to capture attention or build a memorable brand.

This lack of dedicated creative campaign space represented a massive opportunity for Southbase. By crafting a distinct look, feel, and narrative grounded firmly in the core Southbase brand identity, we could cut through the market noise, position Southbase as a uniquely different employer, and capture the interest of highly ambitious talent.

The creative

To break away from the competition, we developed and rolled out the "Build what matters" creative concept. This direction targeted purpose-driven, ambitious talent who aren’t just looking for a job, but want to stamp their mark and have a real impact on the future of New Zealand's built landscape.

The headline carries a powerful double meaning: it refers directly to the large-scale, career-defining projects of national significance Southbase is engaged in, while simultaneously referencing the individual’s own career, friendships, and skills. Visually, the creative heroes individual employees, with concentric rings radiating out from them to showcase the far-reaching impact of their work across people, projects, and processes. This practical and highly flexible approach allowed us to create variations featuring different employees as the 'hero', seamlessly demonstrating the diverse range of roles and people within the Southbase team.

The rollout and video assets

To ensure a seamless brand experience across all touchpoints, the "Build what matters" campaign was optimised for localised execution and novel placements. This spanned region-specific social media variations (Auckland and Queenstown), international recruitment targeting to bring Kiwi talent home from the UK, geo-targeted billboards placed intentionally near competitor worksites, and high-engagement novel placements.

A critical component of the rollout was the delivery of motion and video assets. Tasked with reskinning ten current career progression videos into the campaign theme, we engineered a modular system featuring dynamic opening and closing frames. Visuals utilised expanding ripple animations to showcase scale, giving viewers immediate glimpses of landmark Southbase projects—such as Te Kaha, the Dunedin Hospital Outpatients building, and the Massey University Innovation Complex—before transitioning into the employee's personal story.

To prevent creative fatigue across a tight six-week flight, we developed tailored asset variations across Auckland and Queenstown in both horizontal and vertical formats. This comprehensive multimedia approach ensured that whether an applicant encountered Southbase on LinkedIn, Meta, or an out-of-home billboard, the message of opportunity remained unmistakably clear.

The results

Grounding the creative in purpose and cutting through the generic industry noise paid off immediately. The 1.5-month campaign defied historical seasonal slowdowns, delivering immense brand visibility and an influx of top-tier talent:

• Massive brand exposure: The campaign generated over 3.7 million paid impressions, significantly raising the profile of the Southbase brand in high-visibility placements.
• Surging website traffic: The careers section saw an influx of traffic, recording 22,282 page views during the campaign. A massive 89% of all careers traffic fell directly within the 6-week flight (22,282 of 24,917 total views), proving the spike was entirely campaign-driven rather than baseline seasonal interest. Traffic peaked at ~1,000 views in a single day, with custom tracking capturing 3,314 direct website clicks explicitly to key job listings.
• Exceptional talent quality: High-quality placements delivered exceptional conversion rates. Notably, the LinkedIn Auckland static creative alone drove 88 conversions from just 243 clicks.
• Beating the holiday slump: Launching on 19 December, the drive attracted over 150 applicants, significantly outperforming historical trends for the holiday period. Expressions of Interest (EOI) were unusually high, securing several standout gem candidates with local candidate calibre significantly higher than the previous year's Christmas break.
• Global and local impact: The creative generated strong international interest from India, the UAE, and the UK. Locally, the conversion rate was outstanding, with 25% to 30% of New Zealand applicants successfully progressing to the first-stage screening process.
• A loaded, high-value pipeline: The campaign immediately delivered 125 candidates into the recruitment pipeline during the launch month alone, with the overall candidate success rate steadily climbing from 9.6% in December to ~15% in January.
• Unbeatable ROI: Throughout the 1.5-month flight, approximately 10 exceptionally strong candidates were progressed for immediate consideration for senior, $250k+ specialist positions. By bypassing traditional recruitment methods, the campaign delivered incredible cost-efficiency against standard $25,000-per-hire agency fees, securing the leadership Southbase required to fuel their future growth.