Founded in 1876, Henkel is a multinational group that owns various brands, including the world-famous hair care brand Schwarzkopf, as well as brands such as Pesil, Loctite, Combat, Dial and Syoss.

As Henkel's consumer-oriented business grows, they are becoming increasingly in demand of talents of various calibers. But as a company started out with its detergent products, Henkel’s unrefreshed employer brand image linked to its traditional chemical business makes it a conventional and somewhat uninteresting work choice for modern day talents. They are now on an imperative mission to elevate and promote their employer brand image to attract target talents.

Since 2021, Henkel has partnered with the brand experience consultancy MADJOR and the cultural transformation agency SpringPillar – both under Labbrand Group – to attract and retain the best talents with an employer brand upgrade. Knowing the power of visuals and storytelling in capturing the fleeting attention of younger talents, MADJOR created a series of key visuals, external promotion videos & internal training videos that brings Henkel's EVP (employer value proposition) to life.

Firstly, we deep-dived into Henkel's diversified business portfolio, from which we mapped out Henkel’s target talents in APAC and classified them into four specific groups. We identified target talent groups for Henkel in APAC prioritize emotional values, such as a deeper connection and shared purposes, over physical values. This insight became a breakthrough for Henkel's employer brand experience. We researched and defined internal and external touch points like social media and campus recruitment to enhance talent engagement and effectively communicate with potential candidates.

Meanwhile, we recognized the fact that Henkel is a culturally diverse group with employees of 125 ethnicities from 79 countries/regions, and 37% of the leadership are women. MADJOR assisted Henkel in filming and producing a series of videos for internal training to show Henkel's commitment to diversity and inclusion and inspire a sense of pride among employees. In these videos, the MADJOR creative team use stylized avatars to represent Henkel's executives to bridge the distance with Henkel people, which help effectively convey Henkel's determination to eliminate prejudice and discrimination and channel the courage to fight against injustice.

To amplify Henkel's EVP, we optimized promotion approaches on popular social platforms and job boards in Greater China. By analyzing user activity, we targeted WeChat, Weibo, Red, Zhihu, and Tiktok which are among the top five social platforms with the highest user activity, and Ajinga, Liepin, 51job, Boss Zhipin which are vertical job platforms Henkel’s potential talents prefer to help Henkel accurately deliver its EVP to the right target group and increase visibility and brand impact to secure candidates.

Additionally, we conducted research on East Asian Gen-Z/Y preferences, concluding that young talents in the region prefer hand-painted comic styles visuals with bright colors and are naturally drawn to resonating story telling. With these findings, our team came up with social media communication guidelines applicable to the East Asian market for Henkel, creating three sets of key visuals for omni-channel promotion, as well as a series of game style videos. In the videos, we designed a fun narrative in which Henkel applicants defeat obstacles to level up. The storyline unfolds from Henkel's well-known brand Schwarzkopf with hand-drawn effects to grab young blood's attention and impress them.

Henkel's long-term reputation is always a top priority, and simply generating buzz is insufficient. To ensure a lasting impact, MADJOR has meticulously crafted a 5-year strategic roadmap for Henkel, divided into three stages: Maintain, Expand, and Shine. This comprehensive plan covers both online and offline touchpoints, providing Henkel with an instructive and forward-looking direction for employer brand promotion.

In this long journey of Henkel’s employer brand upgrade, MADJOR is proud to be part of the process of helping Henkel steer towards a better employer brand that is appealing inside-out.