Breathing new life into a faded recruitment brand

CHALLENGE

Reposition a once-dominant recruitment consultancy to reach a new, online-savvy audience and regain its market leadership.

Baraud International, once the market’s longest-established recruitment outfit, had built its reputation on solving tricky immigration-related employment problems. But failing to keep up with the internet age, its competitive rankings had slipped almost to the point of no return. Sensing an opportunity to reclaim the firm’s number one spot, a young, ambitious and energetic management team bought out the founder and engaged BB&P to help reinvent its brand.

Every legacy brand has baggage and often, if the baggage is heavy enough, the easy answer to a re-brand is to take an out-with-the-old approach and start again with an entirely new brand identity. But rather than just going next door and launching a start-up, the new management team were keen to build on the Baraud’s core strengths - particularly its deep regulatory connections.

SOLUTION

A thorough audit of the consultancy’s brand legacy, coupled with several in-depth brand workshops, determined that the Baraud name was worth keeping. It was agreed, though, that the ’International’ qualifier would be dropped. Besides, Baraud still meant something to the older, though still important, client base and the enviable six-letter url, baraud.com, was theirs.

The BB&P team began work on two fronts: one to develop a new vision for Baraud’s brand identity, the other to completely re-develop the consultancy’s online platform.

It’s a truism that recruiting firms are forced to be two-faced: their audience is divided in to two groups - employers and candidates. This is particularly acute for offshore recruiters such as Baraud where the employers tend to be local and the candidates global. And Baraud must engage each group separately and continually, employers through strong personal contact and candidates, increasingly, via online means.

In the critical discovery phase of the project, the digital team dissected first Baraud’s operational and data management systems and then the candidate audience’s online needs. The brand team, meanwhile, studied the competitive design space and gained insights into how important a role personal referral plays in Baraud’s business flow.

Baraud’s new brand identity system included print and digital collateral, print and online advertising, environment, and a world-class new web site with supporting social media platform. ’Baraud’ expressed visually in a custom lower-case type signature contained in a speech bubble, captures the firm’s renewed confidence. Avoiding blue - by far the most popular colour for recruitment brands - we introduced orange as the main hue in Baraud’s new palette.

RESULTS

Baraud powered back into the running with its clean, fresh and eye-catching brand identity. The effect on staff and employer clients was immediate and dramatic, but the real results began to show online where recruit acquisition and conversion quickly began to build. Within six months, Baraud went from yesterday’s headhunter to the HR consultant of the future.

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