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Recruitment video case study: BMW Group Careers (Part 1)

A few years ago, BMW Group came to us with a brief, ‘we want you to make a cool recruitment video for our Facebook page.’ We were excited, it’s not often a new client is so trusting that they give you free rein to produce something that is just… ‘cool!’ And who wouldn’t want to work with BMW!

The only limitations were:

  1. Use BMW’s pre-existing content from across the entire BMW Group – not ideal given we like to capture our own content but have you seen the video’s BMW have produced?
  2. Relatively small budget – this was our first production with the BMW Group so they wanted to see what we could do! We’re always up for a challenge.
  3. Showcase all the career opportunities at BMW – not just the sexy ones!

Related: Want to hit us with your own exciting brief but not sure how to make a recruiting video (or why)? Get everything you need to know about attracting and retaining top talent in the Casual Films Recruitment Video Guide.

We started by collating as much pre-existing content from BMW that we could and what we quickly learnt was it wasn’t going to be enough. The content was amazing but it was too varied, some content would be cropped, the colouring grading was wildly different, some was professionally captured and some was UGC. We knew we needed something to tie everything together.

That’s where our fantastic Senior Creative Alice Duke came in. She identified that despite the project's limitations we had to find a way to bring cohesion to the content. We decided to make a recruitment video that showed a day in the life of a BMW employee. This would feature an intro and outro showing a fictitious employee getting ready for the day and then returning from work.

‘But we didn’t have the budget to film anything!’

Like I said we are always up for a challenge. So, we went to our best resource available… ourselves. Alice became our BMW employee; my flat was used for filming and our internal filmmakers and audio team captured everything.

So that solved the issue of cohesion, but the content still looked mismatched. Welcome to the magical world of colour grading, where colours can be changed to look like everything was shot for purpose. Not quite, but we could certainly give the film a consistent look and feel, check out the finished recruitment video below to see what a difference this made!

 

Related: Generation 2030 demands a new world of work. Get 5 tips that ensure you’ll be recruiting their top talent, in this blog post.

The film is now looking good, but it was still missing something. Thankfully, our recruiting video production team quickly identified the gap. Because the footage being used was mainly pre-existing content most of it was embedded with a music track. When you see cars, you want to hear cars! Enter our audio genius Matt Alani. Not only did Matt recreate every single sound heard in the film but he also composed the entire track himself.

All of this gave us a film that felt considered, cohesive and tailored for the purpose it was intended. Anyway, don’t just take our word for it. Check it out and see for yourself! There will be more to come on our BMW journey so keep an eye out for more content soon!

See the finished recruitment video on the BMW Group Careers Facebook page.

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