Creating an enduring employer brand for global leader in edtech

Emeritus is on a mission to make high-quality education affordable and accessible to people all across the planet. Rezonant helped establish a strong foundation for their employer brand and helped launch it to the world.

Challenge

How do you help a unicorn spread its wings?

Emeritus has cemented their position in the edtech ecosystem — with thoughtfully designed programs, strong partnerships with reputed universities and an expansive learner base. Our challenge was to build an enduring employer brand as they moved forward.

Some of the key challenges

How do we give people a ‘big picture view’ of the sector?
How do we celebrate the journey of Emeritus?
How do we put people and their stories in the spotlight?
How do we bring out the scale and magnitude of the organisation?
How do we celebrate the wide impact of the organisation?

How do we champion Emeritus as a workplace for transformative careers?
How do we give people from the outside a view into the work life of Emeritians?
How do we collect and narrate stories spread across 4 countries and many time zones?

Strategy

A syllabus for a fulfilling career- for and by Emeritians

Our overarching strategy was to build the employer brand from the bottom up. We wanted to make sure that we cover every aspect of working at Emeritus and present diverse perspectives from the people spread across continents.

Some key strategic decisions

Represent the employee as the custodian and storyteller of the brand.
Develop a ‘by the employee and for the employee’ strategy for the creation of all assets — this inspires a feeling of genuineness in the audience.
Include diverse voices — across countries, teams, roles, genders etc, in every topic.
Give people the framework to create their own narratives — from the standpoint of growth, learnings, culture, achievements etc.

Once we had laid down our strategy, we charted the path and outlined the steps.

Research

The hunt for data, insights & stories

In our roadmap to create an enduring employer brand for Emeritus, we conducted extensive research to understand the company, its culture, its people and the EdTech landscape.

Benchmarking

Our research started with a deep dive in the domain to understand competition, communication and visual strategies. Our extensive benchmarking led us to understand the following:

The most successful companies in the industry have repeatedly talked about the power of education to transform lives
One of the biggest attractions of a career in the edtech industry is the ability to make a real difference and be a part of something new and exciting
Edtech companies operating in India have been largely customer-focused and haven’t focused a lot of energy on building the employer brand
There is an opportunity for Emeritus to be a trailblazer in the edtech sphere with a unique and powerful employer identity

Survey & Interviews

Emeritus is a people-first company — so to build an enduring employer brand for the organisation, we needed to study the Emeritian, inside out. We conducted an extensive survey and a series of interviews.

650+ people and 65+ leaders across 7 different regions of the world participated in the survey

150 Emeritus professionals from across the world were interviewed

The responses from the survey were compiled and studied. The exercise gave us a treasure trove of viewpoints, insights and experiences to take the project forward.

Some key insights

Emeritians have a strong sense of cultural identity
They take pride in their diversity and the global nature of their work
They are ambitious and have the drive to advance their careers — just like the learners at the Emeritus platform
We received detailed inputs specific roles, functions of each team and their achievements
We gathered interesting personal anecdotes that bring out the highlights of the Emeritus culture
How the pandemic changed education and Emeritus rose to the occasion
People repeatedly emphasised the impact they are creating in their jobs — we realised that the theme of ‘impact’ has to be at the core of the employer branding

Execution

A pact with ‘impact’

‘Build a legacy of impact’ was chosen as Emeritus’ EVP (Employee Value Proposition). The impact that Emeritians create and their legacy — both within and outside the organisation — became the central theme in all our assets.

The EVP was highly efficient because:

It reinforced our findings from the survey + benchmarking about education being a catalyst for change
It resonated with the spirit of the organisation to make a difference in the lives of learners
It matched the culture of empowerment at Emeritus
It was scalable to individual stories

Packing a punch, graphically

We wanted to create a vibrant visual language for the employer brand that was powerful, bold and most importantly — in alignment with the theme. In the finalised visual motif, we decided to go with a pattern of reverberating and outwardly growing circles or waves. We called it the Emeritus ripple effect.

The pattern complemented the theme perfectly.

Every employee at Emeritus creates a ripple effect that impacts their team, their family and society
Every learner at Emeritus creates a ripple effect that impacts their organisation, community etc.

Once the visual identity was established, we took upon the task of creating various talent engagement materials that would anchor the employer brand among current and future employees

A book authored by hundreds

We wanted to create a culture book that is unmistakably Emeritus and acts as a guide to a high impact career in edtech. We figured that the best way to achieve that was by featuring hundreds of voices from the organisation.

Provides an engaging intro to Edtech and all things Emeritus

Quotations from people to validate every topic

Some important aspects of the book

An infographic page that maps the impact of Emeritus on the world

Candid ‘everyday’ photographs of life at Emeritus that brought a sense of liveliness (No stock photographs anywhere in the book)

The Emeritus culture, explained though light-hearted cartoons

‘Humans of Emeritus’ section that puts diverse individuals and their stories on the spotlight

Q&A section with leadership — where people could understand their leaders better

A new home for the Emeritus legacy

We created an informative, engaging and dynamic website focused on careers at Emeritus. For the UI/UX team, the challenge was to create a website that not only aligns with the brand language of Emeritus — but also looks modern and carries the ‘impact’ EVP.

Some highlights from the careers website

To keep the website modern, we chose an informative + interactive approach. We used this opportunity to integrate some visual storytelling aspects through icons and animations.

The use of animations throughout the website helped us create a seamless experience for the visitor while ticking all the boxes from a communication strategy.

When a potential candidate visits the ‘why join’ page, we want them to notice the impact they will have on the world if they join Emeritus.

A world of impact. With a world map and a hover feature with testimonials, we brought to life the global nature of the company.

Media production

We planned and executed several photo shoots & video shoots across 4 countries to create a massive library of media. These photographs and videos would go on to become the stars of the employer brand launch campaign. Read about how we carried out a world-wide video production here.

72+ Emeritus ambassadors across 7 global cities participated in the shoots.

The videos covered a multitude of topics from empathetic leadership, diversity of the team, flexible work hours etc.

Social media launch strategy

Once all the assets were in place, we created a detailed plan to roll out the extended social media campaign. The key decision was to decentralise the campaign and create opportunities for people to be more involved. We created two pathways for engagement.

A 16-week campaign on Emeritus official LinkedIn page — which would be ground zero for celebrating Emeritus’ legacy, culture and opportunities
A simultaneous 16-week campaign spearheaded by Emeritus Ambassadors on their own LinkedIn accounts — with posts that are custom-made for them

This strategy proved to be a great success, here are some reasons why:

The two pronged approach showcased the team spirit and high morale of the company
Gave professionals at Emeritus an opportunity to appreciate each others’ achievements and ‘legacies’
We were able to leverage the LinkedIn presence of various leaders and key team members at Emeritus and spread the message in their networks
The whole campaign was made more personal, immediate, collaborative and conversational
Instead of a top-down approach, it was a bottom-up way of expressing employer identity.

A total of 20+ static posts on the Emeritus culture and impact were posted on the Emeritus LinkedIn page

A total of 10+ themed videos on work life were posted on the Emeritus LinkedIn page

A total of 45+ static testimonial posts were posted by the Emeritus Ambassadors

A total of 85+ testimonial videos were posted by the Emeritus Ambassadors

Launch event

Emeritus hosted an internal zoom event on the launch day to announce the EVP, launch the EVP video and celebrate the work. The website was launched simultaneously. CXOs and people across the world participated. People saw it as a fitting tribute to the hard work and efforts behind the Emeritus success story.

Impact

A new beginning for Emeritus

Our efforts to create a powerful employer brand was a conclusive win. Through our work, we were able to give Emeritians an opportunity to both look back and look forward — celebrate their journey and be optimistic about the future of edtech.

“The campaign has definitely spread awareness among relevant folk regarding our standing as an employer. The idea to promote this through top performers was also great as it helped spread the message to their network and other superstars”

Arjun Mathur
Associate Director
SEPOs , Emeritus

Results of the social media campaign

On the Emeritus LinkedIn page, the campaign has so far received 75004 impressions at an engagement rate of 6.95% (which is a good rate considering 2% as a benchmark)
On posts from Emeritians, the campaign has so far received 228,844 impressions at an engagement rate of 2.77% (which is good considering 1-2% as good rates for personal posts)
A large number of comments from Emeritians and non-Emeritians shows considerable engagement. Total of 486 comments on the personal posts and 54 comments on the official page were recorded
Qualitative feedback from Emeritians indicated a high level of satisfaction with the campaign

Results for the talent engagement assets

The careers website gained a lot of traction immediately after it was published. People who are interested in a career at Emeritus now have an impeccable resource to utilise.
The culture book was widely circulated among the people and gathered a lot of praise for capturing the essence of the organisation.
Emeritus ambassadors who posted stories about their career at Emeritus inspired countless individuals to engage with the concept of ‘building one’s legacy at work’.
Overall, Emeritus achieved a great visibility for their global team and greater awareness about the work and culture through the vibrant employer brand.