Just like 90’s fashion is making a comeback in 2025, the way employer brands work with consumer brands is going full circle, too. Barry Bell, one of Chatter’s Creative Directors takes a look at what that means for 2025 and beyond.

Let’s turn the clock back 25-odd years to when I first started working in creative recruitment advertising agencies. One of my first clients was a global sportswear business. They were a huge name. The kind of client you’d namedrop in the pub when you were talking about work. However, I’d quickly change the subject when someone asked where they could see the work our agency had done for that client…

Why? Well, mostly because that particular client almost always insisted that we used images of world class athletes in action along with incredibly cringe headlines about high performance - on absolutely everything we created. And it didn’t matter whether that was a full page advertorial for a senior hire, or a quick and dirty job ad to recruit sewing machine operators.

It wasn’t work I especially wanted to shout about. Because while that kind of look and feel might have done the trick for consumers at the time, it was fairly obvious that it wouldn’t work for a talent audience. And it took a fair bit of persuasion to help the client finally understand that pictures of Linford Christie alongside a copyline that says ‘Do you have what it takes to crush it?’ probably wasn’t going to engage Denise from Stockport and her seamster mates.

At least not in the way the client hoped it would.

We’ve been on a bit of a journey

In those days, what we did was called ‘recruitment advertising’. What we now know as employer branding wasn’t much more than a twinkle in the eye of the agencies who worked in our sector. It meant that much of the creative work we did was closely aligned to consumer brands. In other words, it heavily leveraged consumer brand equity to create impact - mostly for all the wrong reasons.

In the years since, we’ve watched our sector grow into something much bigger than we could ever have imagined all those years ago. One by one, sector by sector, clients have had their own lightbulb moments, and realised that the way we talk about working in a business doesn’t (or shouldn’t) need to be exactly the same as the way we talk about buying that business’ products or services. And that a job ad doesn’t (or shouldn’t) need to look exactly like a consumer ad. Of course, there’s always going to need to be some crossover between an employer brand and a consumer brand - but the point we’ve spent years making is that simply lifting and shifting isn’t always the most effective approach.

Alongside this, agencies, like Chatter, have grown into experts in uncovering the insight that clearly differentiates colleague experiences from consumer experiences, and in using that insight to create and activate employer brands that tell the right stories to the right people in the right way at the right time.

That shift from recruitment advertising to employer branding has been a real journey for everyone. Collectively, we’ve all made the argument in some form or another that an employer brand should be relatively distinct from a consumer brand. That talent audiences respond to different messages than consumer audiences. That working somewhere generally isn’t at all like spending your money there.

And I think we successfully made our point. But does it still stand?

Businesses now know how important it is to make their people matter

Everything happens in cycles, right?. Fashion. Music. Film. Food. Employer branding. In fact, just as we’re getting 2025 started, it feels like we’re about to come full circle when it comes to that age-old discussion about employer brands versus consumer brands.

To begin with, consumer brand led marketing today is huge, especially across social media. Brand reach, awareness and recall amongst consumers is constantly increasing. That carries a lot of weight - and talent candidates will naturally pay some attention towards brands they’ve seen and heard, and identify with. So why wouldn’t an employer brand want to tap in to some of that existing reach and awareness?

There’s also been a marked shift in recent times in client side stakeholders who are involved in the development of an employer brand. Back in the olden days, we generally partnered exclusively with HR teams. These days, businesses really understand the importance of making their people matter more than ever - and they’re very much aware of the financial and performance-related benefits of putting people first.

The team making the big yes/no decisions around employer brands also now generally includes in-house marketing brains. What’s more, final employer brand sign-off now often comes with C-Suite ratification - usually involving Chief Marketing Officers as well as Chief People Officers. And even Chief Execs if you’re (un!)lucky.

However, that almost always raises this question client side: we already have a brand - why do we need a separate one for employees?!

The point of this piece isn’t to answer that question. Instead, it’s to suggest that this is a topic of discussion that will almost certainly continue to grow throughout 2025 and beyond.

We’re already beginning to notice that employer brand creative is leaning back into consumer brand language, whether that’s across tone of voice or visual approach. We’re regularly seeing corporate brand guidelines that have had a go at codifying key messages for colleagues - to varying degrees of success. And here at Chatter, we’re building ever closer and more collaborative links with in-house marketing teams, in addition to the people teams we already know and love.

The question is, where do we go from here?

Employer vs consumer branding? Same, but different

My prediction for 2025? It’s that we should expect the employer brands we create to have increasing amounts of synergy with their consumer brand counterparts. Whether that’s in tone, or look and feel, or something else. There’s no reason why employer brands shouldn’t be able to leverage consumer brand equity, and there’s no reason that consumer brands shouldn’t be able to flex significantly into something distinct that can also engage talent audiences. After all, it’s not just customers that matter, right? We all know that people matter just as much.

Today, this seems like the right approach, whereas back in 1997 felt all kinds of wrong. And it will remain as the right approach as long as we continue to acknowledge one small caveat…

Employer brands and consumer brands speak to very different audiences. Those audiences have very different needs, wants and expectations. And the insight, knowledge and experience that goes into creating an employer brand is a world away from the insight, knowledge and experience that goes into creating a consumer brand.

As long as our default doesn’t end up being pictures of Linford Christie alongside a ‘Do you have what it takes to crush it?’ copyline, I reckon this is a prediction we should all be able to live with on both sides of that candidate/consumer marketing line.

And that includes Denise from Stockport. And her seamster mates, too.