Lloyds TSB: Galloping to the Campuses Lloyds TSB (Lloyds), a UK-based financial services group, had assets worth

280 billion and a net income of 3,493 million in 2004. The company, which had employee strength of 70,000 spread across the globe, had its activities organized into three businesses: UK Retail Banking, Insurance and Investments, and Wholesale and International Banking. In 2003, to attract graduate students of high-caliber from campuses in the UK as job applicants to the company, Lloyds designed an innovative promotional campaign that was successful in increasing the quantity and quality of the applicants. In the early 2000s, Lloyds used to recruit around 100 new graduates each year from university campuses in the UK to support its various functions. Though the company was successful in finding enough people to fill the positions, there was a feeling that it was not attracting people of the caliber being recruited by consulting and investment banking firms like McKinsey, JP Morgan, or Deloitte. Competition from companies in new age functions like mobile communications was also hotting up. Lloyds understood that it needed to refine its recruitment branding strategies to attract the right kind of people. Lloyds discovered that graduates found the image of the company unappealing. This was caused by the perception that students had in general, that a career in a bank was more or less related to working behind a counter. The mindset is entrenched that retail banking offers insufficient breadth and depth of opportunity, said Neil Harrison, Planning Director, aia.35 In addition, Lloyds promotional campaigns carried messages that the company was competent, dependable, and risk-free. Though such advertisements went down well with the customers of the bank, who were concerned with the security of their investments, campus graduates were turned off by the image of the company when it came to selecting a company they wanted to work with. Unlike investment banks, ad agencies, or the owners of cool youth brands, for whom developing a recruitment brand was a natural evolution from the corporate brand, Lloyds had to recreate its image. Though the company was well-known, that fact didnt help it in recruiting the right people as the company had the image of a utility and mass market brand. Graduates found the image unaspirational. There was a need for Lloyds to communicate to the graduates that it offered a varied range of career paths. The company also had to get across the idea that a career at Lloyds was challenging and exciting. In order to communicate its messages and with the need to connect with the attitudes of the graduates, the company, in association with aia, launched a guerilla marketing campaign36 at the 18 target universities of UK. In September 2003, a mystery campaign was started where posters carrying a black outline of a horse37 appeared on the campuses. Days later, outlines of horse-shoes were stenciled on pavements in campuses. This was followed by placing life-size, fiber-glass horses in unexpected spots inside and outside campus buildings. These were taken away after 24 hours. For creating maximum impact, the locations at which the horses were to be placed and posters pasted were selected with the help of the second year students on the campus. These actions created a sense of intrigue and became a talking point among the target students. Over a period of time, a web address, www.adarkhorse.com, was added to the posters. On the website, a spoof psychometric test was given asking, Are you a bit of a Dark Horse? A riddle was also given on the website. The candidate who solved the riddle was taken to the Lloyds graduate recruitment page, where the potential candidate was invited to know more about the company and the varied opportunities it had on offer for graduates. The website provided the candidate with a list of dates and venues for presentations where they could personally interact with people from Lloyds. It listed the pecuniary advantages along with other benefits that the company offered to the recruits. The company mentioned the starting salary, healthcare allowances, pension schemes, reward schemes, and loan schemes. It offered a signing bonus of 2000 pounds to each successful applicant. The website also spoke about the holiday packages and the flexible working options that a Lloyd employee could avail of. A mobile phone and a laptop were also offered to the new recruits. The campaign gained the attention of the students and the mysterious style in which it was executed resulted in transforming Lloyds image from a staid, play-it-by-the-book company. After the campaign, for the year 2003-04, the company found a 30-40 percent increase in job applications and an 80-90 percent year-on-year increase in 2004-05. Lloyds also mentioned that the quality of candidates who were applying to the company had improved. The campaign also won several awards in the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Recruitment Marketing Awards for 2004: Winner in Best Innovation Category, Winner in Best Outdoor Category, Winner in Best Website, Finalist in Recruitment Effectiveness Award in Memory of Keving Long and Finalist in the Best Campaign Category. Though the campaign was termed successful in the short-term, analysts felt that there were dangers in sending out mixed messages as communications to customers and existing employees emphasized traditional service-oriented values while the new recruits were given messages that carried a sense of intellectual challenge and excitement. Analysts also wondered how the company planned to maintain the same level of excitement for the new recruits throughout their career at Lloyds. Questions for Discussion: 1. Lloyds understood that it needed to refine its recruitment branding strategies to attract the kind of people it wished to recruit. What were the steps taken by Lloyds to position itself as a company that a graduate student of high calibre would aspire to work for? 2. How did Lloyds use the concept of motive combinations in its marketing campaign to make graduate students apply to the company? .