Graduate award submission

1. MISSION CONTROL
Best On-campus Marketing Campaign

2. MISSION CONTROL: Graduate Campaign, RAD Awards 2015 | 2
Accenture needed something different, something intriguing and engaging to drive applications to
Mission Control; a 48-hour experience event, learning opportunity and assessment centre.
To fill the 38+ Mission Control places with an abundance of STEM graduates and achieve a 50/50
gender split, Accenture needed at least 450 applications. And with the goal of employing 75% of
attendees, the calibre of candidate had to be high.
Another condition of the brief to promote Mission Control was to protect its secrecy and maintain
the mystique surrounding the event. Our response was a prolonged, phased campaign that spanned
multiple channels – both online and offline.

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4 1 2 3 4
PHASES MINI MISSIONS VINYL CODE MISSION DISPATCH MISSION CONTROL
10 social media missions in 2
weeks. Submit answers via
Twitter and Facebook
7,500 vinyls distributed to
STEM and related students,
and photos shared via
Facebook
Over 1,000 missions shared
amongst friends via Facebook
and Twitter
A fully immersive, interactive
event held at a Top Secret
location

4. Phase 1 | Mini Missions:
To spark interest around Mission Control, we appealed directly to the problem-
solving mindset of the STEM audience by devising 10 Mini Missions: brain
teasers, riddles and satellite image clues that were posted across Accenture’s
social media channels. Students responded to the conundrums by replying
to a Tweet or posting a comment on Facebook. Those with a correct answer
were then entered into a prize draw to win a Jawbone Up. Throughout the
competition, Accenture posted messages to encourage students to pre-register
and, ultimately, apply to Mission Control.

5. MISSION CONTROL: Graduate Campaign, RAD Awards 2015 | 5
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151950250975794.1073741831.143844865793&type=3
Phase 1 | Mini Missions - Facebook
500
37%
entries to the
mini missions
Engagement rate of
(27% increase on ideal
engagement target)
19,000
63 likes
434 comments
7 shares
225,000
engaged users
on Facebook
Overall reach of
people

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Phase 1 | Mini Missions - Facebook

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Phase 1 | Mini Missions - Facebook

8. Phase 2 | Vinyl Challenge:
We created a cardboard vinyl player that really appealed to the interests of our
engineering audience by giving them something tangible to construct. It required
the students to set up the device and manually turn the disc at the right speed to
hear the top-secret message. The contents of the vinyl gave students their next
mission: visit accenture.com/missioncontrol to apply.
2,000 vinyls were posted to individuals who had either pre-registered for
Mission Control or were a member of one of Accenture’s sponsored societies. The
remaining batch of 5,500 were distributed on-campus by student brand reps at
16 key universities. The reps were asked to be clandestine and stealth-like as they
infiltrated STEM faculties and encouraged students to post comments online using

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Phase 2 | Vinyl Challenge - cardboard vinyl record players

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Phase 2 | Vinyl Challenge - Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nwlR9dd2mI

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https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152055152535794.1073741837.143844865793&type=3
Phase 2 | Vinyl Challenge - Facebook

12. Phase 3 | Mission Dispatch:
With the word of Mission Control spreading, the final phase of the campaign sought to cast
the net even further. We created Mission Dispatch, an online tool that allowed students to
select and send a mission to a friend using social media. The missions were light-hearted
and tackled stereotypical student gripes, such as not doing the washing up or not taking the
rubbish out. Each mission was delivered via a video which showed one of the vinyls playing a
message. It also encouraged students to visit the Mission Control landing page and apply for
the event.

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Phase 3 | Mission Dispatch - Online tool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bakxmlVgQWk1,000missions were
sent to friends

14. Mission Successful:
There were double the number of student applications (994) to attend Mission
Control than anticipated. Of the 50 people that were selected, 43 (or 86%) were
offered places on the intern or graduate schemes. Over a third were from STEM
subjects. We saw a great split between universities. We reduced time
to hire by 22% (from 36 days to just 28). We had 100% acceptance rate.
And participants rated their experience at 4.9 out of 5.

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Mission successful
Some students were inspired to write blogs:
http://gizmosandchocolate.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/mission-control-an-accenture-event/

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Mission successful
http://www.instructables.com/id/Paper-Record-Player/

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Mission successful

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Mission successful
Seven months on, people are still talking about it:
“Amazing – really took everything to the
next level. A real differentiator for us in the
recruiting market.”
Andrew McCaffer, MD.
https://twitter.com/XanRobinson/status/504159618936111104