Smart Connect Employee App Launch

PROBLEM

How do you grab the attention of hundreds of thousands of employees, across borders, language barriers and with wildly different roles?

This was the problem faced by DHL when launching its new ‘Smart Connect’ employee app. This platform connects employees across regions providing news, info and communication options, but as DHL had learned with its previous app (which over its 3-year lifetime saw only 45k users), promotion would need to play a significant role in making it a success.



OBJECTIVES

To consider the launch a success, DHL needed to: Exceed previous app downloads, Reach DHL employees across all regions and job roles.



STRATEGY

With over 20 years’ experience in creative communications and a proven track record working with DHL, Something Big was well-placed to produce an engaging, on-brand solution. DHL has a strong yellow and red brand, which was used in all existing internal communications. To make this campaign stand out, Something Big needed to step away from the norm. The new comms would need to be vibrant, engaging and beautiful, drawing the viewer in regardless of role or cultural background, inviting them to learn more. It needed to be accessible and language engaging.



IMPLEMENTATION

Something Big produced bespoke materials around the concept of the phone being a doorway or portal to ‘the world of DHL’, with bright, dynamic depictions of employees interacting with messages and pages that leapt out of the phone, larger than life.

Five illustrations were created, each on-brand and showing different aspects of the app. Animations were then created for each of the illustrations and broadcast as slides on DHL’s employee TVs with taglines such as ‘Stay Informed’ and ‘Start Chatting’. Ultimately, these were combined into a long-form animation that could be presented with region-specific audio for broad distribution.

Something Big also produced posters with links and QR codes, featuring the taglines ‘A portal to possibility’ and ‘Download, dive in, explore!’.



RESULT

The project was a success and objectives met: Over 67,000 downloads by May-2022 alone, Creative supplied to the 220 countries that DHL operates within.