NACE Excellence Awards
Best Practice or Program—Information Resources for Students—Employer
KPMG - KPMG GO Magazine and the KPMG GO YouTube Channel
The cover of the Spring 2008 KPMG
GO magazine is a whirl of bright primary
colors and hip images. Inside, 32
glossy pages offer even more highend
design and photography—plus
articles with titles such as, “Sweet. I
got an internship! Now can someone
tell me what that means?” and “What
message are you sending? Getting
down to business—online and on the
phone.”
Nicole Fritz, associate director of national campus recruiting, says KPMG is well aware of the message it’s sending in both the magazine and on its own customized YouTube channel.
“The Millennial generation is certainly the most technically connected and savvy generation ever,” she says. “They are accustomed to receiving information, not only rapidly, but also in an entertaining fashion. And they are tremendous multi-taskers—listening to music as they type a report, with the television on and sharing instant messages with their friends.”
Clearly, Fritz says, old-school marketing materials simply don’t work with this audience. “The plain old, boring brochure wasn’t reaching out to them,” she says.
And so, she says, she and Shawn Quill, KPMG’s marketing director, along with members of the national campus recruiting team and marketing staff, scrapped their old methods in favor of the twice-a-year magazine and the YouTube channel.
“It’s definitely outside the norm of what our marketing pieces looked like,” Fritz says. “Repeatedly, our recruiters hear that it is the people at KPMG that candidates meet that most influence their decision-making process. The need was for an integrated marketing communications platform that could convey a range of appropriate information about KPMG and enable students to meet the people of KPMG—in an entertaining format that candidates would take the time to read or view.”
Quill, who serves as editor
of the magazine and the
YouTube channel, says he
quickly pointed out that such
a message needed to be conveyed
in a sophisticated, lively, and
timely manner.
“When Nicole and the team came to us in marketing and said, ‘we want to reach students in a more powerful and effective way,’ we told them, ‘you need to think differently,’” he says. “Students think differently and they approach things differently. I felt strongly that video is a medium that’s important. You can get a sense and a feel for people in a way that you can’t in print.”
Quill says the magazine and YouTube channel work together to promote KPMG’s message, promising to help students “get a feel for the culture, meet the people, and see the amazing career opportunities awaiting at KPMG.”
“It’s definitely nontraditional,” he says of the idea to create a YouTube channel to market to students. “YouTube is now using us to promote the idea of using it for other nontraditional purposes. We’re the only client so far who has negotiated an enhanced channel.”
Fritz says the idea makes sense for a generation that has moved beyond visiting traditional web sites. “They’re on YouTube all the time,” she says.
And, Quill adds, the student voices and direct approach make students less wary of the corporate message.
“It’s a very sophisticated audience today,” he says. “Corporate propaganda turns them off completely.”
