24 April 2009
How do you get single mums back to work? The Department for Work and Pensions set marketers at employment agencies the challenge of enticing lone parents to jobseeker advice sessions as part of its £1m‑a‑year Employment Zone scheme. And their solution was pretty creative.
Reed in Partnership and other agencies are offering benefit-dependent mums the chance to win shopping vouchers, TVs, sofas, Christmas hampers and cars if they turn up to workshops. Not to mention free trips to beauticians, interview suits and mobile phones to prepare them for the possibility of work.
Marketers know carrots often work better than sticks. The carrot for the employment agencies involved is a fee earned both for results on sign-ups for free jobseekers’ workshops and for numbers achieving the ultimate goal of getting a job.
This could be the start of something big. The government is beginning to let marketers get creative with the way social problems are addressed. Let’s face it, marketers are vastly more capable of grabbing the attention of hard-to-reach demographics than civil servants. With government budgets getting tighter due to the burgeoning national debt, it’s going to be down to marketers to ensure taxpayers get full value for money. Let’s show government departments what marketers can do.
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