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Everyone Knew the Stores. Almost Nobody Knew You Could Work There
Case Study · Retail & Apparel
Sports Direct, FLANNELS, GAME, Jack Wills — instantly recognizable as places to shop. As a place to build a career, the Group behind them was practically invisible. Only 13% of people had even heard careers existed there.
The 60-Second Version
- Frasers Group — owner of Sports Direct, FLANNELS, GAME, Jack Wills, and Evans Cycles — found only 13% of people had heard of careers there.
- A research-led rebrand and campus campaign pushed that consideration figure to 49%.
- The campaign generated a click-through rate reported at roughly 4x the recruitment industry benchmark.
- The work won a RAD Award for Employer Brand – National in 2026.
- The approach runs on 4 stages: Research → Define → Build → Reach.
Customers knew exactly what Frasers Group was. Shoppers walked in and out of Sports Direct, FLANNELS, GAME, Jack Wills, and Evans Cycles without a second thought about who owned them, let alone what it might be like to work there.
When the company set out to fix its employer brand, the research made the gap uncomfortably specific: only 13% of the general working population had even heard of careers at Frasers Group. Strong brand recognition on the shop floor had built almost nothing on the recruitment side.
For a company with serious growth ambitions and a constant need for entrepreneurial, hands-on talent, that gap wasn't a branding curiosity. It was a genuine constraint on how fast the business could grow.
The Challenge
The instinct in this situation is often to launch a flashier recruitment ad. Frasers Group and its agency, Wiser, went a different direction first: they spent time understanding what it actually felt like to work there before deciding what story to tell.
13%
of people had heard of careers at Frasers Group before the project began
49%
said they'd consider a role at Frasers Group after the rebrand and campaign launched
~200
interviews conducted during research, alongside 1,000+ graduate perceptions and 20,000 feedback data points
The research surfaced a consistent theme: employees described a workplace defined by ownership, pace, and fast progression — the sense that people "dive in head first" and grow quickly as a result. That became the foundation for a proposition built around one idea: when you fear less, you achieve more.
Perception followed once narrative, identity, and actual employee experience were finally aligned — that alignment is what makes a shift in perception sustainable, rather than a short-lived campaign spike.
— Adapted from Wiser's account of the Frasers Group employer brand projectGetting from "nobody knows we hire" to "half of people would consider it" wasn't one campaign. It was a sequence, starting well before any advertising went live.
Assuming vs. Researching the Employee Story
Most employer branding efforts start with a campaign brief. This one started by finding out whether the assumptions behind that brief were even true.
Assuming
Starting from a marketing brief
- Employer story guessed at, based on consumer brand identity
- Visuals borrowed directly from customer-facing marketing
- Career growth mentioned vaguely, without specifics
- Campaigns run once, with no clear before/after benchmark
- Messaging led by what sounds good, not what's actually true
Researching
Starting from real employee experience
- Employer story built from focus groups, interviews, and perception data
- Visuals built around real employees, not stock-style product imagery
- Career growth made concrete through a named, structured programme
- Perception measured before and after to prove real impact
- Messaging tested against what employees actually experience
Once the research was done, turning it into an actual campaign followed a repeatable sequence.
The Employer Brand Cycle
The Frasers Group project followed the same four-stage pattern that tends to separate employer branding that actually shifts perception from a one-off recruitment ad.
The rollout sequence
Four stages, each building on the last
01 Research
Understand the real employee experience through interviews and perception data.
02 Define
Turn what's genuinely true into a clear proposition and set of values.
03 Build
Create authentic visuals, films, and career pathways that back up the story.
04 Reach
Take the story directly to target talent, then measure whether perception moved.
Skip Research, and Define becomes guesswork — which is exactly how employer branding turns into marketing copy nobody who works there actually recognizes.
Stage three — Build — is where the story became tangible. These eight assets are what Frasers Group actually put behind the proposition.
Eight Assets Worth Building
A strong proposition needs a full set of tools behind it to actually reach candidates consistently across every channel and team.
Employee Films
More than 20 films covering real employee experiences and culture
Values Framework
A clear, small set of values that actually shape everyday decisions
Career Pathway Programme
A named, structured route for advancement — Frasers Group's Elevation Programme
Brand Toolkit
Reusable assets that let teams across the business apply the brand consistently
Interactive Brand Hub
A central home for the employer brand story and supporting materials
Campus Activation
In-person experiences at target universities designed to physically stand out
Programme Microsite
A dedicated destination explaining exactly how career progression works
Perception Research
Before-and-after measurement proving whether the effort actually worked
Those assets aren't theoretical — the campaign that came out of them produced a specific, documented set of results.
The Campaign in Five Numbers
Beyond the headline consideration shift, the campus activation itself generated a specific set of engagement figures worth breaking down.
1
Reach
Millions of students reached across six target universities
The activation combined an in-person campus presence with digital and social channels to reach far beyond just the students physically present.
2
Engagement
Tens of thousands of competition entries
A QR-code competition tied to prizes gave students a low-friction way to engage and enter a database for future outreach.
3
Conversion
A click-through rate well above the recruitment industry benchmark
The campaign's reported click-through rate to the Elevation Programme site landed at roughly four times a typical 2.5% recruitment benchmark.
4
Perception Shift
Consideration rising from 13% to 49%
This is the number that mattered most — a nearly fourfold increase in people saying they'd consider a career at Frasers Group.
5
Recognition
A RAD Award for Employer Brand – National in 2026
Industry recognition followed the measurable shift in perception — a sign the impact was visible beyond the company's own reporting.
These results didn't come from one clever ad. Here's the sequence any retail or apparel business could realistically follow.
How to Roll This Out: 5 Steps
1
Measure current employer perception before changing anything
Survey the target talent population to establish a genuine baseline — awareness, consideration, and perception. Without this starting point, there's no way to prove the effort actually worked later.
2
Research the real employee experience through direct conversation
Use focus groups, structured interviews, and broader perception surveys to find the themes that genuinely define the workplace — not the ones marketing assumes are true.
3
Build a proposition and values grounded in that research
Turn the recurring themes into a clear, memorable proposition and a small set of values — specific enough that employees recognize themselves in it, not generic enough to apply to any company.
4
Create a visible, structured career pathway
Build a named programme with a dedicated microsite, clear steps, and real stories from people who've gone through it. A concrete pathway is far more persuasive than a vague promise of "opportunities to grow."
5
Take the story directly to your target talent pool and measure the result
Go where candidates already are — campuses, relevant digital channels, communities — rather than waiting for them to find a careers page. Then re-run the perception survey to confirm whether the campaign actually shifted anything.
Even a well-researched campaign like this one only works if a few underlying principles hold. These are the traps worth watching for.
Where Employer Branding Breaks Down
Common pitfalls
A great campaign can't outrun a mismatched reality
- Treating employer branding purely as a recruitment advertising exercise, without grounding it in real employee experience, produces messaging nobody inside the company recognizes.
- Promising career growth or culture that daily leadership behavior and workplace practice don't actually deliver erodes trust the moment new hires arrive.
- Skipping a before-and-after perception measurement makes it impossible to know whether a campaign actually changed anything or just felt like it did.
- Concentrating all effort on external campaigns while ignoring internal consistency leaves current employees feeling like the brand doesn't describe their own experience.
- Building a career pathway program without the mentoring, structure, and support to actually deliver it turns a strong promise into a broken one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is employer branding, exactly?
It's how an organization is perceived as a place to work — shaped by workplace culture, employee experience, career opportunities, values, and how the organization communicates with both current and potential employees.
How can apparel and retail businesses improve their employer brand specifically?
By genuinely understanding how current employees experience the workplace, building an authentic story around that reality rather than assumptions, featuring real employees rather than stock-style imagery, making career development visible and concrete, and keeping recruitment messaging consistent with actual day-to-day experience.
How can HR software support employer branding efforts?
By keeping employee information accurate, supporting structured development programs, and giving HR teams real visibility into the workforce — the underlying operational foundation that makes an employer brand's promises about culture and career growth actually deliverable, not just marketing copy.
The Bottom Line
A recognizable consumer brand doesn't automatically translate into a recognizable employer brand. Frasers Group's shift from 13% to 49% consideration didn't come from a bigger marketing budget — it came from researching what was actually true, then building a story and a career pathway that matched it.
Research the real employee experience before writing a single word of messaging. Define a proposition grounded in what's genuinely there, not what sounds impressive. Build authentic assets — real employees, real pathways — that back up the story. Reach your target talent directly, and measure whether perception actually moved. That sequence, followed deliberately, is what turned a well-known consumer brand into a place people actually wanted to work.
Delivering on that promise requires the underlying employee experience to genuinely hold up. Gallery HR helps organizations centralize employee information, manage HR processes, and support employee development — giving the operational foundation that makes an employer brand's promises real, not just a campaign.
Sources & Further Reading
- Wiser (2026). How We Built an Award-Winning Employer Brand with Frasers Group. wearewiser.com
- RAD Awards (2026). Finding the Fearless: Frasers Group + Wiser. radawards.com
- RAD Awards (2024). Frasers Group Makes a Big Splash on Campus. radawards.com
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