Job campaign that far exceeded the island municipality's expectations

Client: Fedje

We created a recruitment campaign for Fedje the campaign page featured a scroll-based narrative and the ads promoted Fedje.

Work: Campaign site, content, digital marketing

When one of Norway’s smallest municipalities was looking to hire new staff, we didn’t just sell them the jobs. We sold them Fedje entire Fedje. The results exceeded all their expectations.

Mockup showing the scrollytelling landing page for the job recruitment campaign for Fedje

Mockup showing the scrollytelling landing page for the Fedje job campaign on mobile

The island Fedje in an exotic and idyllic setting out in the sea to the west. Like many rural communities, it has experienced a steady decline in population over the past few decades.

But unlike many other municipalities, Fedje has Fedje —and apparently even reversed—the trend. They have achieved this through a combination of focused effort, creativity, determination, and the support of external and local investors and advocates.

In the spring of 2023, they were to recruit just under a dozen people at the same time: Everything from two new municipal managers to teachers and environmental workers.

Bønes Virik helped them find the best candidates for the municipal manager positions, while we were to help them find, tempt and convince well-qualified candidates for the other positions.

We did this through a campaign that focused just as much on Fedje as on the job itself.

See the campaign here.

The concept: More than a job

Working in Fedje most likely also means moving to Fedje, an island municipality with 500 residents. That’s why we had to promote Fedje a whole—as a community, a local environment, and a way of life—not just the job openings.

We needed to highlight all the benefits of living on Fedje, especially those that set it apart from more urban areas. Together with the municipality and the local community, we identified the following as the most important benefits:time, quality of life, community, and nature.

City Manager Berit Karin Rystad sums it up nicely:Fedje so much to offer those who appreciate nature and the positive enthusiasm you typically find in small communities.”

In other words, we had to sell emotion as much as reason.

The answer was scrollytelling built with the DigiStory solution: A landing page where large images and small but strong texts make the reader scroll through the information.

Scrollytelling is a way of making your message vivid and attractive. When done correctly, measurements show that the majority of readers scroll all the way through.

The result was a campaign that succeeded in sparking people’s desire to experienceFedje.”

“This was a completely new way to advertise the positions, and we received a much better response than we have in the past. For the two municipal manager positions alone, we received 27 well-qualified applicants,”saysRystad of Fedje .

Screenshot from a digital job campaign in the form of a scrollytelling for Fedje . The image shows a woman paddling in the ocean, along with the text "The most precious thing you have is your time."

Over twice as efficient as normal

Once the concept was nailed down and the story created, it was a matter of getting the content out to as many relevant candidates as possible. One challenge was that there were so many different positions within several sectors.

The solution was to place ads in Norwegian online newspapers, primarily targeting readers in Nordhordland, Bergen the surrounding areas.

The result was far beyond all expectations.

During the campaign period, the ads were displayed 858,649 times and achieved a click-through rate of 0.49 percent. The expected “normal” click-through rate for such ads is 0.20 percent, so Fedje performed nearly two and a half times better than expected!

In total, approximately 6,000 people visited the campaign page, of which 4,200 came in via the ads.

The concept, the campaign website, and the advertising all contributed to Fedje nine of the eleven advertised positions with highly qualified candidates. This was far beyond what they—and many other small, outlying municipalities—are accustomed to achieving.