BRING YOUR WHOLE SELF TO WORK
Whole Foods Market is a brand with a history. For almost 40 years, foodies, health nuts, and culinary experts have flocked to this specialty store, and along with them, employees looking to take part in evolving foodscapes. But in the current economy, brand loyalty only gets you so far. Now, career decisions are life decisions and for the first time in decades, Whole Foods Market has to sell itself as the place to work.
We engaged directly with Whole Foods Market Team Members during hours of interviews and conversations. We talked with folks at every level, from stores to regional to global. We captured the learnings of years of experience and the freshest points of views around the changing landscape of Whole Foods as a brand and as an employer. We heard personal stories and discovered universal truths. We got the whole picture.
Too often, today’s workplace is filled with a focus on titles, rigid hierarchy, and coded corporate speak. Because of this, brands end up having conversations with themselves instead of the people they are looking for. If it’s all inside baseball, who’s the other team? It’s time to shift the conversation and talk about people’s life choices, personal growth, and professional fulfillment. Let’s talk about people. That’s what we’re looking for. Let’s put them first.
People connect with people. It’s a universal truth that works every time. So, we put real people front and center. Hours of video footage, engaging un-staged portraits in real environments, and real stories—these were the foundation for the new Whole Foods Market Employment brand.
Beat, beat, and repeat is the mantra we often emphasize to our clients. But you can’t drive a point home unless you’re consistent. We created a consistent brand ID and guide so that when Whole Foods Market shows up as an employment brand—whether that be in digital ads, social media, in stores, or at career fairs—there is a single cohesive look (this was previously a struggle for the de-centralized brand). At the same time, we wanted to ensure that the employment brand was evocative of and closely tied to the established consumer brand.
Last, but not least, we created a strategy to untangle and streamline the hiring process. Too often, job sites are confusing and difficult to navigate. There are many reasons for this, especially with a company as large as Whole Foods Market that is trying to hire CEOs, merchandising gurus, store managers, cashiers, and everything in-between.
As we expanded our work with Whole Foods Market, we interviewed dozens of team members in stores across many regions. Their stories were real and their love for working at Whole Foods Market was strong. Who better to tell the story of what it's like to work at a Whole Foods Market store than the people who actually work there?
Each story was cut into multiple videos for use across digital and social platforms. Each video covered a specific role and the day-to-day skills needed to adapt and succeed in a fast-paced environment like Whole Foods Market. More than that, they showed each person's unique love for the role, their favorite customer stories, and what the future may hold for them at Whole Foods Market.