BBBS Sudbury Recruitment

Recruitment ads designed to get people recommending to suitable friends that they’d make great mentors. These ads are all my concept, my writing, my everything… the agency generally doesn’t come with specific requests when it comes to recruitment ads. They trust my creativity and let me run with it.

Chantal Gladu, Agency Director, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Sudbury
“Geoff has provided his professional services to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Sudbury since 2002 on various design projects. During this time he has shown exemplary initiative in creating a wide variety of design artwork including logos, posters, banners, greating cards, business cards, advertisements, web graphics, pamphlets and more. His eye for design is first-rate as are his skills in leading design software. Geoff is a team player with a “can-do” attitude. His strong work ethic and ability to quickly complete any job thrown at him has made him an asset to our agency. Geoff is creative, reliable, flexible and personable. I highly recommend Geoff to any employer or individual seeking a talented, motivated graphic designer.”

GEORGE BROWN COLLEGE

In 2020 I took advantage of Midas Safety’s continuing education funding and found myself a social media curriculum at George Brown College. I tended to use my relationship with Big Brothers Big Sisters as a focal point for the assignments, rather than make up a fictional company with no constraints, I used BBBS and the real world constraints I’d have to work within to create materials that the agency could actually use for real. It made for a more authentic development experience, and gave me actual usable materials.

MARBLES

This was a follow-up to the calendar ad, but instead of marking the passage of time, this one used a metaphor to give a physical presence to the two dozen boys awaiting a match… and following that up with a bad pun (“get things rolling”). Stock images abound, the little boy with those eyes – that really reflected the marbles – was a find. That wasn’t an edit… not on my part, anyways.

COULD YOUR DAUGHTER USE A BIG SISTER?

Normally the ads I create are centered around finding Big Brothers for Littles on the waiting list. However, since women tend to more readily sign up, the agency actually had a surplus of Big Sisters on the waiting list, with no Little Sisters to match them with. So, this was all about trying to find some Little Sisters who needed the matches.

KNOW SOMEONE?

These ads started with the idea that perhaps directly appealing to potential Big Brothers wasn’t necessarily going to win new male volunteers signing up. Since over 80% of the BBBS Facebook feed, where they predominantly post their materials, is women, perhaps recruiting those women to recruit suitable male friends might make more sense. I, myself, only got involved because Chantal herself went out of her way to get me involved… it wasn’t because I saw an ad somewhere, it was because someone suggested “I think you’d be good at this”.

THE “KNOW SOMEONE?” ADS

A big set of ads I conceived of, wrote and designed, utilizing a huge stock photo download session, along with their accompanying social media copy. Full of dad jokes, bad puns and pop culture references, these were meant for people to share directly with someone they thought they’d resonate with. The last bunch appear elsewhere in this portfolio page – they were added to the set because they worked, and they’re included here so you can read the copy.

BACK TO SCHOOL ADS

Created at the last minute a few Septembers ago to add to the agency’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, urging anyone paying attention to those feeds to pay attention to the kids not likely to be paying attention when heading back to school.

WANT AD WITH CUTOUTS

For this “want ad” style ad, I actually recycled something I did for the Big Sisters agency in the mid-2000s before it amalgamated with Big Brothers to become Big Brothers Big Sisters… using the “cutout” technique to show something missing from the life of the child in question… asking the viewer if they want to fill that role.

TWO YEARS

This one was designed as a guilt trip, with the sad, soulful eyes. It was a stock image, but it spoke to what I was trying to express with it… that long, lonely wait for a match. For imagery, I dug into those classic memories of the passage of time – the lines drawn on a wall or doorframe.

RAPSCALLION

Inspired by my earlier “Want Ad” ads, this one was a little more fun. I believe the “Kids stuff is serious business” was actually a slogan BBBS had used in previous years. I’m not above recycling stuff that works.

PROFILE SILHOUETTES

This was a set of recruitment ads dropped in the Facebook feed. Since we can’t use actual photographs of the real children, I found stock silhouettes of boys of various ages. It allowed me to capture a different feel and vibe for each boy, from posture, body language, potential emotional state… even if they weren’t specific boys, they each had a humanity to them that brought the ads to life.

THE L’IL BRO

I was an active volunteer from about 2003 to 2008 with this lad, who’s no longer a lad. He happily let me use him for our marketing efforts at the time. This would prove to be the humble beginnings of my designing for Big Brothers of Sudbury.

BIG SISTERS AD

Somewhere in the mid-2000s, when Big Brothers and Big Sisters were still separate organizations, a friend who was on the board for Big Sisters asked if I would create an ad for them, knowing that I was already doing work for the Big Brothers. So, I got Chantal Gladu, then a caseworker at Big Brothers, to model for me with her daughter. I then proceeded to remove Chantal herself from the ad, but the obvious connection between her and her daughter remained.

BBBS Sudbury Recruitment

Share