The Challenge

Next are one of the biggest high-street retailers in the UK, and they don’t have too many problems hiring for their stores. But when it comes to attracting talent for those behind the scenes roles – IT, Buying, Merchandising and Design – that’s when the challenges start. Our objective was to get fashion-conscious, digitally-native students who had grown up in a world of ASOS, Farfetch and Lyst to head to Next’s graduate scheme instead.

The Solution

Walk this Way. A graduate brochure that lived exclusively on Instagram. Only this wasn’t your standard brochure. It was created using over 1000 Next products. Each painstakingly positioned to create 204 square images, 204 posts on Instagram and subsequently one extraordinary image that people could dip in and out of as they pleased. What’s more, every single post had rich media behind it – whether it was interviews with employees, videos of the environment or footage from Next’s very own student house.

The Results

You didn’t really need to ‘follow’ Walk this Way to get the benefit of it, but there are over 1,500 followers and more than 3,000 likes/comments on posts. Crucially it helped Next fill roles across IT, Design and Buying & Merchandising.

Phase 2 will be starting soon, so keep an eye on @nextwalkthisway

RADs: Best use of Social

The Webbys: Webby Award Honoree