Why ‘boring’ brands can build brilliant employer brands

With over a decade shaping employer brands for household names across industries, Wiser's Design Director Alex Forrest has spent over 10 years working with all kinds of clients and seen first-hand that 'unglamorous' or 'technical products' don't limit employer brand potential. This blog uncovers where that potential really sits, covering how to balance authenticity with creative ambition and bring stakeholders along with change.

There’s a misconception in employer branding that some companies simply have it easier. If you’re selling cutting-edge technology, building the next big consumer brand or working in an industry people already perceive as exciting, surely creating an employer brand people want to engage with is straightforward.

But what if you’re a more generic business, for example making one small but essential component of a product most people never think twice about? Does a less glamorous product mean you have to settle for a less exciting employer brand?

Absolutely not. The organisations that don’t have an obviously ‘fancy’ product can present some of the biggest creative opportunities in employer branding. Because at the end of the day, it comes down to the people behind the business and what you can offer the people who might join them.

If an organisation provides a product or service people perceive as boring, it’s easy to assume the experience of working there must be boring too. But the two have very little to do with each other.

Employer branding is about uncovering what exists behind the product. 

What can someone achieve there? What challenges will they solve? How will they grow? Who will they work alongside? How will the organisation support them? What environment has been created to help them succeed?

Those are the things that turn an employer into an interesting proposition.

There’s also another way to look at so-called ‘boring’ businesses: boring often means essential. For example, we need manufacturers producing the materials and components sitting invisibly inside the products we use every day. These organisations keep industries and economies moving, and they need brilliant people to do that.

Employer branding allows you to uncover what genuinely matters, which is far more important and interesting. 

Consumer marketers have spent decades understanding how to build relationships between people and brands, and there’s plenty employer brand teams can learn from that world.

Think about the brands people return to again and again. They build that connection consistently, create recognisable experiences, and build enough trust that customers feel comfortable choosing them.

Employer brands need to build the same kind of relationship with talent, except the decision we're asking people to make is considerably bigger. Choosing toothpaste is relatively inconsequential, whereas choosing where to spend the next few years of your career isn't.

We spend a huge proportion of our lives at work, meaning trust needs to be built long before someone reaches the application stage.

There can often be a tension between authenticity and creativity in employer branding. Push an idea too far, and stakeholders worry it doesn't feel like the company anymore. Play it too safe, and you risk producing something completely forgettable that could be about any company out there.

The answer starts with research and finding the things your people genuinely value. Identify the experiences employees consistently recognise as distinctive to your organisation and find the elements that answer the simple question: why should somebody care about working here?

Once you have that truth, creativity becomes much easier to defend. Every campaign, film, photograph, social post and careers site experience can stretch creatively while still tracing itself back to something real. When you can stand behind what you're saying, pushing the creative expression further, there becomes less of a risk of overpromising. 

The main thing that comes with being creative and getting the sign-off. Your employer brand team might love it, and our agency might have the research to support it, but you still haven’t presented it to leadership. 

For some stakeholders, external evidence can make that conversation easier. Show them what competitors are doing and build context around what candidates are looking for. A brave idea feels much less like an unnecessary creative gamble when leaders can see the market movement that makes change necessary.

Other stakeholders might not particularly care what competitors are doing. But they do care about the brand they already know, built and love. They've spent years building it, protecting it and becoming emotionally invested in what it represents. Showing them something dramatically different without context can therefore feel like you're asking them to abandon it.

In those situations, don't begin with everything that's changing; begin with what you're keeping. Show them the foundations they recognise, from the values and truths to the characteristics and distinctive elements that aren't going anywhere. Then demonstrate how you're evolving their expression for a different audience.

That distinction matters. Leadership needs to believe in the employer brand, but also be aware it's being created for the people you need to attract, engage and retain.

Keep the root of what leadership loves, but build the expression of it around the audience you're actually trying to reach. And, crucially, bring stakeholders along the journey. Don't disappear for months and return with a finished employer brand that feels like an enormous creative leap. Share the research, explain the decisions and create familiarity before introducing evolution.

Having an exciting product doesn't automatically give you an exciting employer brand. And having a functional, technical or overlooked product certainly doesn't condemn you to a boring one.

The opportunity is in what sits underneath it: your people, their experiences, the challenges they solve, the careers they're building, the lives their work enables and the role your organisation plays in something bigger.

Employer branding allows businesses to find those stories and tell them with the ambition they deserve.

Find what makes the experience of working behind it worth caring about, and be brave enough to show it.