Accenture advances to the final in Aller Best Q3

The consulting company Accenture provides services in strategy, consulting, digitalization and technology. Competition is toughest within the latter - "Technology consulting" - and they want to take a position by being visible on platforms used by the developer industry.

Thus, a collaboration with Aller Media's Kode24, Norway's first online newspaper by and for developers, became a natural choice this spring.

- "Kode24 gave us access to a very appropriate target group for our Technology department," says Kaja Thorvaldsen, Head of Employer Branding at Accenture Norway.

Goals and challenges The vision for the collaboration was twofold:

- Market objective: Accenture Technology shall at all times have the best possible base of suitable candidates in the areas in which it offers its services.

- Media goals: Accenture will be present on sites where developers and programmers are involved and spend time.

A major challenge was that developers are very attractive in the market.

- The best don't have to apply for a job. They are "headhunted". That's why it was an important KPI for Accenture to present itself as an attractive employer," says Sales Manager at Aller Media, Pål Sørensen.

He adds that Adblock also had to be taken into account.

Easter mystery for hackers The solution was to create an engaging Easter mystery - sponsored by Accenture - that was designed as a competition for developers on Kode24.

The mystery involved a hacker who threatened to leak emails from Porsgrunn Town Hall. However, the ficient man challenged other hackers to try to stop him by leaving small hints and clues on the website porsgrunn.zone.

- With a new task and winner every day throughout Easter, we made sure that people were exposed to both us and our sponsor on a regular basis," says Code24 editor Ole Petter Baugerød Stokke.

Together with developer Jørgen Jacobsen, he is behind the idea and technical implementation.

- "The plans were big and comprehensive, but we had to shave off a bit to make it happen with our two-man staff. We ended up with something we got a lot of good feedback on, both from readers and sponsors," the duo continues.

- Completely unique

The result of the innovative solution speaks for itself:

- The Easter Mystery generated 649 registered users.

- Approximately 100 people managed the task each day.

- There were 15,407 username/password attempts on the City Hall server.

- 10,633 commands were entered on the City Hall server.

- 40 people managed to expose the hacker.

- In total, 650 hours were spent on the Easter mystery.

- Some of the key success points that can be highlighted are that we managed to engage readers throughout Easter, and that the time spent on the mystery and code-breaking is unique. We're talking about over an hour on average per user. That shows that we have achieved the media goal we set: To be present on websites where developers and programmers are involved and spend time," says Aller Media sales manager Sørensen.

Kaja Thorvaldsen, Head of Employer Branding at Accenture Norway, is also full of praise for the campaign.

- We ran this as a pilot and we are delighted with the results. We are positively surprised by the engagement of the readers, the number of participants and the high level of time the participants have been active! We see the collaboration with Kode24 as very positive," Thorvaldsen concludes