84 [EB Series] Building an Employer Brand From Scratch in 12 Months | Brie Mason from AMP

In this special edition of the VMJPod's Employer Brand Series, series co-host Brie Mason (AMP) is in the hot seat, talking to David Macciocca and VideoMy's Gavin Lamb about how she built an employer brand from absolute ground zero – for a digital bank that didn't even have a name yet.

Brie shares the challenge of joining a greenfield project to build Australia's best digital bank in 12 months, starting with zero brand, zero assets and zero employees. Her first week wasn't about recruitment marketing tactics, it was fundamental questions: What is this business? What's the name? Nobody had the answers yet.

The conversation reveals how Brie recruited startup-minded talent (competing with Atlassian and Canva) while representing a traditional corporate brand. Her strategy? Get license to be disruptive. She launched campaigns with messaging like "teaching an old dog new tricks," pushed into TikTok and Instagram during the Christmas hiring lull, and built an ambassador program from day one – coaching new starters with cheat sheets, sentence starters, and Copilot prompts.

The defining moment came six months in when the CEO, wearing branded merch at a pub, was asked by a bartender: "What's it like to work at the new AMP bank? I've seen so much buzz everywhere." That's when it hit home, the employer brand-led market entry had worked.

Must listen for employer brand professionals facing the challenge of building a strategy, especially those working in startups, new business units, or organisations undergoing transformation where traditional approaches won't work.

Key Topics:
02:30 – Ground zero reality: No brand, no name, no answers
05:00 – Interviewing stakeholders to collectively form the vision
07:30 – Building ambassadors from day one: Every new starter becomes a storyteller
10:00 – "Teaching an old dog new tricks": Getting approval for disruptive messaging
13:00 – TikTok and Instagram strategy during Christmas hiring season
16:00 – Balancing authentic content with corporate risk (and handling trolls)
20:00 – Including consultants in your ambassador program and referral rewards
23:00 – The referral program secret: Pay for leads, not placements
26:00 – Weekly stand-ups, Teams chat assets, and shameless promotion tactics
28:00 – The pub moment: When employer brand drives consumer brand awareness

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