Why do human beings stay together?

Why do human beings stay together? Why are some marriages, friendships, professional relationships successful and others not?

Listening to a BBC radio program that touched upon the end phase of Simon & Garfunkel, Garfunkel opined about the more questionable reasons of why people stay together year after year doing the same thing, as opposed to the more understandable notion that people change and grow apart.

The parallels are just too easy to draw between personal relationships and brand and consumer relationships: give a consumer what they want –including the freedom to choose, experiment and come back– but most importantly give them a reason why they stick around with you. It is as simple as that.

At the same time I was ruminating this I stumbled upon Jung v. Matt's recruiting calendar, yet another example of a smart idea, executed brilliantly and without fear of repercussions.


Lesson learned: DON'T BE AFRAID of change. Embrace it, encourage it, be part of it.

Brief Explanation:
The main challenge for our HR representatives is to constantly be in contact with the candidates without annoying them.
So it was crucial to to come up with an idea to talk to them in an entertaining way without missing our goal of making them quit and then join Jung von Matt.
 
Describe the brief from the client:
We were briefed to come up with an effective and fresh recruitment tool for the agency to headhunt the best creatives in the market.
 
Description of how you arrived at the final design:
We gave our candidates an A4 size tear-off calendar that contained a ready-made quitting letter for each and every day of the year: 365 entertaining letters that just had to be signed and handed in.
We came up with the most absurd quitting reasons, made fun of the whole advertising industry and used elements of a creative’s everyday life to design visual quitting art works.
This way we reminded our desired candidates every day how inspired working at Jung von Matt is. And we made quitting one’s job as easy as never before.
 
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market:
The first quitting calendar in the world caused a buzz in the German advertising industry. Our HR representatives used the calendar in numerous interviews as a special give away. It was received with amazement and caused leading creatives as well as creatives of the senior and junior level to finally join Jung von Matt.