Insight
Say goodbye to employer branding as you know it
Services
Industries
The EVP is outdated. Here's how to build employer branding fit for the future.
In today’s talent landscape, the traditional model of employer branding is starting to show its age. The familiar formula – craft a polished Employer Value Proposition (EVP), wrap it in campaign messaging, and push it out via HR or comms – is no longer working.
Why? Because talent has evolved. Today’s candidates are more brand-literate, values-driven, and sceptical of empty promises than ever before. They don’t just want a job. They want to join something that feels real, aligned, and worth believing in.
Article quick-read:
The traditional EVP is no longer effective: it attracts, but doesn’t reflect.
Employer branding should be grounded in the master brand, not siloed off.
Culture is your content. Don’t invent, show who you are.
Specificity matters. Repelling the wrong people attracts the right ones.
Integration beats isolation. Break down silos between HR, marketing, and culture teams.
Measure what matters: engagement, retention, and cultural fit.
Want to know more? Watch a recent webinar with Emilie Kamradt and Jesper Bech Hansen on what's next in employer branding.
The EVP is broken
Many employer brands today are built backwards. They start with what companies think talent wants to hear and build an EVP from there, often through a long list of buzzwords. But when those words don’t match what it’s actually like to work at the company, it creates dissonance. And candidates are quick to notice.
The result? Lower internal buy-in, higher external scepticism, and tangible business problems: drop-offs in recruitment funnels, early attrition, and weaker retention strategies.
The solution isn’t another round of word-smithing. It’s a fundamental shift in thinking.
Start with truth, not fiction
The most powerful employer brands don’t invent stories – they reveal them. That starts with the master brand: the truth already being lived, proven to customers, investors, and partners.
Employer branding should be the master brand focused on talent. Nothing more, nothing less.
Instead of crafting separate narratives, companies should articulate what already makes them unique and design experiences around it. The goal is not to sound appealing to everyone. It’s to sound exactly like you.
Example: Novo Nordisk
At Novo Nordisk, Manyone helped bring visibility and purpose to their global IT organisation – an essential but often behind-the-scenes part of the company.
Rather than creating a separate identity, the team built a recruitment hub that felt like a natural extension of Novo Nordisk’s master brand.
The result was a space that not only showcased the team’s impact and culture but gave tech talent a reason to see themselves in the company’s broader mission.
Your brand isn’t a value proposition – it’s a truth you live.
Emilie Kamradt
Brand Strategy Director
ManyoneDifferentiate, don't decorate
The war for talent has triggered a race to sameness. Everyone claims to be flexible, inclusive, and purpose-driven. But if every brand says the same thing, none of it means anything.
Real differentiation lies in the details. The quirks. The trade-offs. The real-life rituals, behaviors, and values that make up your culture. These aren’t always glossy or universally appealing, but they’re honest. And that honesty is magnetic to the right people.
Integration, not isolation
One of the biggest blockers to effective employer branding is structure. Too often, responsibilities are split across HR, marketing, and culture teams, with no one owning the whole experience.
But employer branding isn’t a messaging challenge. It’s a design challenge. Every interaction, from onboarding and team rituals to decision-making, shapes how your culture is perceived. And unless those touchpoints are aligned, the story won’t hold.
Your employer brand isn’t your career page or the post you put on LinkedIn. It’s how your company behaves. And in fact, companies where culture, leadership, and strategy align have a lower cost per hire.
Jesper Bech Hansen
Strategic Design Director, Partner
ManyoneBuilding a brand people believe in
So what replaces the old EVP-led model? A new approach rooted in coherence, culture, and clarity:
Your master brand is your employer brand – just pointed at talent.
Culture is the content. Don’t invent – articulate what’s already true.
Design experiences, not slogans. People believe what they experience.
Make it cross-functional. Employer branding should live across the business.
Choose clarity over popularity. The goal isn’t to please everyone – it’s to resonate with the right ones.
Example: Austrian Airlines
Instead of inventing a shiny new EVP, we helped Austrian Airlines articulate what already made Austrian distinct: deep national roots, a collaborative team culture, and a uniquely human workplace.
The result, 'Creating journeys together,' wasn’t just a slogan, but a reflection of how work happens across every part of the airline. It helped them stand apart in a uniform industry and hire over 1,300 new employees in just 18 months.
The bottom line
Employer branding isn’t dead. But the way we’ve been doing it? That’s long overdue for retirement.
The best employer brands today don’t sell an illusion – they embody a truth. They reflect a culture. And they make it easy for the right people to say: “Yes. That’s where I belong.”
Want to know more?
Are you interested in Manyone's approach to employer branding, and what we've done for other clients, and how we might help your business? At Manyone, we combine strategy, creativity, and technology to build business-driving brands.
More insights like this
How does your brand sound?
Let’s talk about sound – an increasingly crucial factor in today’s brand, product, and digital design landscape. But how do you create a sonic brand that resonates?
- Branding
- Customer experience (CX)
The AI-powered brand
Branding is on the verge of a paradigm shift: AI exponentially reduces content creation time and costs, leading to endless content. In this context, brand relevance is more important than ever.
- Branding
- AI advisory
Why customer experience is telco's real differentiator
Telcos provide a service billions rely on daily. But as connectivity becomes a commodity, telcos face a tough competition. To succeed, telcos must evolve into experience-centric brands powered by a deep understanding of user needs.
- Customer experience (CX)
- Transformation
- Comms and tech