01 · The problem

Chennai has the technology talent. WGT Chennai is not getting into its consideration set.

01 · The problem

To change that perception, WGT Chennai has to clear three steps, in order.

02 · The audience

The talent we want evaluates an employer through ownership, impact and career value.

02 · The audience

They will reconsider WGT Chennai when they can repeatedly see what it builds, owns and influences.

"I will not reconsider Walmart Chennai because it tells me it is a technology hub." That is the whole problem — and the whole brief. Six things are already true here, and none of them are being seen.

Reasons to believe · select a card for the evidence

03 · Case studies

GE changed perception by making the stereotype the story.

▶ Watch campaign

What's the Matter with Owen?

The perception

An industrial manufacturer — not a destination for modern software talent.

The idea

Owen, a developer thrilled to join GE, whose friends and family have no idea what technology work at GE means. GE dramatised the exact misunderstanding its audience already held.

The result

8×

Increase in total candidate applications

+66%

Month-on-month recruitment and career portal traffic

13,000

Employees empowered as brand ambassadors

The campaign drew highly qualified technical candidates, expanding GE's total addressable talent pool and shifting the brand from antiquated and physical to modern, digital and impactful.

If the misconception already exists in the audience's head, confronting it can be more powerful than avoiding it.

03 · Case studies

BCG broke employer-brand conventions to become culturally relevant to the talent it wanted.

Welcome to the Group

The perception problem

Conventional consulting recruitment communication had become undifferentiated, and no longer reflected what younger high-potential talent wanted.

The response

BCG behaved like a contemporary lifestyle brand rather than a recruiter — belonging to "the group" — across print, social, OOH, events and a self-published magazine.

The result

+17%

Graduate applicants

+15%

Female graduate applicants

+30%

Interview invitations

Employer branding can behave like brand advertising — not recruitment advertising.

View full case →

03 · Case studies

Together, the cases give us four principles for changing perception.

Select a principle to see which case earns it.

04 · Strategy on one screen

Our strategy is to make the invisible reality of WGT Chennai impossible to miss.

People do not change entrenched perceptions because they are told to. They change when they repeatedly encounter evidence that makes the old belief harder to sustain. Chennai already has the story — our job is to make it visible.

05 · Creative route 1

A route that is assertive rather than defensive, and built to repeat.

05 · Creative route 1 · the expression

Chennai.
Where else?

Why it will work

• Assertive rather than defensive.
• Turns Chennai into a technology credential.
• Proudly local without becoming tokenistically Tamil.
• Works across reputation and specialist talent audiences.
• The question-and-answer structure creates natural repetition.

06 · Creative route 2

A route that lets the evidence do the persuading.

06 · Creative route 2 · the expression

Made in
Chennai.

Why it will work

• Lets evidence do the persuasion.
• Creates surprise without over-explaining.
• Feels technically credible rather than recruitment-led.
• Can accommodate very different pieces of technology.
• Does not depend on one trend or technology category.

07 · The execution system

Our audience is not a monolith. Their opinion is formed by everything orbiting them.

So the task is not only to make a campaign. It is to make the execution cohesive enough that every touchpoint in that orbit carries the same shift. Select a cluster, or press → to turn the dial.

One campaign reaches one orbit. Cohesive execution covers all six.

08 · The proof system

Six proof pillars, delivered in an order that moves the audience from seeing to considering.

10 · Flagship properties

Always-on communication builds visibility. Chennai-focused properties can accelerate the perception shift.

What WGT already has, against the three strategic objectives

But to accelerate Chennai's perception shift, WGT also needs recurring properties created specifically around the Chennai opportunity.

10 · Flagship property 1 · Technology prestige

Checkout Chennai

Rationale

Technology prestige is shaped not only by what a company builds, but by the technology community that chooses to gather around it. WGT can strengthen its place in Chennai's ecosystem by creating a recurring platform where technologists inside and outside WGT connect around the subjects they genuinely care about.

Why it will work

• Builds technology community, not event attendance.
• Multiple entry points for different specialist audiences.
• Puts WGT practitioners into peer-to-peer exchange.
• Grows WGT's presence edition after edition.

The idea

A recurring technology-community platform that brings together technologists inside and outside WGT around one relevant technology theme at a time. The topic changes. The community compounds. Over time WGT becomes not a company communicating to Chennai's ecosystem, but one of the places around which that ecosystem gathers.

How it works Microsoft Reactor Atlassian

The topic brings people in. The community is what we build.

01

Pick the signal

One subject people genuinely want to explore. Data + ML · AI-native organisations · Retail tech · Infrastructure + platforms · Cybersecurity

02

Checkout who's building it

WGT practitioners, external technologists, researchers. Practitioner-to-practitioner, not company-to-audience.

03

Open up the conversation

Inside the build · Outside-in · The Checkout · Show + tell. The format follows the topic.

04

Keep people in the loop

An opt-in community, not a guest list. Attendee → member → contributor.

05

Connect the best to Converge

The strongest ideas and speakers graduate. Year 1: a regular cadence, a few themes.

▼ more below

10 · Flagship property 2 · Workplace culture

One Thing I Own

Rationale

If Chennai is seen as a place where the major decisions happen elsewhere, the strongest counter-evidence is the people making decisions here. The property makes ownership itself part of the culture story.

Why it will work

• Directly addresses the ownership perception gap.
• Pride around meaningful work, not corporate praise.
• Makes complex work understandable through people.
• A scalable source of authentic Chennai stories.

The idea

An associate storytelling property built on one question: what's one thing you own? The answer becomes the entry point into the person, product, technology, decisions and impact behind the work.

How it works Employee-led storytelling

01

Ask

Invite Chennai associates to answer: what's one thing you genuinely own? A product, roadmap, module, architecture decision or platform outcome.

02

Prove

Each story answers four things — what is it, what do you decide, at what scale, and why does it matter.

03

Tell the story

One Thing I Own — a 60–90 second film. A Day Around One Thing I Own. Ownership Card — "One thing I own is what happens between Pay and Order Confirmed."

04

Build the collective story

Aggregate into What Chennai Owns — an evolving gallery of work and ownership.

▼ more below

10 · Flagship property 3 · Thought leadership and community initiatives

Chennai 2030

Rationale

WGT can build stronger ecosystem authority by doing more than joining conversations about Tamil Nadu's technology future. It can use its capability and relationships to help solve tangible problems relevant to the state.

Why it will work

• Turns thought leadership into visible action.
• Brings government, academia, startups and technologists together.
• Shows WGT capability beyond recruitment communication.
• The 2030 horizon creates continuity and accountability.

The idea

Select 3–5 real-world challenges relevant to Tamil Nadu and build cross-sector mission teams to develop, pilot and scale viable technology solutions by 2030. Where appropriate, solutions can be transferred, open-sourced or operationalised with government or another ecosystem institution.

How it works Toyota · Varanasi

01

Identify

Bring together WGT, government, academia, researchers and ecosystem partners.

02

Select 3–5 missions

Problems that are important, solvable, measurable, adoptable, scalable — co-selected with partners, not chosen by communications.

03

Build mission teams

WGT technologists, researchers, domain owners, startups and specialists.

04

Work with the Tamil Nadu government

Go directly to the people who own the problem — to understand it properly, get access to the data behind it, and shape solutions against what the state actually needs.

05

Build + pilot

Discover → prototype → test → pilot → measure.

06

Deploy what works

Transfer, open-source, license, scale. Build for adoption, not a press release.

▼ more below

11 · Always-on social IPs

Flagship properties create the moments. Social IPs make the shift continuous.

Three repeatable LinkedIn- and Instagram-first formats that build technology prestige and workplace culture through everyday stories.

Ctrl + Chennai

Technology prestige

OOO: Chennai

Workplace culture

Between Meetings

Workplace culture

11 · Always-on social IP · Technology prestige

Ctrl + Chennai

LinkedIn · Instagram

Rationale

Technology prestige is not built only by showing sophisticated technology. It is built by showing how technologists think differently about familiar problems — where a team questioned an accepted way of doing something and found a smarter, simpler or more scalable way forward.

The idea

Ctrl + Chennai = Reimagine.

Every keyboard shortcut performs an action. This one is the shortcut for reimagine. A recurring series about associates and teams who challenged the conventional way of doing something and improved customer experience, engineering productivity or business outcomes. The technology matters, but the mindset is the story.

How it works · every post follows four moves

01What was the challenge?

02What did the team question?

03What did they reimagine?

04What became better?

Reimagining SearchCheckoutHoliday ReadinessDeveloper Productivity

LinkedIn carousel · short video · associate post · Instagram Reel

11 · Always-on social IP · Workplace culture

OOO: Chennai

Instagram · LinkedIn

Rationale

An employer experience does not end when the laptop closes. For many technology professionals, choosing where to work is also choosing where and how they want to live — their interests, friendships, family, routines and relationship with the city.

The idea

Out of office, into the city.

A series that follows associates beyond the workday, showing the people and passions that exist alongside their careers. Not polished testimonials — real lives. Engineer by day, Carnatic vocalist after. Product manager, weekend cyclist. Data scientist, street photographer. A career is part of your life. It doesn't have to become all of it.

How it works · every story follows three moves

01Who they are at work

02Where they go when work ends

03What that part of their life means

ECR CyclistCarnatic VocalistStreet PhotographerDad's on pickup duty

Instagram Reel as hero · carousel · Stories · LinkedIn video · associate post

11 · Always-on social IP · Workplace culture

Between Meetings

Instagram · LinkedIn

Rationale

Workplace culture is rarely revealed by formal culture statements. It shows up in the small behaviours between the work — the conversations, rituals, friendships, jokes, food, debates and moments that make a workplace feel human.

The idea

Culture isn't what happens in the town hall. It's what happens between meetings.

A social-first series capturing what happens when nobody is presenting a deck — lunch-table arguments, five-minute coffees, someone bringing food from home, a teammate teaching another a local phrase, walking conversations, small team rituals.

How it works · one small moment at a time

01Notice the moment

02Capture it lightly

03Let it stay unpolished

04Post it where people scroll

Food from homeThe five-minute coffeeFour languages, one tableNobody scheduled this

Instagram Reel · carousel · Stories · LinkedIn photo posts · associate posts

13 · Media & amplification

The portfolio creates the proof. Media gives it the scale to change perception.

12 · The strategic logic

One continuous story, from a memorable expression to a changed decision.

Flagship properties create the moments. Social IPs keep the evidence moving. Media makes sure the right people encounter both often enough to change perception.