be yourself - TELUS International Bulgaria | Clapboard Ad Archive
The be yourself campaign from TELUS International Bulgaria, developed by proof. and executed within the electronics market category, tackles the persistent problem of bias in recruitment by leveraging a startlingly direct creative strategy rooted in the realities of social media identity. Anchored by research finding that over half of Bulgarian job seekers in Year 2021 experience prejudice at the interview stage, the campaign centers on TELUS International Bulgaria’s public commitment to inclusion and diversity—a positioning that both asserts social responsibility and sets the brand apart in a competitive sector dominated by other technology and outsourcing giants. At its core, the campaign animates the insight that in contemporary Bulgaria, your Instagram handle communicates volumes about your story, often telegraphing the very biases and obstacles society projects. The creative solution, falling squarely into what Clapboard’s taxonomy classifies as FORMAT#8—Ongoing Characters or Celebrities, involved a visible and collaborative social media stunt: a roster of high-profile Bulgarian celebrities publicly altered their Instagram handles to literally spell out the types of prejudice they routinely confront, reframing those experiences as both public acknowledgment and playful challenge. By making these barriers explicit, the campaign harnessed the celebrities’ own resilience and public persona as vehicles for empathy and solidarity, bridging the gap between the abstract concept of workplace discrimination and the intimate, lived reality of career-defining hurdles. This mechanism—enlisting recognizable figures, with their presence serving both as message and as a catalyst for conversation—delivers emotional impact and amplifies engagement, resonating well beyond the target cohort of job seekers to provoke broader societal discussion. Across the campaign, the interplay of strategic candor and irreverence ensured that the message of authenticity and meritocracy penetrated a crowded digital environment, further reinforced by 6 million impressions and 34,000 clicks, signaling both reach and resonance among users exposed to the creative. TELUS International Bulgaria, supported by proof.’s integrated approach, succeeds in signaling cultural relevancy, placing real experiences of bias at the center of a conversation that too often happens behind closed doors in the electronics and technology workplace. The campaign earns 69/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. In positioning a tech brand as an agent of social change, be yourself demonstrates the value of unvarnished storytelling and celebrity partnership for reframing issues of inclusion in categories historically slow to disrupt their own internal narratives.
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