Flipping the recruitment script in food manufacturing.

As a 3rd generation family business with 70 years of steady growth in pet food and snack manufacturing, KLN Family Brands (like many manufacturers) was struggling to adapt to the changing recruitment landscape. Attracting and retaining committed production-floor-level employees was an issue, especially outside their rural midwestern community. They needed a fresh perspective to better tell their story.

Through a rigorous research and analysis process and brand messaging revamp, we discovered that most manufacturers recruit with imagery of office staff, when they make up just a small percentage of their workforce. Instead, we opted for transparency, utilizing video and sharp design with interviews and portraits of production-floor-level employees, to make them the hero and show the realities of factory work.

Organic social engagement has more than doubled with KLN’s new recruitment content, as they prepare to launch paid media. We continue to work with them in a consulting capacity on a “Moonshot” mission to radically transform the daily experience of their production-floor workforce through major investments in worker-generated training & knowledge management, new compensation & incentive structures, an on-campus member center, and more.