The Challenge

SSENSE was doing talent acquisition the traditional way: offline channels, organic job postings, referrals. The result was a high cost-per-hire and a limited candidate pool. They needed to reach a broader, more qualified audience of applicants — but hadn’t considered applying performance media methodology to recruitment.

What We Did

We took the exact playbook that works for DTC product advertising and applied it to hiring. The core insight: if you can use paid media to find a buyer who fits a precise profile, you can use the same approach to find a candidate who fits one.

We built targeted Meta and Google campaigns designed around the ideal candidate profile — reaching people by interest, behavior, and demographics rather than waiting for them to stumble onto a job board. Creative was designed to communicate SSENSE’s culture and brand as a luxury employer, making the opportunity aspirational rather than transactional.

Campaigns were optimized for application volume and cost-per-applicant, with the same rigor we apply to cost-per-acquisition in product campaigns. As with any performance campaign, we tested creative angles, refined targeting, and scaled what worked.

The outcome was a pipeline of 600+ qualified applicants generated through paid media alone — at a fraction of the cost of traditional recruitment channels.

The Results

• 600+ applicants — generated entirely through paid media, not job boards or organic posting
• 54K link clicks — high engagement from a precisely targeted candidate audience
• 4M impressions — substantial brand visibility as an employer during the campaign

The Takeaway

Performance media methodology isn’t just for selling products. Any organization with a specific “ideal profile” they’re trying to reach — whether a customer or a candidate — can benefit from the same targeting, testing, and optimization approach.