Multilingual Employer-Brand Transcreation for Philip Morris International

Over a multi-phase programme, Brightlines transcreated Philip Morris International’s employer-brand recruitment campaign and localised the full suite of candidate communications that sits beneath it, across a range of languages and markets. Creative transcreation and standard localisation were combined so that every touchpoint, from a banner headline to an application acknowledgement, read as if it had been written for that market, not translated into it.

The Challenge

PMI was recruiting across a wide spread of markets while building an employer brand around its public commitment to a smoke-free future, fronted by the #MAKEHISTORY campaign. The candidate-facing copy spanned two very different registers. On one side was the emotive campaign creative: portal welcomes, Talent Community pages and recruitment banners. On the other was a large set of functional, journey-stage emails.

Those registers can’t be handled the same way. A campaign headline is an emotional promise; translated literally it falls flat, or worse, says something the original never meant. A candidate email needs to be clear, consistent and unmistakably on-brand. Serving both well takes more than one translation pass. It takes the judgement to know when to recreate a line and when to render it faithfully.

This is also why machine translation alone was never the answer. For the functional emails, automation can do some of the heavy lifting. For the campaign creative it cannot, because it reproduces meaning rather than motivation and has no way of judging whether a line still inspires once it changes language. Recruitment copy is easy to under-invest in, because unlike a product page it does not drive revenue directly. What it drives is whether the right people apply. A campaign that reads as machine-translated tells candidates an employer does not really value their market, and leaves it competing badly against local employers who sound native. Set against the cost of losing strong candidates, transcreating the handful of lines that carry the brand is a small and worthwhile investment.

The range of languages made that harder. The same campaign had to carry one consistent employer voice across European, Latin American and Central Asian markets, each with its own idiom and emotional register. A line that lands in English does not automatically land in French, Portuguese, Russian or Kazakh, and a slogan written for fixed banner artwork has to fit the space as well as the sentiment.

Our Approach and What We Delivered

Specialist transcreation linguists handled the creative work. All were native, in-market and experienced in employer-brand and marketing copy. The starting point was not the English wording but the intent behind it: what the line was trying to make a candidate feel, and how a reader in that market would feel it.

For the brand creative, every headline was delivered as a source line paired with one or more transcreated options, each with a back-translation and a short rationale, so PMI’s team could choose the version that best fit. Brand elements that needed to stay fixed, the #MAKEHISTORY campaign line among them, were flagged to remain in English across every market, and linked lines were kept consistent wherever the same idea reappeared across touchpoints. Where copy had to sit inside fixed banner designs, it was written to fit the space and rhythm, not just the meaning.

For the supporting candidate communications, the full set of journey emails was localised consistently, with personalisation fields and inline formatting preserved so the copy could be deployed directly. The English source was refined where needed before localisation, and everything ran through a translate, edit and review workflow with in-country review.

• Creative transcreation of PMI’s employer-brand recruitment campaign, covering portal, Talent Community and banner copy, across a range of language variants
• Multiple transcreation options supplied per headline, each with back-translation and rationale, so the client retained full control over the final wording
• Campaign-critical brand elements, including the #MAKEHISTORY line, kept consistent across every market
• Full suite of candidate-journey communications localised, with personalisation fields and formatting preserved for direct deployment
• Source copy refined and localised through a translate, edit and review process with in-country review

The Outcome

PMI’s recruitment campaign worked in-market in every target language, with creative that reads as written for each audience and a single, consistent employer voice carried from the first banner impression through to the final email. The complete package, from standard localisation to creative transcreation, was delivered through one managed workflow.

• Employer-brand campaign transcreated across a range of language variants spanning European, Latin American and Central Asian markets
• Consistent brand voice and campaign lines maintained across every market and touchpoint
• Full candidate-communications suite localised and delivered ready to deploy
• Creative options and rationale provided throughout, so the client made every final call on wording
• Standard and creative translation handled together, demonstrating the complete package from one supplier

How We Can Help

If your employer brand or recruitment campaign runs across multiple markets, the creative needs to be recreated for each one, not translated. The difference between a translated slogan and a transcreated one is the difference between a line people read and a line that moves them to apply.

We work with global employers to transcreate recruitment and employer-brand campaigns, and to localise the supporting candidate communications around them, in every language you hire in.