Westpac Grad - For Uncommon Minds

An uncommon evolution

When we created the original ‘Uncommon Minds’ campaign for Westpac’s Graduate Recruitment 7 years ago, we had no idea the success it would achieve. 

Westpac’s famous grad heads - exploding with uncommon experiences, interests and skills - have become synonymous with Westpac’s candidate centric attitude to their grads. Each year we feature new grads with their own personal stories and each year we evolve the campaign a bit to explore how we can improve on what is already an award winning and highly effective campaign.

This year we evolved the concept by capturing the moments that created each of our three hero grads’ Uncommon Minds. The exploding-heads posters and short-form videos still ran, but we added longer-form video in which we animated our grads’ own selfies to show how they acquired those experiences.

Then we gave our grads a voice. Through TikTok and Facebook Reels, our heroes walked us through their uncommon minds, sharing the stories that made them compelling candidates.

Real grads with real stories helped us attract independent thinkers from every field of study.

The campaign only concluded in August, yet applications are already up more than a quarter, and the mix has shifted: STEM candidates now make up 53.6% of our applicant pool, and female representation is up by 3.6%. More uncommon minds, from more places.