Reimagining CareerBuilder: A Brand Refresh with Heart and Vision

🤌🏽 Target Audience

To effectively engage these audience segments, CareerBuilder continued to focus on delivering a user-friendly and efficient platform that addresses the unique needs of each group. Marketing efforts included targeted advertising, content marketing, social media campaigns, and email marketing, with messaging tailored to the specific pain points and goals of each target audience. Additionally, strategic partnerships with industry associations, educational institutions, and other relevant organizations helped broaden the platform’s reach and credibility.

🎯 KPI Goals

Our goal was to help the CareerBuilder brand begin the transition into a more playful and positive brand on both the client and business side. By continuing to close the gap between their very silo’d brand approach to B2B and B2C we could begin to create a cohesive brand across both channels. As leadership shifted, changed and refocused it became clear that a total rebrand would be in the future for CareerBuilder. The brand refresh was designed to serve as a stepping stone for the brand’s future evolution, laying a solid foundation for ongoing change and growth. We especially focused on developing social media vibes and tones that could grow along with future marketing strategies.

The new brand refresh was applied to a variety of mediums that allowed to showcase a different side of CareerBuilder. From presentation decks to social media posts and e-books, the brand refresh pushed the brand in a more vibrant visual direction and an overall more approachable positioning.

Updating Brand Standardization for the Future

📌 Brief

CareerBuilder was having a bit of an identity crisis. The brand was being diluted across divisions, they were losing track of their target audience (which is why the video above was produced to test the waters) and the new leadership really hated the brand logo. They needed things to be both quickly updated and set up for a brand transition but also organized and implemented in the current channels to keep the current brand from becoming diluted.

💡 Creative Solutions

During my tenure at CareerBuilder, my team and I initiated a strategic brand refresh, steering clear of a full-scale rebranding to maintain the essence of the company during its transition. Our focus was to enhance the existing strengths of the brand and align it with modern market trends while preserving its core identity. We introduced a refined color palette, placing emphasis on a more singular color scheme in our logo usage to establish a distinct and memorable visual identity. This strategic shift represented a new, playful yet professional direction for CareerBuilder, closely tied to its mission of connecting job seekers with opportunities. By redefining and communicating the brand’s ‘big why’, we crafted a narrative that resonated with both clients and businesses, solidifying CareerBuilder’s position as a dynamic leader in the job market.

 

⚡️ Visual Design

After refining the brand standards, it became easier to spot where we could push CareerBuilder’s tone, look, and feel into a more vibrant, joyful space. I worked closely with the creative team to bring that to life, rolling out cleaner design systems, simplified typography, smarter color usage, and a more cohesive photography style across every touchpoint. From ebooks and white papers to infographics, emails, and social content, every piece felt sharper, more intentional, and unmistakably on-brand.

As part of that evolution, I also led concept development and strategy for a series of YouTube pre-roll ads that acted as both top-funnel temperature checks and middle-funnel lead drivers. These videos explored different creative angles, from irreverent humor to emotional resonance, while nodding to CareerBuilder’s 90s-era quirk. One leaned into an anti-design aesthetic. Another pushed emotional copy that connected deeply with job seekers. Both delivered. One spot hit over 5 million views, another 4.8 million. None relied on perfect polish—just a clear concept, aligned visuals, and messaging that reflected what the audience actually cared about.

These efforts not only increased engagement from the previous quarter, they helped redefine how CareerBuilder shows up in the world.

 

 

 

 

3. Experiential (Spacial) Design

The refreshed brand personality didn’t stop at digital assets—it shaped how CareerBuilder showed up in physical spaces. I worked across experiential strategy to bring the brand to life in ways that felt more human and memorable.

At the CareerBuilder Challenge, an annual golf tournament, we rethought the experience from the ground up. We mapped how people moved through the space. We considered where they gathered and how the day naturally unfolded. Instead of flooding the course with logos, we focused on more thoughtful touchpoints. Interactive golf games. Strategic layout planning. Moments of connection that felt true to the brand’s new tone.

That same strategic lens adapted to fit the energy of each environment. While the golf event called for subtlety and flow, the SHRM event was a different stage entirely. It needed impact. Presence. We went big with oversized visuals, bold color, and interactive moments (like a “Spin to Win” game) that drew people in. It turned a traditional B2B setup into something attendees wanted to stop, engage with, and remember.