Creative recruitment consultant Chantal Manning-Knight needed a new brand for the launch of her business. Operating as a 1-person company, Chantal handpicks and delivers the best creative talent for agencies all over Australia. She operates with absolute discretion, dealing with agencies and individuals one on one, face to face. Solutions are tailored to an agency’s culture, and finding the perfect fit is paramount.

Recruitment doesn’t have the sexiest reputation. Most agencies regard it as a necessary evil. Nor is it a comfortable process. The first thing you do when a recruiter calls you is pretend you’re not talking to a recruiter.

Our challenge was to not only present Chantal as a cut above her competitors, but to also position her in a way that would attract the sharpest minds, in the most discreet way possible.

Since launching, Chantal has been inundated with calls and emails as well as receiving PR and coverage from marketing and design blogs from around the world. Best of all, she received a frantic call from her accountant asking why she hadn’t informed him she’d opened a Cloak & Dagger store.

Addressing the standard hurdles of creatives’ changing jobs – secret meetings, awkward phone calls and short attention spans – we avoided any references to recruitment. Instead, we created Cloak & Dagger: online emporium of coats and knives (and jobs).

Potential candidates can browse an online store, designed to share the characteristics and aesthetics of high street tailors that specialise in personalised fittings, tailoring, and alterations. They can explore Cloak & Dagger’s philosophy, history and process, register for catalogue and product updates (new jobs), and even book a fitting (interview). All without revealing, they are actually considering a career move.