On Strategy Showcase
Episode: The Story Behind Indeed's Gold Effie-winning Entrance into the Indian Market
Host: Fergus O’Carroll
Guests: Sanjana Chetan (Senior Strategist, DDB Mudra, India) & Owen Murphy (Senior Global Marketing Leader, Indeed)
Date: December 7, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode explores the award-winning strategy behind Indeed’s entry into the Indian market, focusing on its Gold Effie-winning campaign. Fergus O’Carroll is joined by Sanjana Chetan and Owen Murphy to discuss how Indeed identified an opportunity with India’s small and medium businesses (SMBs), challenged entrenched behaviors, and ultimately used humor to disrupt a market previously dominated by established players like Naukri. The conversation provides insight into complex cultural contexts, strategic pivots, and the power of creative messaging in a high-growth, high-stakes market.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Indeed’s Global Brand & Market Differentiation
- Scale & Reach:
- “Someone is hired on Indeed every two seconds. We've got 615 million profiles. It's huge with 1.1 billion company ratings.” (Owen Murphy, 06:07)
- Market Variation:
- In the US, Indeed is ubiquitous; in India, it was a challenger with less mass-market recognition and more focus on white-collar jobs in metros like Mumbai and Bangalore. (Owen, 06:38; 16:56)
2. India’s SMB Opportunity: An Untapped Beachhead
- Market Context:
- India’s existing competitors (Naukri, Monster, LinkedIn) neglected SMB hiring. Post-pandemic, SMBs were a thriving sector, contributing over 2 million openings annually. (Sanjana Chetan, 09:05)
- Informal Hiring Norms:
- SMBs relied on personal networks: “They typically tend to want to staff it with people from their own community...their hiring tends to happen from their social circles.” (Sanjana, 13:47)
- Behavioral Barriers:
- Many SMBs lacked hiring “know-how” and found formal recruitment daunting due to workload and skills gap. (Sanjana, 13:47)
- “A lot of the folks, double hat, maybe triple hat, they learn things on the go...so they tend to fall back on the gut feeling hires that they do.” (Sanjana, 13:47)
3. Strategic Choice: Courage and Calculus
- Rationale for SMB Focus:
- “Indeed makes a decision to find a beachhead through SMEs because it was a strategic choice in order to get into the market...it was a good, great foothold that took a lot of courage.” (Fergus, 12:08)
- “A whopping majority of your job seekers were also interested in jobs in the SMB domain...about 72% of them would prefer jobs in SMBs over large enterprises at that point in time.” (Sanjana, 12:44)
4. Cracking the Brief and Planning
- Problem Discovery:
- SMBs did not perceive informal hiring as problematic. The challenge was to “get them to realize that there's a problem with the way that they're currently hiring.” (Sanjana, 22:19)
- Ineffective hires via informal routes led to business liability, but this wasn’t evident to SMB owners. (Sanjana, 22:19)
- Emotional Barriers:
- Deep ties to community and a sense of giving back complicated the adoption of formal recruitment. (Sanjana, 19:54)
5. Creative Leap: Humor as a Trojan Horse
- Breaking B2B Stereotypes:
- “A lot of [B2B advertising] tends to be fairly drab...it tends to be fairly sterile...we were taking on something that would be a fairly delicate task...humor would be a good way to do it.” (Sanjana, 23:19)
- Humanizing the Message:
- Humor was used to reflect hiring mistakes without being preachy or condescending, softening the message and allowing SMB owners to relate without offense. (Sanjana, 24:23)
- Campaign featured scenarios where hires made through personal connections led to humorous, costly blunders (as in the "Warehouse" spot at 25:38).
6. Internal Buy-In and Simplicity of Message
- Organizational Shift:
- “When I joined Indeed in 2018, humor was almost somewhat off limits. I think we had been quite an earnest brand up until that point...Germany was probably the best case in point...we've taken the brand from zero to effective market leader using humor.” (Owen, 25:52)
- Creative Partnership:
- Teams avoided overloading communications: “To DDB's credit...they were fervent in terms of stop, being really clear...you're trying to do too much, you're trying to say too much. And I think that was really brilliant.” (Owen, 27:53)
- “What we got right were simplicity of message...really single minded in a way that just stands up.” (Owen, 27:53)
7. Long-Term Brand Building vs. Short-Term Wins
- Effie-winning Results:
- The campaign was recognized after just one year, but there was focus on building “distinctive assets consistently deployed over time that are creating real memory structures... we absolutely look at the long term in everything that we do.” (Owen, 29:52)
- Follow-up Campaign: Broader Audience
- Eventually built out to reach job seekers beyond SMBs:
- “Let Jobs Find You” campaign encouraged job seekers not to settle, leveraging the same approachable, humorous tone. (Sanjana, 31:27)
- “That work is some of the work that I think I'm most proud of in Indeed...just clear in what it's trying to say and not overloading the message.” (Owen, 32:47)
- Eventually built out to reach job seekers beyond SMBs:
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- On the Indian Market’s Complexity:
- “Can you imagine the segmentation studies?...There is a lot that we can learn and a lot of things that seem very different about our market when it’s 1.6 billion people.” (Fergus, 03:54)
- On the under-served SMB Audience:
- “The SMB audience was, yes, A, untapped, but also B, they were thriving in the post pandemic context...” (Sanjana, 09:05)
- On Humor as Creative Tool:
- “Humor would be a good way to do it... it would soften the blow. It would also...allow the SMB owners...to put themselves in the shoes of the characters in those films.” (Sanjana, 24:23)
- On Brand Transformation with Humor (Germany case):
- “We developed a character... she is now synonymous with the brand...there’s a stage where three out of four... recognize it...we’ve taken the brand from zero to effective market leader using humor.” (Owen, 26:55)
- On Simplifying Complex Messaging:
- “We had a bit of a proof of concept from other markets and understood that [humor] is the most significant emotion and tool...the two things that we got right were simplicity of message...and just stands up.” (Owen, 27:42)
- On Long-Term Effectiveness:
- “Distinctive assets consistently deployed over time that are creating real memory structures... we absolutely look at the long term in everything that we do.” (Owen, 29:52)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [06:02] — Owen Murphy introduces Indeed’s global presence and unique market-by-market activation.
- [09:05] — Sanjana Chetan explains the untapped SMB opportunity in India.
- [13:47] — Insight into informal hiring practices among SMBs.
- [16:56] — Existing perceptions of the Indeed brand in India and the need for repositioning.
- [19:54] — The heart of the creative brief: shifting emotional and knowledge barriers.
- [23:19] — Decision to use humor to address behavioral change and stand out in B2B advertising.
- [25:38] — Example spots using humor to depict consequences of informal hiring.
- [27:53] — Owen discusses internal push for message simplicity and the creative process.
- [29:52] — Strategic emphasis on building long-term brand assets, not just one-off results.
- [31:27] — Expanding the campaign from SMB focus to broader job seekers (“Let Jobs Find You”).
Conclusion
This episode provides a masterclass in nuanced market entry strategy, showing how Indeed successfully navigated cultural complexity, category norms, and entrenched behaviors to win both market share and creative acclaim in India. The gold Effie case is built on smart insight, cultural empathy, fearless creative choices, and a focus on long-term brand distinctiveness—with the human touch of humor at the core.