DICK'S Sporting Goods
Project
Employer Branding, Art Direction, Recruitment Marketing
Employer Branding, Art Direction, Recruitment Marketing
Role
Lead Designer
Lead Designer
Client
DICK'S Sporting Goods
DICK'S Sporting Goods
Agency
Confidential
Confidential
01 | Overview
Building the Employer Brand from the Inside Out
DICK'S Sporting Goods had a clear ambition: become the best sports company to work for. But the employer brand hadn't kept pace with that vision. Internally, the culture was strong, built around genuine passion for sport, deep team camaraderie, and a commitment to community. Externally, that story wasn't coming through with the clarity or consistency it deserved.
The work was to close that gap, not by inventing something new, but by codifying what already existed and giving cross-functional teams the visual language and messaging tools to communicate it with one unified voice. No career site. Just the brand, built to travel across every format and every audience it needed to reach.
02 | Scope
01
EVP Brand Guide: a comprehensive visual and messaging system designed to unify DICK'S voice across every internal and external touchpoint
EVP Brand Guide: a comprehensive visual and messaging system designed to unify DICK'S voice across every internal and external touchpoint
02
Art direction for recruitment marketing: digital display ads, social posts, and banners extending the employer brand into paid and organic candidate channels
Art direction for recruitment marketing: digital display ads, social posts, and banners extending the employer brand into paid and organic candidate channels
03
Talent segment messaging: distinct visual and copy frameworks for five candidate audiences: Retail, Distribution, Tech, Creative/Design, and Brick & Mortar
Talent segment messaging: distinct visual and copy frameworks for five candidate audiences: Retail, Distribution, Tech, Creative/Design, and Brick & Mortar
04
Photography art direction: guiding image selection and treatment to ensure visual consistency across all formats and candidate touch-points
Photography art direction: guiding image selection and treatment to ensure visual consistency across all formats and candidate touch-points
03 | Employer Brand Guide
The EVP brand guide was the anchor for everything else. It established the visual identity (DSG green, a bold all-caps type system, and a warm-but-high-energy photography direction) and translated the "Come Win With Us" platform into a tool that any team member could pick up and use. Every layout decision, color choice, and messaging framework was made to feel like DICK'S: competitive, community-driven, and genuinely proud of what they do.
04 | Talent Segments
DICK'S needed to speak to five distinct candidate audiences, each with different motivations, environments, and expectations. The brand guide included tailored messaging frameworks for each, while maintaining the consistency of the "Come Win With Us" platform across all of them. The design challenge was making each segment feel specific without losing the cohesion of the whole.
05 | Recruitment Marketing
With the brand system established, the visual language was extended into a suite of recruitment marketing materials: digital display ads, social posts, and banners designed to reach candidates where they actually were. Each format carried the same bold type, DSG green, and sport-forward energy from the brand guide, ensuring the employer brand felt consistent whether someone encountered it in a job board ad or a LinkedIn scroll.
06 | Outcome
The work gave DICK'S a fully realized employer brand system, built to scale across audiences, formats, and teams, that closed the gap between the culture people experienced inside the organization and the brand they encountered as candidates.
One Unified Voice
For the first time, DICK'S cross-functional teams had a single, comprehensive employer brand resource: a system that made it easy to communicate consistently across every area of the organization and every candidate channel.
For the first time, DICK'S cross-functional teams had a single, comprehensive employer brand resource: a system that made it easy to communicate consistently across every area of the organization and every candidate channel.
Brand at Every Touch-Point
The recruitment marketing suite ensured the employer brand showed up with the same energy and clarity in a LinkedIn ad as it did in the brand guide itself, giving candidates a consistent experience no matter where they encountered DICK'S.
The recruitment marketing suite ensured the employer brand showed up with the same energy and clarity in a LinkedIn ad as it did in the brand guide itself, giving candidates a consistent experience no matter where they encountered DICK'S.
A System Built to Last
The guide was designed to be used, not filed away. Its frameworks, segment messaging, and visual rules were built to scale with the organization and hold up as the employer brand continued to grow.
The guide was designed to be used, not filed away. Its frameworks, segment messaging, and visual rules were built to scale with the organization and hold up as the employer brand continued to grow.
