Improving employer brand with a summer job campaign

A gamified summer recruitment campaign helped Motonet generate 114% more applicants than previous year.

+18 700

Unique visitors

+114%

Applicant growth in Finland

60–70%

Of hires engaged with campaign

Challenge

Motonet runs one of the largest seasonal recruitment drives in Finnish retail every year. For 2026, the goal was to bring Motonet's values into the recruitment campaign, refresh the employer brand with a new concept, and increase the number of summer job applicants.

Motokesä 2026

We built the campaign page around Motonet's own Motokesä concept, a mobile-first hub where candidates could test their skills in three custom games, read about company culture, get tips for their application, and apply directly to open positions across all 42 stores. The same platform launched fully localized in Sweden a few days later.

The page brought in 18,747 unique visitors across the two markets and over 63,000 page views, with 5,504 of those visitors playing at least one game.

Games

Three games, each built around a real role in the store. Each had its own live leaderboard, with a combined leaderboard that rewarded players for trying all three. There were no prizes — the only reason to play was to engage with the brand and have a bit of fun.

The Store

Run and catch products in different departments. The player runs through a randomly generated level, avoiding obstacles and collecting products that have fallen from the shelves. After reaching a specific score threshold, the player advances to the next department and level, where the game gets progressively more difficult. Players could keep going as long as they survived with three lives.

The Spare Part Department

Identify automotive parts against the clock. Players were shown 10 random objects from the spare part department and had to recognise them as fast as possible — the faster the answer, the more points earned. Each question had a 10-second timer. To keep it challenging, we built a library of over 50 different spare parts, and the questions and answer positions changed on every play.

The Checkout

Quick fingers were needed for this one. Players had to collect all the products moving down the conveyor belt while avoiding the checkout dividers. If an item got past or a divider was hit, one life was lost. Players could keep going as long as they survived. The game got more challenging with every item collected, and not for long the conveyor belt was smoking hot from the speed!

Results

The recruitment campaign reached over 775,000 people through paid social and brought in 14,489 applicants across Finland and Sweden, a 114% increase in Finnish applications compared to 2025. Across both markets, players spent over 250 hours of active play time in games.

Most importantly, between 60 and 70% of the seasonal workers Motonet hired this summer had engaged with the Motokesä campaign page along the way.

Working with Gust was highly smooth and professional. They brought a great deal of expertise to the planning and development phase of the Motokesä campaign, along with valuable ideas for future development. Their work clearly reflected up-to-date knowledge, genuine interest in their field, and a strong ability to support the customer in a situation that was new to us as a company.

Throughout the project, Gust kept us excellently informed about the progress and actively asked for our feedback at different stages of the process to ensure the final outcome was exactly what we had hoped for. The collaboration was easy, clear, and enjoyable. I can warmly recommend working with Gust to any organisation interested in developing impactful, modern, and engaging solutions.