In 2021, Thorn gave BNO the opportunity to help them develop their employer brand.

Thorn is the philanthropic brainchild of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. In 2012, both actors founded Thorn in an attempt to try to reduce the amount of child sex abuse material, or CSAM, that was available on the internet. Those who work at Thorn are incredibly passionate about what they do, and that pervasive sense of purpose bleeds into every single area of employee life.

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BNO started our employer brand development process by developing a competitive analysis, carrying out focus groups and IDIs on the internal level, and finally using all of this preliminary research to develop a core strategy towards attracting and retaining talent. I was a part of the strategic research portion of this effort by leading the creative competitive analysis.

After our research was completed, we started in on writing and visually developing a wide breadth of taglines and initial graphic concepts, shown below. We landed on Our Cause Is Our Code, which speaks the employee purpose, company mission, and technological innovation that’s at the heart of Thorn.

We used our final tagline on social properties, print ads, and the careers site that you can see below. The careers site is interactive and operates on an infinite scroll that develops more detail about a life inside Thorn as you delve deeper into the page… it’s an element of the new employer brand that we’re especially proud of. I’m so excited that my illustrations finally got to take center stage for a major client.