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Everyone asks the question like it’s a maintenance schedule.
“How often should I refresh our EVP?”
And the most common answer is the one that sounds wise while saying almost nothing: it depends.
Here’s the part people skip.
It mostly depends on one thing.
Whether your “EVP” is advertising or strategy.
Those are not the same. And they don’t age the same.
If your EVP is advertising, it has an expiration date
If your EVP is built on creative, taglines, content themes, channel spend, a new look, a new campaign, a new “story,” it’s basically fashion.
Fashion works. For a while.
But fashion has a shelf life because it is designed to win attention, not to anchor a company’s real, differentiated value. What gets attention changes fast. What looks modern changes fast. What feels fresh changes fast.
So if your EVP is mostly advertising, you should expect to “redo it” often. Potentially quarterly. Not because you’re failing. Because advertising is a treadmill.
And if you stop running, you look stale.
That’s the hidden cost of building your employer brand on creative alone. You’re signing up for constant reinvention just to stay visible.
If your EVP is strategy, it should barely change
Strategy is different.
A strategic employer brand is built on differentiated value. It is rooted in choices.
It’s the answer to a hard question: why should the right candidate choose us over competitors, even when we’re not the most famous or the highest paying?
That kind of employer brand is not fashion. It’s positioning.
It doesn’t need a quarterly refresh because the underlying value doesn’t change quarterly. The company’s real advantage usually doesn’t change quarterly. The reasons people join and stay rarely change quarterly.
You can absolutely update the creative layer on top whenever you want. Different campaigns. Different stories. Different formats. Different voices. That’s smart.
But the underpinning strategy should be close to static. Stable enough that recruiters can repeat it. Hiring managers can reinforce it. Candidates can recognize it. Leaders can stand behind it without re-litigating the story every few months.
The problem: most companies think they have strategy when they have advertising
This is where things get awkward.
A lot of employer brands are called “strategic” because they have a deck and a tagline and a set of values.
But values are not differentiation. Everyone has values. And if we’re being honest, most companies’ values are the same handful of words with different typography.
Benefits aren’t differentiation either. Most benefits are table stakes, and the ones that are different often don’t matter to the candidates you’re trying to win.
So here’s the test. It’s simple. It’s uncomfortable. It works.
The career site test
Go to your career site.
Now point to the one thing that none of your competitors can say.
Not the thing you say differently. The thing they cannot say without lying.
Or point to the one thing you do that your competitors would admit they can’t do.
If you cannot find that, you do not have a strategic employer brand.
You have an ad plan.
And when you have an ad plan, the EVP question becomes: how often do we need new creative to stay interesting?
That’s why it feels like you’re constantly redoing it. Because you are.
What does “strategic” actually look like?
Strategic employer brands contain a few traits that advertising-based EVPs usually avoid:
- They make choices, which means they exclude some candidates on purpose
- They include tradeoffs, which makes them more believable
- They have proof, not just claims
- They can be repeated consistently across recruiters, hiring managers, and leaders
Most importantly, they have at least one idea that competitors can’t steal.
Because it is true.
The takeaway
If your EVP is fashion, refresh it constantly and accept the treadmill.
If your EVP is strategy, stop rebuilding the foundation and start changing the paint. The foundation should hold for years.
And if you aren’t sure which one you have, don’t ask how often to redo it.
Ask the only question that matters:
Can I point to something that none of our competitors can honestly say?
If not, you don’t need a refresh.
You need differentiation.
