Our best marketing and growth endeavor: The Nova 111 List
Why we created the Nova 111 in a world full of rankings and lists, and how it was designed to be different
Hey, we are Ramón Rodrigáñez and Andrea Marino, Co-Founders at Nova, the Global Top Talent Network.
Welcome to Talent First, our newsletter where those who believe that talent is the most important resource in the economy get together.
Every week we cover a new topic related to attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining talent, as well as the learnings from our journey building Nova.
Summary:
The origin story of the Nova 111 list: Why we created the Nova 111 in a world full of rankings and lists, and how it was designed to be different.
How the Nova 111 contributed to our growth: The expected and unexpected impacts of the Nova 111 on our brand, community, and growth trajectory.
Lessons learned from building a viral project: Practical takeaways from launching the Nova 111, including how we achieved virality with a $0 marketing budget.
1. The origin story of the Nova 111 List
For those readers who are new to Nova, the Nova 111 list is our yearly initiative that celebrates the 111 best professionals under 35 across 11 sectors and the 111 top students across 11 educational backgrounds. With nominations for the 2024 edition open, it's the perfect time to reflect on how this project came to life and why it remains a pillar of our mission to connect and accelerate talent globally. Of course, if you’d like to learn more about the list and apply or nominate someone, here is the link, the applications to the Italian and Spanish 2024 lists are currently open.
Why create yet another list?
Back in January 2020, as we were scaling Nova globally, we faced a challenge: how do we identify, attract, and engage top talent at scale while maintaining our commitment to meritocracy?
Word of mouth had served us well in our early stages, but it wasn’t enough. We saw the risk of creating an inner circle typical of elite networks rather than the merit-based, global talent community we envisioned.
We needed a way to elevate Nova’s brand awareness and attract diverse, exceptional individuals. We also knew that existing lists, like Forbes 30 Under 30, celebrated success that was already visible but often lacked transparency about their selection process. We saw an opportunity to fill this gap by creating a list that was:
Transparent: Sharing clear selection criteria to ensure credibility.
Merit-Based: Using Nova’s technology to assess talent with scientific rigor. We will not go now into the details of the assessment process but you can read more about it in this article.
Aspirational: Celebrating individuals with immense potential, not just those already in the spotlight.
The unique name, Nova 111, was an iterative choice. Starting with 100 honorees, we expanded to 110 to represent 11 sectors. Adding one final "supernova" of the year brought us to 111—a number that we liked as, with some imagination, resembles rockets ready to launch.
From idea to execution
We realized we had all the ingredients in place even if we had a small team of just seven people, we decided to dare. We would challenge the status quo of rankings and lists by leveraging what we had: a strong mission, robust assessment technology, and boundless creativity.
But we had no marketing budget. What we did have was belief in our vision and the resourcefulness to make it happen.
2. How the Nova 111 became a catalyst for growth
The Nova 111 launched in October 2020, marking a turning point for Nova’s brand. Without spending a single euro on external marketing, we achieved results beyond our expectations. Since that first experimental edition in Spain, we’ve now launched multiple editions in Sweden and Italy, collecting a combined amount of 40K+ nominations, a huge milestone considering where and how it all started.
But how did we manage to grow this fast with little resources?
1. Designing virality from the get-go
The Nova 111 was built to go viral from the start. Since the very beginning, we knew we could leverage two core human motivations:
Recognition: given our legitimacy in talent assessment, we knew that if executed right, we could tap into people of self-actualization and recognition.
Aspiration: By celebrating potential, we made the Nova 111 appealing to both people who had already accomplished remarkable things and those who had significant potential and early signs of excellence.
We built on top of that by designing and thinking about viral loops that were natural to the user and not spammy, the most effective came from the references journey. During the application process, candidates share up to 3 references that can vouch for them. This usually increases the quality of their application as we weigh the type of relationship the reference has with the candidate.
One smart viral loop has been adding a short sentence in the reference email that invited them to also apply or nominate someone else. So if you do the math, if on average applicants were adding 2 references, the chances of generating more nominations out of that loop were immense and free at the same time.
2. Strong corporate partners
When we designed the list we did not know whether companies would be interested in sponsoring the initiative. Since the very first moment, we started to bounce ideas off our customers and listen to what kind of value the Nova 111 list could bring to their talent attraction strategies. Shaping the list in a way where corporate partners could gain a unique visibility right next to the leaders of the country has been a winning decision.
In fact, as corporate partners decided to sponsor the list we turned the Nova 111 into a sustainable initiative but we also increased even further the legitimacy and credibility of the project. When top talent would see highly credible brands behind it, they would instantly know the initiative was worth paying attention to. We are proud to have on our side leading employers in different countries that throughout the years made the list possible, companies like Unilever, BCG, Bain & Company, and Danone to mention a few together with leading educational institutions like SDA Bocconi and IE University were key enablers of the list’s success.
3. Creativity beats money
In the marketing team, we knew we could not spend anything on promotion but we still wanted to hit our target of at least 1.500 applications for our first edition. Considering that completing the application required about 30 minutes, it was not an easy target.
We had to find new ways of attracting media attention and starting the buzz around a new list being launched in the country, we must say we had a few winning ideas that really changed the awareness game for the list.
A billboard in Plaza del Sol in the very center of Madrid We had no budget right? However, we pretended we had an unlimited budget by putting the Nova 111 ads in Plaza del Sol, one of the most expensive locations in Madrid. We did it only digitally, meaning on Photoshop. The results were almost as if we’d done it for real as people looking a the image on social media could not tell if that was true or not. That LinkedIn post is still to this day one of the most viral we have ever published and kicked off a tremendous buzz around the List and its legitimacy.
A consistent PR narrative that tapped into a highly relevant story The Nova 111 list has been built around one of the pillars of our vision, make the world more meritocratic. In a country like Spain where top talent every year leaves the country to look for better opportunities, the narrative of elevating the talent of the country was something that radio and newspapers picked up on quickly. The Nova 111 list was in fact covered in major media outlets like El Pais.
Make the winners shine brighter than ever While existing lists up until we arrived in the game were featuring the winners in a simple ranking with names, we decided our winners deserved more than that. We wanted to let them be proud of the achievement and give them a professional-looking picture they could keep and share with their circles.
Little do we know about the viral effect this would have created. In fact, on the day of the winners’ announcement, our LinkedIn feed was flooded with pictures of winners who proudly shared their remarkable achievements with the world. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of people saw the Nova brand for the first time next to some of the best leaders of the country. This initiative has been the one that created the most virality thanks to the organic spread via personal LinkedIn profiles (user-generated content), something that the LinkedIn algorithm favors more than company accounts.
3. What did we learn from all this?
The Nova 111 taught us several lessons that can be applied to almost any project.
It’s all about talent Again and again, we were reminded that having top talent in the team beats any budget or money. The quality and results achieved with the Nova 111 would not have been possible without a team (of 3 people) who had creativity and an entrepreneurial mindset.
We will never be afraid to challenge big corporates In the beginning, we were afraid we could not carve out our space in the market as huge brands already tried to become the leader in the space. However, we analyzed them carefully and identified the weak points of the existing alternatives and, as a startup, we could move much faster in addressing those. Don’t stop doing things just because there are bigger actors, break down the gaps, see what are your unique assets and find out how you can leverage them to create a new narrative.
Whenever you can, tap into humans’ basic needs If the Maslow pyramid can serve as an inspiration, we all share certain needs and we look for those in life in many different ways. All life decisions can often be redirected to those simple needs (i.e. safety, belonging). Whenever you launch a new product or project, it’s worth asking yourself how do I make my end user feel better about themselves? Am I making it easier for them to achieve that emotional return? You will often come up with great ideas that will elevate your impact to the next level.
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