From Compliance to Campaign: Treating onboarding like a major product launch

onboarding is still treated in many organizations like some dusty HR ritual, like mandatory team lunches or sensitivity training. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be. In fact, if you really think about it, onboarding is basically your company’s product launch moment. Seriously. And we’re all sleeping on it.

Nobody—and I mean nobody—wants to show up on Day One and get handed a stack of forms while someone mumbles about the printer being “somewhere on the third floor, probably.” Yet that’s exactly what happens at most places. It’s depressing, honestly. What if instead, companies treated new hires like Apple treats a new iPhone launch? With anticipation, storytelling, and that magical feeling of belonging?

When Marketing Meets HR: The Art of Onboarding

Here’s what we have noticed: marketing folks have cracked the code on first impressions. They spend months plotting how to make people feel something. The unboxing experience, the packaging, the story—it all matters. But HR? HR’s still copying and pasting the same welcome email template from 2015.

What if we flipped that? What if onboarding reads like a campaign brief instead of a compliance checklist?

Google gets this. They give new employees—”Noogglers”—these ridiculous propeller beanies. And you know what? Everyone wears them. Why? Because it’s playful. It’s human. It says, “We’re not uptight here, and you don’t have to be either.” Suddenly, new hires aren’t anxious; they’re amused. They’re already part of an inside joke. That’s genius-level HR right there.

Real Talk: When Onboarding Goes Hilariously Wrong

But let us tell you about the disasters. Because they’re kind of hilarious—in retrospect.

There was this startup guy who showed up for his first day, ready to crush it. Imagine: coffee in hand, LinkedIn profile already updated with his new title, texts sent to his family saying, “I did it!” But then… nothing. No desk. No computer. Not even a chair. Just a ping-pong table and a lot of confused looks. He literally spent his first morning balancing his onboarding paperwork on a ping-pong table while IT searched for his record. And get this, when they finally found him in the system, his email was spelled wrong. For three weeks. He’d been “[email protected]” instead of “[email protected].” A simple typo that probably cost the company a morning of productivity and this poor guy his dignity. Welcome to startup life.

Then there’s my personal favourite: the bathroom bandit. The new hire walks into what he thought was the bathroom on Day One, except it’s actually a closed-door investor meeting. The CEO is mid-pitch about quarterly projections, and this guy just casually walks in like, “Good morning, team!” Everyone froze. Dead silence. A moment of dead silence that perfectly illustrates why clear office orientation and signposting matter on Day One.

The Companies Actually Nailing This

It’s not all chaos and confusion. Some organizations actually get it.