Engaging and inspiring 2 million young people through careers education
National Careers Week
NCW is the biggest celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK. The aim is to support and inspire young people to achieve their career dreams.
As Creative Directors since 2015, establishing the brand, resources, media and outreach campaigns to consistently engage over 2 million learners is a point of pride for us. As a result, further diversification and growth of the NCW offering has also included Green Careers Week, National Skills Week and the headline Virtual Careers Fair.
Young people need meaningful opportunities, engaging and digestible resources and positive, attractive campaigns to inspire them into a conversation about careers.
We saw an opportunity to help NCW build and grow engagement across all audiences, by creating content and resources that capture attention and encourage young people and educators to access and explore the support available. Rather than treating Careers Week as a standalone campaign, our approach was to be big and bold - positioning NCW as the best celebration of careers across the nation.
Insight
Our work has continued to grow, develop and evolve the brand, message and appeal of NCW across the past 10 years. From the outset, we helped articulate the true mission of NCW:
Empowering positive change through careers education.
This became the rallying message to inform the creative strategy. Part activism and part optimism, we have used this to build out a set of brand and campaign materials that bring key messaging to life through typographic and illustrative approaches.This has been developed to be flexible to work across multiple formats, audiences, and platforms, giving NCW an overarching identity that adapts to individual campaigns and initiatives to have their own feel and purpose.
From film and media, resource creation, audience attraction campaigns, out of home engagement, digital marketing and print design - we continue to push the boundaries and ensure that NCW remains the biggest and best celebration of careers guidance throughout the UK.
Action
Assembly has helped NCW turn a single week of activity into an ongoing resource for careers education.
In 2026, we achieved the following impact with NCW:
Virtual Careers Fair generated more than 450,000 views
Resources downloaded more than 262,000 times
49 million unique users reached across major social channels
2 million learners engaged
The campaign's wider reach demonstrates the demand for accessible and engaging careers content, giving educators and young people practical ways to explore different pathways and understand the world of work.
More importantly, the work demonstrates how creative communications can make careers education feel more accessible, relevant, and inspiring, helping young people move from simply thinking about their future to believing that they can achieve their dreams.
Impact
“The partnership between National Careers Week and Assembly is a longstanding partnership of real meaning; from the very beginning, the creative team have excelled in providing what we have needed from graphics to videography, from branding to print media - all expertly project managed. We couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Nick Newman,
NCW CEO