Nissan’s toddler-turned-technician fronts recruitment campaign
23 August 2013
A technician at car maker Nissan’s Sunderland plant is reprising the starring role in a recruitment campaign for the firm that he first held 26 years ago as a toddler.
Fri, 23 Aug 2013A technician at car maker Nissan’s Sunderland plant is reprising the starring role in a recruitment campaign for the firm that he first held 26 years ago as a toddler.
Donning a specially made set of overalls and waving a Union Jack, Chris Pickbourne was the face of the firm aged just two back in the mid-1980s.
Now, with the company again hiring for both production staff and engineers as its expansion continues, who better to front a new campaign than… Pickbourne? (See the bottom of this story for a then-and-now picture.)
In the intervening 26 years, the company has shifted gears considerably, with 1,100 staff making a total of 28,797 vehicles in 1987, compared with more than 6,000 staff producing 500,000 cars last year.
Pickbourne’s mother Wendy, 56, who has herself worked at Nissan for, as chance would have it, 26 years, said of the original casting: "When I took Chris to the shoot there were a few volunteers, but he was the only one who would sit still for the photographer.”
Greg Penn, now the Sunderland plant’s HR director who was given as the contact number on the 1980s adverts, says: “We are actively recruiting for experienced professional people across our engineering and maintenance departments, so I'd encourage anyone interested in Nissan to visit our recruitment website, and find out why more than one in three British cars is now built in Sunderland.”
Donning a specially made set of overalls and waving a Union Jack, Chris Pickbourne was the face of the firm aged just two back in the mid-1980s.
Now, with the company again hiring for both production staff and engineers as its expansion continues, who better to front a new campaign than… Pickbourne? (See the bottom of this story for a then-and-now picture.)
In the intervening 26 years, the company has shifted gears considerably, with 1,100 staff making a total of 28,797 vehicles in 1987, compared with more than 6,000 staff producing 500,000 cars last year.
Pickbourne’s mother Wendy, 56, who has herself worked at Nissan for, as chance would have it, 26 years, said of the original casting: "When I took Chris to the shoot there were a few volunteers, but he was the only one who would sit still for the photographer.”
Greg Penn, now the Sunderland plant’s HR director who was given as the contact number on the 1980s adverts, says: “We are actively recruiting for experienced professional people across our engineering and maintenance departments, so I'd encourage anyone interested in Nissan to visit our recruitment website, and find out why more than one in three British cars is now built in Sunderland.”
