{Replik} Career choice Employer branding & image campaign of the craft: Sunk marketing millions?

Craftsmanship is important, but its image is bad, especially among young professionals. The only question is whether the corresponding advertising campaigns will really change that or whether that Money is not rather sunken.

Craft: Bad image, good chances!

Craftsmanship is one of them Industries with optimal future prospects. With 4,8 million employees and around 500 billion euros Turnover the craft is a mainstay of the German Economy and Society. And it is one of the sectors in Germany in which jobs are created even in a tense economic situation.

Unfortunately, the skilled trades are also plagued by worries about young talent - certainly one reason why the opportunities in the skilled trades are so good. After all, handicrafts don't have a hip, chic image and therefore very few young people want one Job seize. A Forsa poll found that the Significance of craftsmanship in society, especially among young people, is underestimated.

Does the craft need an image campaign?

The books on the subject (advertising)

For this reason, the German Handwerkskammertag (DHKT), the umbrella organization of the 53 Handwerkskammern, has launched a five-year campaign to demonstrate how our life looks without the trades.

Objective of the communication offensive is to illustrate the economic and social importance of the craft and young people for a Vocational Training to inspire there. The claim “The craft. The economic power. Next door." is intended to demonstrate the size, innovative strength, diversity and realism of the trade and give the industry a more modern image. Above all, the organizers want to inspire young people so that they can apply for one of the 151 skilled trades decide.

Tradition vs. Globalization and mass products

Of course, in times of globalization craftsmen have to defend themselves against industrial mass production on the one hand, and against cheaper competition and moonlighting on the other. And yet: The craft is one of the sectors with optimal future prospects.

Of course, it would be wrong to deny that small and medium-sized craft businesses are the biggest, given the government burdens and the banks' reluctance to lend Problems have, as they often pay in advance for their work and invest must.

Crafts are created in the trade

Discounts for your success (advertising)!

But the skilled trades are one of the sectors in Germany in which jobs are being created even in the tense economic situation. Anyone who speaks to craft businesses asks everywhere fast found that hand-wringing Employees be searched.

The reason is obvious: more and more customers want individual handwork instead of mass production, guaranteed quality instead of cheap offers that cannot be trusted and serious ones Consulting instead of moonlighting. Customers have realized that with a greed is cool mentality, they can get cheap services, but also poor quality.

Distrust of low-cost suppliers

This is shown by numerous discussions in Internet be conducted via platforms on which one can auction craft services - in other words, the craftsman who makes the cheapest offer wins the auction.

The offer is by no means as popular as you should think, on the contrary, many users distrust the cheap offers and ask for uncertainty because they believe that the result can only be bad at cheap offers.

Exactly this new quality awareness is an expression of a changing customer attitude: In the future, it will not be just about getting things quickly at a cheap price, but good performance - and that may also cost something. Especially in bad times, the desire for something special always grows.

How craftsmen profit from luxury

Swatch is a trend and therefore a successful example of it Success of watchmaking: from plastic watches to luxury items. It all started with colorful plastic fun clocks. In the meantime, the Swatch Group, which operates worldwide, is increasingly introducing its profits to the high-priced watch business:

Luxury brands such as Breguet, Omega, Glashütte and Certina are the growth drivers of the holding company. For the Future Despite the financial crisis and increased raw material prices, Swatch expects sales to increase, especially in the luxury segment.

Custom handmade rather than mass-produced: 4 points how the crafting can score

There are a total of 4 areas, as the craft can score:

1. Sustainability and quality are in demand

And what's more: For more and more customers, it's not just the pure work result that counts, but also the ideal value and the lasting benefit they get from a service. And these are precisely the ones who are financially strong and who accordingly have a long-term relationship customer retention Make sense.

With this changing customer mentality, the skilled trades sector in particular has excellent prospects due to its image: Because skilled trades in Germany can look back on centuries of history and the Foundation own handicraft business usually requires a demanding qualification path up to the master craftsman.

Craftsmanship is therefore commonly associated with quality, consistency and tradition. And that's what many are about People, as a survey of 31.000 people in 25 countries worldwide by GfK Roper Consulting shows: More than two-thirds (69%) of those surveyed consider it at least “important” to give traditions a crucial place in their lives.

2. The trend is towards the regional

At the same time, the small craftsman from the neighborhood is considered by many to be a trustworthy cheap service provider from abroad - simply because many people have discovered a kind of new homeland connection and are therefore increasingly willing to buy services and products in regional markets. According to a recent Forsa survey, 60% of Germans state that they want to pay more attention to regional origins when shopping in the future.

The reason for this trend is a perceived homelessness and location independence in an accelerated environment; the increasingly hectic way of life leads to an increased longing for the simple and genuine. As paradoxical as that may sound: Precisely because today we live in a highly technical, extremely mobile Welt live, we love handmade furniture made of natural wood or want to eat local baked goods, even if we have to have them sent to us.

Regionality is thus a construction and a horizon of expectation charged with sentimentality, which transports strong emotional values. This emotional quality has been served by the food and hospitality industry but is beginning to spread to many other markets; Above all, however, this benefits craft and manufac- tured consumer goods. Internet has made a decisive contribution to the recent comeback of the regional, which makes it possible to source domestic products even if you are sitting at the other end of Germany.

As an Allensbach survey has shown, around half of Germans prefer regional products. And especially for consumers with high net household incomes (4.000 Euro and more), regional products are a new form of luxury: 41% of high-earners prefer exquisite products from their homeland and obviously pay a higher price for them.

3. Repair and service is “in”

Another trend that benefits the craft industry is that we are increasingly moving away from a throwaway society towards a recycling society. In times of tight budgets on the one hand and growing environmental awareness on the other hand, there is a worldwide trend that is increasingly coming to fruition in Germany too: namely repairing, repairing, re-naturing. Customers who spend a lot of money on a piece of furniture do not necessarily want to throw it away if it has scratches or signs of use, but rather have it repaired. And even the expensive evening dress does not have to be thrown away, because one has taken off a dress size; there are change cutters for that.

It follows that, especially in an industry in which tradition and quality are so important, services and long-term customer loyalty are particularly important. Above all, those craftsmen will be able to survive in the market who win customers with resourceful new ideas, for example by using the Internet in a targeted manner and then binding them to themselves with excellent service. The aim must be not just to offer all kinds of handicrafts, but your own Companys to a strong one Brand to expand In order to achieve this, you have to convey a certain attitude to life to your customers with your services. Here it makes sense to cooperate with other trades in order to be able to offer innovative products together under one brand name.

Example: The Armani brand, originally responsible for clothing, no longer stands for designer clothes, but symbolizes a comfortable life in general prosperity and also sells accessories, home textiles and furniture.

4. Eco-trend also for the craft

After all, another trend for craftsmen is the marketing argument par excellence: the organic and organic trend. And that intervenes in many craft trades: Example: environmentally friendly and low-emission living:

Craftsmen who specialize specifically in such eco-materials and bring the appropriate specialist knowledge with them when advising customers can score points - this ranges from building materials to wall painting to the production of particularly environmentally friendly furniture. And it is also the case in textile production, as well as in bakers and butchers usefulto offer special products with an ecological focus - from low-emission clothing to organic sausages.

What brings the advertising campaign for 10 millions

All of these are aspects that should be emphasized in the context of an advertising campaign. The image campaign that the ZDH started to specially Boy Addressing people unfortunately only marginally considers these aspects.

The only question is whether such an expensive (budget: 10 million euros) staged campaign reaches its goal.

Remarkable campaign

The start of the Kampagnet offered a TV commercial and the really good and extraordinary. This was definitely striking: offices, houses, bread crumble to the hands of people to dust and at the end you sit again as in the Stone Age. Motto: See where we would be without crafts! Even with long hair and beard - the hairdressers are also part of the craft.

In addition to the TV commercial, there were nationwide poster and advertisement circuits and a website on handwerk.de, in addition, all craft businesses in Germany as ambassadors of the campaign were equipped with appropriate advertising materials.

Good idea, bad timing!

However, the timing for such a video was extremely bad: At about the same time, an earthquake took place in Haiti. And so complained numerous TV viewers who saw themselves reminded by the crumbling Berlin in the video to the earthquake images - and the broadcast of the video on TV was stopped.

Only: The first of the 10 million is allowed to the ZDH with the botched videoSALE have already screwed up. All right, but there are still the pictures that are supposed to hang everywhere as posters.

Displeasure instead of enthusiasm

The enthusiastic response to the campaign was missing - no wonder! Instead, there is a lot of malice. So joked Mark Spörrle ZEIT ONLINEthat the campaign is fundamentally brilliant Idea be - Instead of craftsmen who don't keep to deadlines, bungle and charge horrific prices, the customer is told what it would really look like without craftsmen: namely quite Stone Age-like.

And he also has a plausible explanation for the great Neander dance, which can be found on the ZDH website: potential customers can use it to vent their anger. Exactly, that was it... because I was already wondering if anyone actually believes that young people are attracted to such nonsense feel could…. And around Honestly I haven't heard from this campaign for a long time - so grab a toilet?

Defensive and without solution

Wolfgang Müller complained that it took a very, very long time until the Solution is offered - and that the video shows what is not possible without the craft - but that no solution is offered as to how it can be done better.

In my opinion, that's also the problem with the whole campaign: it seems pretty defensive overall. Instead of relying on your own Power to reflect and to emphasize this, the emphasis is on the negative - for example, if no World Cup without the craft is propagated in press releases. However, that comes across as sour (“Guys, pay attention to us again”), arrigant (“nothing works without us”) and rather destructive (“If you don’t pay attention to us, we’ll ruin everything!”).

What is craft - and what is not?

It would be better to address the unique achievements and the creative side of this industry - there are next week just a few ideas!

That has a completely different, very interesting point of criticism Team brought forward by flexiblesbuero.com via Twitter: Too many of the examples appearing in the video and also on the posters are not associated by consumers with crafts in the true sense of the word, but with machine-made industrial products. Or would you have thought of crafts when you thought of space travel or wellness?

Marketing that is embarrassing to the compulsory members

It may be that this was exactly what the ZDH intended to bring to awareness, but you should always pick up consumers where they are and not where you as a company or Organization would like to have. In fact, a return to traditional craftsmanship would have been the better way here too – more on that next week.

The fact that this image campaign, which is considered by many critics to be embarrassing, for the artisans themselves is the worst, as shown by the many comments of people who are forced as members of the Chamber of Crafts no matter where their money flows.

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