Situation:

Statistics show that Norway will lack as much as 88 000 workers in the construction industry by 2035. It has a low standing amongst Norwegians, in fact only one person applied to become a painter in three years. Parents are not contributing, and as much as 40% don’t consider it a relevant career path for their teenagers. Norges Hyggeligste Håndverker/Norways Nicest Carpenter’ is an industry award created to improve this unearned reputation and reduce stigma around skilled workers.

Brief:

How can NHH, increase the reputation and status of the construction industry, among young people in Norway?

Objectives:

To create awareness about and spread positive vibes towards vocational work among young Norwegians - in order to better the reputation of craft and construction careers.

The blue safety helmet is a digital and social high-five to all the hard working people in the construction industry. Through celebrities, snapads, lenses and press we encouraged young people to place a blue safety helmet on their Bitmojis.

Snapchat is one of the key social channels among Norwegian youth (80 % has a profile), and one of few that isn’t flooded with commercial messages and ads. The idea itself, leveraging an existing snapchat function paved the way for the strategy - to use the blue helmet as an easy to share tool, which would gain traction in the target group.

During the launch in April 2021, we got influencers and peers to spread the word about the importance of the symbolic blue helmet. We created a Snaplense and Snapads encouraging people to put the blue helmet on. This, to create the shortest way possible for the target group to engage in the campaign. From there the blue safety helmet rapidly spread across social channels, ending up on both politicians and industry leaders’ heads, even the prime minister! The social campaign culminated with the launch of the industry award, creating more awareness and nominations for the award than ever before.

The blue safety helmet spread in social networks all over Norway.? Eventually the campaign outgrew snapchat, and became a physical symbol. At the peak of the campaign, the blue helmet appeared on both the prime minister, and the prime minister elect– making it a bipartisan statement. That’s pretty influential.

The snaplense had a 6,77% share rate, 1,4x over benchmark.

The nominations for the award increased by 45%.

But most importantly.. the use of the bitmoji-helmet went up 1700%! Spreading positivity through social networks all over Norway.