We used Berlin's public spaces not just as a medium – they were also the message. For our mission to provide more staff and societal attention to Berlin's daycares, we traced the chaotic conditions in Berlin back to a lack of educational professionals. The provocative slogan: Berlin Needs Education.

Then, we walked through Berlin for 5 days together with photographer Cem Guenes and captured evidence for our motto. All motifs are authentic; we found them just like that in the cityscape. And exactly where education was needed, that's where we later displayed our campaign: outdoors.

The kindergartens in Berlin are facing numerous challenges. There's a shortage of staff and a lack of attention. The job market is depleted. No one knows this better than Berlin's municipal daycare operators, the city's largest association of kindergartens.

At the same time, Berlin is considered the city where nothing works anymore in Germany. Bureaucracy, crumbling infrastructure, and political standstill are eroding the city's image. This is the case for the rest of Germany, but also for Berliners who actually love their city, yet are struggling with doubts.

We leveraged this sentiment to spark a huge discussion and get our rather small topic – recruiting for Berlin's daycares – onto all the front pages: By defining the lack of societal support and shortage of educational professionals as the reason for the city's problems.

Thus, our campaign affected not just a small group of professionals, but: everyone.

Our task was to help the municipal daycare centers in Berlin navigate their challenging staffing situation by adopting a different approach. Experts in education aren't looking for empty promises; they seek more social recognition and better working conditions. Traditional recruiting campaigns for kindergartens, with their repetitive visuals and stock images of laughing children and building blocks, fail to engage the target audience. To increase applications for the Berlin daycares, it was crucial to not only reach entirely new demographic groups but also to demonstrate to experienced professionals that these daycares tackle their mission in a unique way compared to others.

In just under 3 months of campaigning, the daycares received as many applications as they did in the entire previous year! 358 in total, from apprentices to management level. The path to this achievement included 20.5 million out-of-home (OOH) impressions, 26.8 million digital impressions, and a cost per click (CPC) of only €0.57 - three times better than the client had planned.

The campaign and the new brand identity did more than just address the target audience. They actively expanded it: By making the recruiting campaign relevant not only to existing professionals through its strong emotional appeal, but also to the entire city with its placement and design, we were able to excite people about the education profession who had not noticed traditional recruiting campaigns. The campaign generated many applications from newcomers and career changers. Incorporating strong emotions about the state and future of life in Berlin into our brand, alongside the core theme of “education,” also enabled us to spark a real societal discussion. Everyone had an opinion about the campaign, and that got us onto the front pages and television nationwide without spending a single cent.