WorldSkills Norway: Getting a head start
Over the last two years, Gambit H+K has produced a series of creative and effective campaigns for WorldSkills Norway – for example a game show tailored for Facebook.
WorldSkills Norway (WSN) is a non-profit that works to increase the interest in, and the quality of, Norwegian vocational education.
Vocational education gives you a head start
2018 was the year of vocational education in Norway. WSN therefore sought to develop a campaign with the goal of inspiring more pupils to choose a vocational line of secondary education.
In Norway, pupils at age 15-16, when commencing their upper secondary education, choose between a vocational or academic track. Our insights showed that they are heavily influenced by their parents in their choice. Yet, parents tend to have scarce knowledge about what such a choice entails, and indeed tend to hold worse prejudices toward vocational education as such. Our primary objective was therefore to reach the parents with our message.
Our campaign concept “Get a head start. Go for a vocational education” showed all the advantages you get when choosing a vocational education track. The concept was disseminated through six videos on Facebook that were tailored to parents between ages 35 and 55, in addition to a YouTube-collaboration with three widely recognized “youtubers” who each tried a different vocational education program for a day.
Gameshow on Facebook
On Facebook we created the gameshow “The Head Start”. In this gameshow, the teenagers act as show hosts and quizzed their parents on facts related to vocational education. If the parents answered incorrectly, they were penalized, for example by receiving an electrical buzz, having pinches placed in their face, or by having to eat a bowl of lemons. The participants were “real” parents and children.
Youtubers try out vocational education
In the second part of the campaign we had three famous youtubers meet with three young, skilled workers. In 2018, 92 percent of Norwegian adolescents between ages 12 and 17 visited YouTube weekly and we wanted to create content that the target group itself would want to spend time watching.
The youtubers were selected according to their viewers and their ability as storytellers. The result was three YouTube clips, in the style of a reportage, that showed authentic meetings between the role models and good representatives of vocational subjects. The clips were edited by the youtubers themselves and focused on the “head start” that the interviewees have compared to their peers. All the videos were published through the youtubers own channels.
1,3 million views on Facebook
The videos became a great success on Facebook, with almost 1.3 million views. Over 38 000 people liked, commented, shared or clicked on the ads.
In total the campaign created over 19 000 views with over 111 000 minutes of viewing time, something that shows that the content managed to engage the followers. On average the followers watched 5.22 minutes of the video, which is far above what is expected on YouTube.
2019 also became the first year in which almost as many pupils applied for vocational education as for the academic track. A post-hoc survey showed that there had been a 28 percent increase in the number of parents with children aged between 13 and 15 that believed vocational subjects represent an attractive career path for their children.
