NGen – Advanced manufacturing recruitment campaign targeted at youth

Business Problem

People think manufacturing is dull, repetitive, and dead-end work. False. Canada’s most advanced manufacturing companies—packed with the leading edge of nearly every technology on earth—offer a variety of creative, life-long jobs that pay well. But almost no kid in high school knows about this career path. So how do you convince a kid to consider something like this?

Audience insights
Young people will pursue a career if two factors align: They have to want it, and their parents have to allow it. Young people want to know their career is going to make a difference in the world, and parents want to see their kids earn a good living—two very different audiences. Oh, and young people hate ads. 

So how do you tell them what’s what without being too sell-y?

Creative insight
Imagine waking up to find you suddenly had millions of fans online. Every day, millions of people watch #satisfying videos. These videos, which kids watch to chill out, often show machines doing incredibly precise movements. Many of these videos are advanced manufacturing. On TikTok alone, #satisfying videos have been watched over 25 billion times. All we needed to do was help kids make the connection that they’ve been fans of advanced manufacturing this whole time.

Creative Idea

If you want to make things right, make things right. We would make mesmerizing #satisfying visuals that lead to meaningful content that outlines how advanced manufacturing improves the world in food production, agriculture, health sciences, and cleantech. Also: the word “manufacturing” has too many negative connotations for the audience. So we created “careers of the future” instead, which shows all the promise of what’s to come.   

Creative Executions

YouTube Loop: The most satisfying video that ever satisfied
We filmed and edited a 2-hour loop of original advanced manufacturing footage and paired it with a lo-fi hiphop soundtrack (another YouTube megatrend) that kids use to chill out. The page outlines that they’re actually watching advanced manufacturing and where to get more information. 

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram
Four different :15 #satisfying videos pulled kids into our campaign site, careersofthefuture.ca.

Broadcast
To convince parents this career could be great for their kids, we created a fast-paced, :30 TV commercial and ran it across every major network in Canada for two months. 

Twitch Takeover
We held one of the biggest pieces of real estate on the entire internet: We put our robots on the Twitch header. 

Website
A thick site loaded with information, FAQs and videos that help kids understand how much they can really get out of a career in this field. Check it out at careersofthefuture.ca/ 

Influencers
Rather than pay expensive influencers, we created our own: Young people who’d taken up advanced manufacturing and absolutely loved it. They preached the gospel to the next generation in mini-docs about who they are and what they do. These videos anchored the campaign website.

Collaborators

A huge thanks to Makers, an incredibly talented producer-led organization, who played a leading role in bringing this project to life.