Latest Campaign Launched to Help Boost Industry Image

ConstructionSkills’ latest advertising campaign, aimed at attracting quality recruits by boosting the image of the industry, launched on Monday 3rd April and the TV ad will be airing until 30th April on terrestrial and sky TV and the Internet.

The new advertising campaign ‘Make Your Mark’ features iconic buildings, which come to life in a specially animated style, evoking the sense of dreams becoming reality. For the first time this year we will be running an interactive TV campaign, where by young people can pass us their details and opt into the on going email communication campaign through the red button on their television set.

To maintain recognition with our core target audience, the advert has a distinctive voiceover from T4 presenter June Sarpong to reach young women without alienating young men. View the advert by clicking on the image below (4.9MB MPEG file):

The timing of the campaign is designed to allow young people immediately interested in a career in the construction industry the opportunity to still apply for either a university place, Inspire Scholarship, Apprenticeship or to make the relevant school and college subject choices.

The campaign directs people to bconstructive.co.uk where they can apply online for courses or simply absorb all of the relevant information available to them about the industry. The call to action asks young people to register with us for future email updates about the Construction Industry, enabling us to build relationships with them and send out targeted information that is most relevant to them and their chosen career path.

Further campaign activity will occur later in the year with a separate push in October to reinforce the variety of opportunities that construction offers and will include:

• Conducting ongoing regional PR campaigns focusing on regional buildings and the local heroes that were part of their design and construction.
• Online partnerships with key youth lifestyle sites, online banner advertising and viral advertising using an animated game
• SMS texting to young people on the day they receive their GCSE or A Level results to direct them to www.bconstructive.co.uk
• Employers wishing to support the campaign through their own recruitment programme can do so by downloading the recruitment tool kit

It was felt that as successful as the previous year’s brick campaign had been the creative needed a fresh approach. We therefore conducted in depth research with our core target audience (11-19yr olds), parents and employers to find out what they thought of the construction industry and what positive attitudes we could build upon.

One of the strongest themes that came from this research was the tangibility of the construction industry, being able to say: “I helped to build that!” Young people wanted to be able to affect the environment in which they live and have an inspiring and rewarding career.

These along with the key messages of diversity and scope of careers available in the industry resulted in the challenging campaign idea and message: Make Your Mark.