How do you get young people engaged in discussions about skills and careers? City & Guilds has taken to YouTube with its #OpenDoors campaign to engage with young people where they hang out and get them involved. It may not be business marketing but it has achieved impressive results we can all learn from.
Background
City & Guilds, a not for profit business in the UK, that aims to help people into a job and progress their careers, wanted to reach out to young people to get them to attend Skills Show events. The aim was to inspire and transform young people's lives through a series of interactive events held across the UK. They wanted to change the way they think about skills, training and apprenticeships. In short not to let exam results at school restrict their career options or aspirations.
Times are tough for young people when it comes to training and jobs. The aim of the project is to help young people get on the front foot when it comes to their careers. The 14-16 age group has been particularly hard to reach traditionally so City & Guilds turned to YouTube.
Using YouTube As A Channel
Rather than set up a new site or platform City & Guilds decided to go to where young people hang out. The platform of choice was YouTube where they both consume content but also share and comment.
In order to get some traction City & Guilds identified and engaged a number of key influencers to help promote the campaign. They worked with the influencers to not simply promote the events but to create a series of videos that young people would relate to and take them on a journey through different careers.
Below is the first video that was produced.
I love the T-Shirt one of the presenters is wearing "I will not let an exam result decide my fate." It really sums up what the whole campaign is about.
Results and lessons
In first ten days the video has received over 22,000 views on the City & Guilds YouTube channel. More importantly over 900 people subscribed to the channel in this period and will receive the new videos as they are added.
The campaign has achieved 22,168 interactions so far across social media and a combined audience reach of over one million across all platforms.
The lessons are simple:
- - Get to where your audience hangs out
- - Use influencers they respect
- - Create engaging content
- - Use different channels but have a unified campaign
While I have had no involvement in this campaign, one of my roles is as a Director of the City & Guilds Group. As you can probably tell I am very proud of the work the group does, giving young people a future is one of the most important things we can do. If you are in the UK do encourage young people to watch and get involved.