Upskilling. Retooling. Sharpening up. There are plenty of buzzwords for learning a new trick or two.
Local government often gets funding to give people training, for free. Yet uptake can be low, and the free opportunities for development go unused. You may have experienced a similar challenge internally with L&D opportunities within your organisation.
So, the obvious question is – why? We know it’s an overused word, but awareness can be an issue. But of course, communicating the value is vital, and if your campaigns aren’t hitting the spot, then that’s going to leave a lot of empty places on your training courses.
The challenge
If you’re providing free learning and development opportunities, that’s a bloomin’ good offer that’s hard to turn down. But people won’t know about it until you shout about it.
And campaigning is getting harder. We see tonnes of ads and content every day (how many is an open question) and those ads are tiring out the brains of the people you’re trying to talk to.
Creative thinking is required in order to stand out and get your message heard. You have to create a hook and a compelling message that captures attention, shows why your offer is so valuable, and gives them a glimpse of what learning and development can do for their lives.
The opportunity
For local authorities, training and upskilling has significant value. It offers a gateway to new labour, faster upskilling, and greater engagement with local communities.
If we go a level deeper, it’s also an opportunity for the country. The only way we truly get back on our feet is by skilling up everyone we can, getting people into, or back into, work and helping boost the economy.
However, great campaigns must focus on the end user. When we’ve worked with clients on campaigns around training, upskilling, learning and development, the communication is centred around the impact it can have on the user or a particular person.
Working with local councils, we’ve created campaigns that promote their free training to fill courses, boost employment numbers and transform lives. We have also worked with organisations to support their internal L&D campaigns too.
Before, after and beyond
We worked with Devon Council and CAN Digital on a campaign to boost awareness and sign-up numbers on their free training courses.
The previous waves (before we were involved) of recruitment had lacked energy and impact. We knew together we could do better. Their courses offer a genuine opportunity to transform the lives of residents and so it was on this transformative power that the campaign was built.
It featured social media posts and animations featuring the real stories of the previous trainees, alongside a fast-paced one-minute video that reflected the energy of the campaign.
From an initial target of 704, the final number of sign-ups for Wave 4 was 1,233. This was 75% higher than the initial target. It was the first time the programme had hit its target – not only beating it, but smashing it.
It the first time the council had reached their target, and it was so successful that it secured double the amount of funding for the next wave of recruitment.
The lesson? Creativity and storytelling can deliver real change to people, communities and organisations.
Get bums on seats with a creative campaign
Do they sound like results you’d love to be talking about yourself? Then we’d like to help you achieve them.
Our team loves getting stuck into creative campaigns that deliver results, and we’ve got a process that is tried, tested and loved by our clients.
