For the last several months, LaborTools, powered by BMA Media Group, has been working on a nationwide apprenticeship recruitment project for the United Association’s International Training Fund. This project was designed to recruit highly-qualified apprentices for the HVACR branch of the UA, mainly targeting the high school and college age demographic.
Theme Development
Through discovery meetings with industry apprentices, contractors, journeyman, facility managers, lead technicians, training directors, and general contractors, we were able to materialize a specific focus for the project.
After we picked our locations and gathered a series of site- and industry-related facts, we began to story board. This gave us a good idea of what the script would like while allowing us to maintain a certain level of flexibility to schedule video shoots in the various locations we had picked.
Goals, Strategies, and Tactics
The objective of this campaign was to recruit qualified apprentices into the HVACR branch of the UA. Our target audience was hardworking, capable students seeking a worthy alternative to a traditional college track.
The tactic we used to attract our target audience was to pick fascinating locations, such as art museums, sports facilities, hospitals, and power plants, and briefly show that one of the main reasons these facilities are able to perform the various functions they do is in large part to the HVACR systems that smart, highly-skilled UA trained HVACR technicians manage closely every day. The goal was for the viewer, the young student, to see himself as one of the skilled HVACR technicians portrayed in the video, a reflection of his or her possible self.
The interrogative and conditional script we wrote asked our target audience a basic question: Do you see more? This question could also be interpreted as “Do you have the ability to see past the surface of things? Do you have the type of mind that desires to know how things work? Are you interested and inquisitive?” Second, if the answer to any of the questions posed in the video was yes, then we wanted to pose a call to action to become an apprentice.
Script Production
After the concept was agreed upon and approved both in-house and by the client, we continued to storyboard. This set the groundwork for our script. Several drafts of the script were written before we had a script we felt achieved what we wanted it to.
In addition to writing the script, we also scheduled and performed dozens of interviews in various locations with various people involved in the HVACR industry. As well as providing further insight into the HVACR industry, these interviews also provided a very good source of video footage we could utilize for several other companion videos we would create for the project.
Conclusion
After months of shooting, editing, and audio work, the complete set of videos was completed and delivered to the client to help them recruit the best apprentices possible. LaborTools is proud to help the UA secure its future.
If your organization is looking to create a video, contact BMA Media Group to find out more about how our award-winning video production team can help bring your ideas to life.
LaborTools powered by BMA Media Group is used to help strengthen our union client’s organizations. From working with unions from the local level to the international, with training funds and labor management partnerships, as well as other labor organizations, BMA has experience with organizations of all sizes. We are here to create and implement unique and customized marketing campaigns for our clients.
At BMA, we offer services in the following categories: union event services (from writing the history of your union to executing the logistics of an event,) video production, website design, union marketing campaigns, print and broadcast advertising, social media management, development of print materials, building trades industry education, labor public relations and crisis management, union merchandise, as well as strategic branding and marketing of union organizations.
BMA Media Group is a Union Building Trades Contractor, signatory with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Local 673 and International Union of Painters and Allied Trades DC 6 / Sign Display and Allied Trades Local 639. BMA Media Group is also signatory with AFTRA and an affiliate contractor of the Cleveland Chapter of NECA.
