When it comes to making your career choices, we might often think which kind of future would we have either graduating from a university or from a vocational school. Higher education or vocational education? The easiest way to show the importance of the latter one is to show life without it.

Career choices are all about matching your skills, interests and personality with the future you would like to have. So it means that decisions about your future are one of the most difficult decisions young people have to make. If not the most difficult decision.

In a majority of countries higher education has been a more attractive choice for decades – graduating a university would mean better chances in the labour market and more prestigious jobs. According to different kind of statistics a bigger salary too. Young people have the tendency to believe that a degree would open doors for them once they want to find a job. But this might not be the case any more as there are less jobs available for the university graduates and more placements for the vocational qualifications.

So the whole situation is pretty much about the image. Even the ones who have been doubting about their future choices, they might choose the university programme. And anyway, we all know that there has always been a so to speak competition between higher education and vocational education.

So here is a German solution to all the ones doubting in the relevance of vocational education. The year was 2010. And the campaign (made by a company “Scholz & Friends”) was a big hit in TV, printed media and in many other communication channels.

 

Why is this advertisement remarkable?

Lots of different reasons for that. But the main reason is the fact that as we see the collapsing world we have no clue what the ad is about. Second (at least for a foreigner) – the charming nursery rhyme does not help us either. So we should see the ad until the end. And when we find out that all the carpenters, cobblers, brick-layers, masons, welders, bookmakers, designers and all other professions are the ones who help us live our lives the way we like it – we can only say – long live the vocational education!

And last but not least – the message was extremely simple.

The whole image campaign for the German craft and manual skills makes the social and economic relevance of this important industry visible to the public and also praises the local craftsmen and artisans themselves.

Idea of the Day: Just imagine life without your service or product.