Hartl: The Perfect Job

EUROPE

How to use strategy behind creativity in B2B?

Client: Hartl
Markets: Europe

It was in 1965 when Ernst Hartl senior laid the cornerstone for the HARTL Group in Saalfelden/Austria. In the first few years, lumber shipments were made from the Salzburg area to southern Italy.
In 2015, Hartl Connect celebrates the 50th year in business and started working with Handsome Advertising on all marketing leveles: B2Clients, B2Partners, Employee Communications and B2Community.
In 2022, the company is one of the most respectable carriers in Europe working for global brands like Amazon.

The Perfect Job – Another way to launch recruitment campaigns

At Handsome Advertising, we have always said that we are like doctors who solve clients’ problems. We heal situations that arise in companies.
Hartl Connect Austria has opened branches in Eastern Europe (Romania and Bulgaria) and they were facing the lack of staff for Timisoara-Romania office, a city where multinationals were literally fighting for trained employees.

The Campaign

One of the most creative campaigns (also awarded by advertising professionals) was “The Perfect Job” campaign. The aim of the campaign was to transform Hartl Connect from a pragmatic Austrian company into a cool brand desired by the city’s youth. (knowing that the Eastern European market is a more emotional market than the German Austrian spirit). Thus, we created a campaign in which we asked young people what the perfect job means to them. We integrated the most common answers into a marketing campaign based on a film, followed by the implementation of the young people’s answers within the company. More specifically, if the youth wanted a hamburger every Friday, Hartl created a program in which a famous chef in town prepared hamburgers for the whole team every Friday. Moreover, an interesting initiative was the answer of one of the young people to the question “What does the perfect job mean to you?”, his answer (more or less seriously) being: “It would start with a limousine that would take me to the interview!”. What did we do at Hartl? We did it. We actually implemented this answer. In a period of 3 months, whoever selected for a Hartl job was brought to the interview by a limo. The campaign had an effect far beyond the most optimistic expectations, with the Hartl company becoming one of the most sought-after employers in the region.

From marketing materials to online and software development

Since 2015, we have been creating all the marketing materials for Hartl Connect, always being appreciated for the creativity and out-of-the-box ideas delivered.
Handsome Advertising has also created ERP and CRM platforms for various processes within Hartl Connect, such as the automation of customer requests and the delivery of automatic quotations or recruitment platforms.

Recruiting partners campaign

To meet the needs of its clients, sometimes Hartl Connect hire partners (mixed transport companies that own 1 to 20-30 trucks) and are subcontracted by large transport companies ( like Hartl Connect) or forwarding companies.
The challenge was: We want Hartl to be the number 1 choice for these partners.
How we start? We also started from a series of target insights.
We have identified the fears of small carriers (fear of running out of loads, fear of not receiving the money on time or fear of not being important – the big ones taking advantage of them). We have created a series of videos as an answer to each fear.
The success of the campaign was substantial, the films being translated and delivered to other markets.

Do you know who I am? How to get European markets and clients

This was a difficult task. The challenge was to remove a layer between Hartl Connect and the end customer. Often in transportation industry, large customers work through logistics groups that act as an intermediary, reducing the commercial margin of the supplier (in our case, Hartl Connect). In this campaign, we thought strategically, wanting to reach the decision-makers: the transport managers of the companies wanted by Hartl. Thus, using an important insight of our target (the fact that a transport manager wants external decision-making power, especially since he lacks power inside his own company) we created a campaign across Europe. A campaign main film, PR, online banners, social media and industry events.

After the main campaign video filmed in Vienna, using London actors and Los Angeles voices ( we have a strong relationship with London and L.A. artistic community) , we filmed also a follow up video ( at Hartl headquarters) to explain Hartl process. The success of the campaign was immediate, with Hartl Connect growing its portfolio of direct customers, such as Amazon.