Fusion by Jonas Pedersen, ready for sale in 2013

“Skud på stammen” (shoots on the tree trunk) is a Danish four week workshop each summer where designers and cabinetmaker apprentices create brand new furniture prototypes. The experience is obviously very enjoyable and worth-while for the participants, and often result in sellable products that can move the Danish furniture industry forward. But how can the communication and branding effort be taken to the next level?

Solid communication
The webpage and accompanying press release is solid communication, and the story was picked up by the Danish technical journal Ingeniøren. Strangely it wasn’t mentioned in neither Danish Design Centre or Danish Design Association’s newsletters.
The description of how the workshop was executed is rather limited, but this is probably a good idea to avoid competitors copying the concept.
Each participant has been asked 3-4 standard questions, which has resulted in some very good quotes from especially cabinmaker apprentices, while the designers are more brief.

Has the initial communication goals been reached?
Looking at the standard questions, the career counselling aspect is rather obvious: Designers are asked about their educational background (role model), while the apprentices are asked why they wish to become cabinet makers, and dreams for the future.

Both groups are asked why they decided to participate, which indicate that recruitment is (or has been), an important communicative goal. Judging by the replies from apprentices, most have heard about the workshop via word of mouth, and they are already sold to the idea. The designers seem more practical and less enthusiastic when replying to the questions.

So how could the designers be engaged more?
Since the workshop is hosted by Copenhagen Technical College for educational reasons, there is a limit to how many communication ressources can be spent on promoting the designers.
However, it ought to be possible to engage the designers more by making them talk more about themselves: How do you usually work with design (+ link to portfolio page)? How does this workshop influence the way you work as a designer?

Other initiatives could be

• Extending the promotion by keeping the pages from previous years (it’s a big plus that books from previous years are available on the page, but since you can’t zoom in, it’s impossible to read the text on smaller screens).
• Assemble design picture, designer and apprentice information in one convenient page, instead of spreading it over three different pages, where you often have to scroll down quite far, looking for a particular designer or apprentice.
• Newspage spotlighting and following up on designs that have succesfully made it into production and links to external media coverage.
• Live coverage of the workshop itself (pictures of the process, possibly on Facebook, blogs by designers or apprentices, or communication person walking around asking questions and finding the good stories).