Storytelling to position HARTING’s products as industry standard

The development of Industry 4.0 in China is pushing the upgrade of factories in many industries, added to advancements and safety measures in transport, energy and other markets all raise the demand for reliable and quality industrial connectors. HARTING’s connectors belong to top-tier industrial connectivity solutions meeting all the requirement of digitalization, customization, miniaturization in the industry. Besides, HARTING’s Han Connector is even an industry standard since 1950. But, competition is tough and local connector companies target the same markets with a competitive offer not always on par regarding features.

HARTING was in dire need for differentiation from competitors and had to educate decision makers, now young and more receptive to mobile engagement.

Key communication messages need to be sorted, certain amount and more engaging content or activities need to be built around key messages in order to enhance HARTING’s image as an industry leader who is always leading the trend and is committed to supporting China’s smart economy growth.

Influence Matters reworked HARTING’s messaging targeting the younger audience by defining the persona of their key decision makers in China. Based on the results we developed a content strategy for HARTING’s social media channels and media relations with the goal to enhance HARTING’s image as an industry leader who is always leading the trend and is committed to supporting China’s smart economy growth.

To connect with the younger, mobile decision makers and capture attention, we build a comic series, turning the persona of their decision makers into cartoon comic heroes who would solve product design challenges and reap the benefits from their clever work. The world was used to develop comic stories showing how designers, installers and purchase managers would save their company a lot of hassle by using various HARTING connectors in their designs with various USPs and applications in different industry.

We also designed a WeChat minigame launched during Chinese Traditional Valentine’s Day embedded with the concept of “connection”. The idea was to combine holiday wishes with interactive and educative content, users at the top ranks could get gifts by submitting their personal contact information, allowing HARTING sales to identify new leads.

To support the campaign Influence Matters developed a series of articles, case studies and two e-books introducing HARTING’s industry insights, products and brand information which we consistently placed in key industry media for maximum targeted awareness, increased with media relations activities around their trade show presence.

Over one hundred thousand total views resulting from 24 front page media placements, 12 WeChat KOL cooperation, engaging content and more than 30 press articles/e-books/announcements/case studies on HARTING’s official WeChat account. A clear growth of view times on HARTING’s official account is apparently success.

The H5 WeChat minigame has accumulated 2,171 visit times, 2,855 participation times and 678 data and directly generated qualified business leads for HARTING!