Employer branding
Recruitment campaigns
Lufthansa Technik · 2017–2020
Making aviation careers feel personal
Lufthansa Technik needed to attract apprentices, retain talent, and build pride among 20,000+ employees across multiple locations — all within a competitive labour market where the brand was known for planes, not people. Three campaigns, one consistent human insight.
The challenge
Engineering excellence is easy to communicate.
Making people feel it's for them is harder.
Lufthansa Technik is one of the world's leading aircraft maintenance and engineering companies — technically brilliant, but not obviously human. For a generation of potential apprentices, it was "the place where planes get fixed," not a place to build a meaningful career. For existing employees, the brand felt more corporate than collegial.
The brief across three campaigns: make Lufthansa Technik feel approachable, relevant, and worth committing to — for school leavers, for experienced professionals, and for current employees who could become ambassadors.
My role
Strategic
Campaign concept development from insight to creative idea. Translating brand positioning into audience-relevant messaging for apprentices, employees, and referral networks.
Creative / operational
Art direction across print, digital, social, OOH, and video. Concept development for interactive formats including the Heimathafen photo booth activation.
The work
Three campaigns — one human thread
Each campaign addressed a different audience and moment, but all shared the same underlying belief: the most powerful employer brand comes from real people, not polished promises.
01
Apprentice recruitment
"Früher Minecraft, heute mit Verantwortung."
The insight: today's apprentices grew up with games, creativity, and making things. The campaign connected their childhood interests directly to professional roles at Lufthansa Technik — Minecraft to Werkzeugmechaniker, Mandala to precision engineering, Baukasten to electronics. Each motive spoke directly to a specific Berufsgruppe, making the abstract feel personal and attainable.
Social ads
OOH
4 Berufsbilder
02
Internal employee engagement
"Heimathafen" — Was macht Lufthansa Technik zu deinem Heimathafen?
A participatory employer branding campaign that turned employees into brand ambassadors. Staff across Hamburg and Frankfurt were invited to share why LHT was their "home port" — the responses became the campaign. Photo booth activations in canteens and common areas, individual portrait cards with real quotes, a microsite for submissions, and organic social distribution created an authentic, employee-driven narrative that no agency copywriter could have written.
Internal campaign
Social
Microsite
Photo booth activation
03
Employee referral
"Tell a Friend" — Jobs mit Durchblick, Ausblick, Tiefgang.
A referral campaign that incentivised employees to recommend Lufthansa Technik to their network with bonuses up to 2,000€. The creative used visual wordplay anchored in the workplace — "Jobs mit Durchblick" (office with a view), "Jobs mit Ausblick" (engineer peering through aircraft), "Jobs mit Tiefgang" (engineer beneath a jet engine). Wit in the service of recruitment.
Referral programme
Poster
Social
Internal comms
The creative principle
Shared insight across all three campaigns
The most convincing employer brand is never the one the company writes about itself. It's the one employees and candidates recognise as true. Each campaign found a different way to make that happen — through childhood nostalgia, through real employee voices, or through wordplay that only insiders fully appreciate.
The "Früher X, heute mit Verantwortung" concept examples:
Impact
Key learnings
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Specificity beats aspiration — "Früher Minecraft" works because it names something real. Generic "build your future" messaging doesn't.
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Employees are the best copywriters — the Heimathafen quotes were more authentic and convincing than anything we could have written. The campaign's job was to create the conditions for those voices to emerge
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Wit earns attention — "Jobs mit Tiefgang" works because it requires a moment of recognition. That moment creates engagement that polished corporate messaging never does.