Trade fair communication for h+hcologne after the crisis

Task

The h+h cologne is an international trade fair for handicrafts and hobbies that takes place annually in Cologne and presents new products, trends and innovations in the handcrafts industry. It is known to be the world’s largest order platform for textile handicrafts.

On social media the trade fair addresses the international trade audience as well as end consumers. As a result, the posts are adapted to the user behaviour and the professional industry topics are presented in short “snippets”.

Accordingly, our task was to find a new medium that could address trade visitors – especially German-speaking ones – in a more targeted way and provide them with interesting content. The goal was to bind German retailers to the h+h cologne by providing them with interesting content and to encourage them to visit the trade fair.

Realisation

The podcast “Zick-Zack – the h+h cologne podcast” is intended to reflect the diverse topics surrounding the h+h cologne and the handicrafts market. For this reason, we decided to produce an interview podcast with alternating guests. Katrin Schön, the director of the h+h cologne trade fair, offered herself as host. Topics of conversation are not only sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery, quilting, but above all the handicrafts market and the trade of the future. Katrin Schön talks to the guests about the industry, current trends and projects. Personal anecdotes will not be overlooked either.

In order to be present throughout the year and establish a bond with the fair – for exhibitors and visitors alike – as well as to ensure that visitors come to the fair, the podcast is published in a two-week period. The individual podcast episodes retain recurring themes for listeners such as “the elephant has to go through the eye of a needle”.

Listen to the podcast here.

The released episodes of the podcast will not only be embedded on the h+h cologne website, but also shared via Instagram and Facebook. Moreover, the podcast is released on all streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer and Google Podcasts.

SMART PR supported the h+h cologne with the technical & operational setup of the podcast, trained the host regarding the related recording routines and is to this day responsible for the post-production, editing, mixing and mastering as well as the distribution.

Hard Facts

In this very top niche of the handicraft industry, the podcast was able to reach over 3,500 streams & downloads, over 2,000 listeners and close to 1,500 subscribers in 14 episodes.