Last year in Italy thousands of talents started to learn ancient crafts through Samsung Maestros Academy, the online platform we launched to re-ignite the passion for artisan trades among young people, who were abandoning them.

Our objectives for 2015 were creating even more awareness on Samsung brand-essence and to re-ignite the curiosity on Samsung Maestros Academy.

For this reason, one year later, along with IED - a leading worldwide design school - we have turned our online learning model into the first offline Master’s Degree course for “Digital Artisans”, offering 12 full sponsorships to the most motivated candidates.

Our strategy was to provide even more know-how, inspirations and tools to the generation of Italian Artisans we fostered in 2014, enabling them to develop innovation-projects with a great PR-value. A valuable strategy in a country that is recovering from long years of crisis and that now can start a new golden age thanks to the energy of its youngest talents. In just 5 weeks Samsung Maestros Academy@IED doubled the contacts that the 16 best IED courses had generated in 6 months, attracting over 100 candidates, triggering outstanding PR, and increasing the visits to Samsung Maestros Academy platform, reinforcing brand-penetration and brand-preference among key audiences in Italian market.

Over 6 months, outstanding craftsmanship projects came to life, impressing the 2015 Milan Design Week audience of influencers and design experts. One of them has already become on-going Research Project in collaboration with University of Macerata, enhancing the PR-value of the project even more.

Samsung Maestros Academy Master’s Degree initiative started with an online recruitment campaign for the assignment of 12 full-sponsorships offered by Samsung, displayed both on Maestros and on IED – European Institute of Design corporate website. The campaign was further supported through a direct mailing campaign and via social shares on both corporate FB pages of the two brands. The Master’s Degree Course started in November and the whole academic path was showcased through an online branded content published on IED.TV and on social networks, generating a great virality for both brands. On 17 April, 2015 the best students’ innovation projects were showcased at the 2015 Milan Design Week, triggering the interest of influencers and design experts. A great buzz is keeping the initiative in the top of mind of a wide target audience. Samsung will further support students’ independent crowd-funding campaigns, offering free media space to promote their Indiegogo campaigns.

Samsung Master Academy Master’s Degree has become, once again, a game-changer for the world of education, introducing the professional figure of the Digital Artisan into the Italian labor market for the first time. In just 5 weeks, Samsung Maestros Academy Master’s Degree course doubled the contacts that 16 IED courses had generated in 6 months, attracting more than 100 candidates. Social posts related to the initiative generated a +300% interaction rate compared to IED benchmarks and a +10% compared to Samsung ones. Spontaneous mentions of Maestros initiative increased significantly both on social networks and on traditional media, turning #maestrosacademy and #maestrosied in trending topics for several time. The whole initiative promoted the adoption of Samsung devices as valuable “smart-tools” for contemporary artisans, and a way to enable digital fabrication and co-creation with the final customers.