Samsung is a leading technology brand whose marketing approach has always focused on launching products and features. This has created a lack of communication on its higher “human” mission. Our main objective was to making it more approachable, leveraging on Samsung’s core values: a brand that designs its technological products to “launch people”, to amplify their life’s possibilities.

We looked at the current situation in Italy: the disappearance of great handcrafting excellences that once brought Italy to greatness. On the other side, a dramatic unemployment and younger generations yearning for opportunities to express their potential.

Our first challenge was to make young people look at handcrafting with new eyes, overcoming the wrong perception of a “dusty world”, with no attractiveness. For these reasons, we needed the greatest “Made in Italy” legends, the true “icons” of success able to motivate young people and to testify how great can be working in ancient crafts, even in 2014 and especially in the next future.

We choose 5 highly aspirational crafts and the most famed Maestros, creating the first digital platform where young talents can learn the secrets of “Made in Italy” masters, through technology. Two generations, sharing knowledge thanks to more than 40 video-tutorials, live interactive-lessons and the exclusive features of Samsung devices.

As a result, more than 30 million media-impressions and 4.5 million FB-users reached, on Italian market alone. Many success stories that became a 12 episodes series on Discovery-Italia channels, reaching over 6 million TV-viewers and motivating even more young talents.

The target of Samsung Maestros Academy are young digital-skilled individuals who are looking for a successful life based on their talent. We researched across data by Italian Institute of Statistics, to discover which artisanal fields where looking for young talents and which professions were requested by the young audience. Surprisingly, we discovered that many “dream” professions were very close to handcrafting sectors dramatically looking for apprentices.

Our main goal was to pass the heritage of the greatest Italian handcrafting master to young generations, overcoming their negative perception by offering an innovative way to learn handcrafting thanks to technology.

Maestros’ success stories reached over 6 million TV-viewers, in Italy alone, inspiring a generation to preserve and innovate the greatest Italian heritage.

After Maestro Pelizzoli’s course, Alice created a truly innovative bike, showcased with great success during the Milan Design Week event. Marina together with Maestro Siniscalchi tailored a shirt, featured on an important Italian newspaper, triggering even the curiosity of GQ and its 250.000 readers. Anna and Valerio crafted a bag, immediately displayed by the prestigious “Flow” shop in Florence.

The results achieved by many other students generated more than 30 million media-impressions and 4.5 million FB-users reached, on Italian market alone. Almost the 50% of live-lessons participants asked the Maestros to become apprentices, exceeding the available positions by 300%, on average. Our Maestros were even invited by many Italian universities to lecture, such as Bocconi, Cattolica, IED, Tor-Vergata and even by Fashion Institute of Technology of New York.

We selected the 5 most famed world-class artisans all across Italy, asking them to share even the tiniest secret of their craft through 40 extensive video-tutorials. We completed them with invaluable in-depth materials, downloadable through the platform.

We organized live interactive lessons where each maestro taught in real-time to many young talents all across Italy. Many students started then to interact intensively with the Maestro, developing personal ideas and generating great success stories. We followed our 12 best students, turning them into a 12 episodes series on Discovery Italia Channels.

We helped the 3 best ideas to be showcased in prestigious occasions where journalists and opinion leaders could notice them. The production phase started in the 7th October and is on-going still now, with 10 new Maestros and Ambassadors. The first on-air on the platform was on 10th December and the first digital campaign started on 3rd February.

Italy is living a huge paradox: despite the unemployment crisis, thousands of positions in handcrafting remain vacant.

Young Italians are not fascinated by ancient crafts anymore, focusing their interest on technology. That’s how the tradition of “Made in Italy” started to quickly fade away. Young Italians would need instead to experience handcrafting though their native language –technology-, looking at it with new eyes. That’s why we chose true “legends” of Made in Italy as Maestros, in order to engage young Italians with aspirational characters, true “rock-stars” in their field of excellence who experienced huge success and highly rewarding lives.

The core strategy was to reconnect two generations, preserving the future of “Made in Italy” and fostering a new generation of Italian artisans. We developed the first digital platform where young talents can learn the secrets of “Made in Italy” masters, through their native language: technology. We called them to join the project, the most famed world-class Italian artisans, selecting the 5 most engaging crafts for a young audience. We choose handcrafting traditions with strong connections with highly aspirational professions (fashion stylist, sport champion, luxury-goods designer, actor/artist, chef) in order to prove that there is another “path” to become a world-renewed excellence.

Every handcrafting secret was express through the most engaging and innovative technology, making it available from every possible smart-device, anytime, everywhere, and featuring it even on digital-billboards in the major Italian squares. Ancient crafts mixed up with the most advanced technology, engaging young generations to the maximum.