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Siemens
Rollercoaster Challenge
Social impact campaign linking Siemens UK to its local community, inspiring and motivating young people and nurturing the talent pipeline. The campaign was enhanced through a dedicated website alongside social media and PR support.
Siemens is a world leader in pioneering energy-efficiency, resource-saving technology and digital know-how.
Siemens’ site in Congleton is regarded as a centre of excellence in product process and digitisation. It leads the way in expertise, productivity and innovation for industries across the world, producing and exporting 1.3 million variable speed drives that help reduce CO2 emissions by over four million tonnes per year. These speed drives are the same components that control and drive motors for well-known rollercoasters such as Nemesis and Pepsi Max.
Sharing core values with the brand, TMC were briefed with the development of a campaign to:
- Raise the Congleton site’s profile as a significant contributor to the local economy.
- Support Siemens national initiative to boost skills by enriching teaching and learning in Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths (STEM) and increase the number of apprentice applications within engineering roles.
- Provide a local legacy that improves skills and increases the accessibility and desirability of engineering across all genders.
The Results
100% positive feedback from the local community
88% of pupils would now consider engineering as a career
+50k reach of the competition in 2018
Our Solution
TMC’s solution was an annual schools-based challenge that highlighted Siemens Congleton’s engineering and technology expertise in a context familiar to young people, with an aim to enhance their understanding of core curriculum STEM subjects through fun and practical tasks. This provided opportunities for Siemens’ employees to engage with young people and the local community regularly and directly, helping to positively inspire and influence students to consider a career in STEM.
To date, all 11 secondary schools in the local area have participated in the Challenge, with both of the secondary schools in Congleton taking a key interest from day one. To date, TMC have reached over 17,000 young people, their parents, and the local community. Press coverage has been extensive and the Challenge has won internal and national awards.
The Siemens Roller Coaster Challenge tasks students aged from 12-14 to work in teams over a twelve-week period to design, build and test a working rollercoaster model, create a business plan for their project and present the end result to a judging panel at a finals event hosted at the Town Hall attended by the local community.
Participating schools are provided with a comprehensive Challenge ‘entry pack’ including K’nex kit. Each school is also partnered with a dedicated apprentice / graduate volunteer member of the Siemens’ Congleton team, working with them throughout each step of the journey and affording them the opportunity to extract knowledge directly from industry experts, seeing first-hand how drives are built during a site tour.
“The Roller Coaster Challenge is a fantastic initiative, with the target of altering perceptions of engineering as a career.”
Andy Peters – Managing Director, Siemens
Students are empowered, enthused and motivated throughout, by their mentors who offer first-hand experience of what it’s like to work in engineering. The mentors encourage them to practise effective decision making, workflow management and task delegation and to demonstrate the collaboration, creative thinking, problem solving, communication and perseverance skills desirable to future employers.
Throughout the campaign, TMC enhanced visibility of the project through a dedicated website alongside social media and PR support. The website provided a central resource for participants and stakeholders to refer back to and actively promote the challenge to their peers. Our social media support highlighted the timeline of activity and proactively celebrated achievements of students for the duration.
What next?
Need help developing your social impact initiatives?
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or email hello@wearetmc.com.
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