Die
Unersetzlichen.
Public sector employer branding: Green Professions
For the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism (StMELF), GRAPEVINE developed the employer branding campaign “Die Unersetzlichen” (The Irreplaceables). It puts the Green Professions on the career radar of young people.
StMELF is the sender of the campaign, but not the employer. The training positions are offered by numerous companies across the state. The campaign therefore creates awareness and interest, so that these companies can win new talent.
- Client
- Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism (StMELF)
- Industry and location
- Public sector, Munich
- Target groups
- School students, teachers, parents, adults interested in continuing education
- Services
- Research and strategy, concept and creative, media planning, social media, HR content production, influencer collaboration, careers page and landing page
- Channels
- Schools, posters and DOOH, clubs, social media, gaming, audio, news, search
- Period
- December 2025 to present
The Challenge
Putting the Green Professions on the career radar
StMELF is the technical authority for vocational training in the Green Professions. It is responsible for the training content, oversees the exams and develops the occupational profiles further. It is not an employer, though: training takes place in numerous companies across the state. Based on this technical responsibility, the ministry handles the promotion of the professions, image building and awareness across all of them. Most people know individual professions such as farmer, gardener, forestry worker or winemaker. The full range of 14 Green Professions, their content and the paths into them are far less visible. What is needed is an employer branding strategy for very different occupational profiles and for talent acquisition across a decentralized field of work.
A good foundation already exists: the StMELF Instagram channel has a large reach and is posted on daily. So far its topics are agriculture, nature, food and day trip tips. The professions hardly appear there.
The goal is to lastingly strengthen the image of the 14 Green Professions in Bavaria across all target groups. They range from agriculture, horticulture and forestry to fishery, viticulture and home economics. They should become an alternative to university and classic careers for young people in Bavaria. The central question for GRAPEVINE and StMELF: how do we win young people for professions that are only partly on their radar so far? The focus is on school students between 13 and 20, whose everyday life consists of school, clubs and digital interaction. Parents, teachers and adults interested in further training are additional target groups.
The Idea
One campaign umbrella for all Green Professions
The campaign umbrella is the overarching image campaign that GRAPEVINE developed after analyzing the status quo and the target groups. It strengthens the image of the Green Professions among all target groups. The professions are irreplaceable, because AI and robotics cannot replace them. The people in these professions are therefore “Die Unersetzlichen”.
A flower with 14 petals stands for the Green Professions to choose from. In addition, each profession gets its own visual with a fitting headline.
GRAPEVINE derived the core messages for school students by comparing the attractiveness profile of the Green Professions with the preferences of the target group: purpose and added value, community and belonging, variety and challenge, and future viability.
Four overarching visuals speak to all target groups
The four overarching visuals build awareness and speak to all target groups: school students as the primary target group, parents, teachers and experienced professionals as secondary target groups. All carry the overarching campaign headline. Two visuals invite people to vocational training, two show further training in the Green Professions. They show, among others, a farmer, a dairy technologist, a master gardener and a master animal husbandry specialist.
One visual for every profession
Each of the Green Professions gets its own visual with a profession-specific headline. Five focus professions get an extra media push. The remaining professions run mainly on the website.
Students see all Green Professions, matched to their interests and access. For the headlines, the typeface was changed to highlight the contrast between people and technology.
Execution
Apprenticeship marketing examples: how interest is created
GRAPEVINE planned the campaign in three phases through 2027: visibility and awareness, sparking interest, enthusiasm and interaction. The focus is on awareness and attraction, and the campaign page makes everything easy to find.
We reach teenagers along their daily lives: in schools, on social media, in gaming, on the way to school and in clubs. The kickoff took place at a vocational training fair with a newly designed booth. The umbrella campaign followed, with a focus on awareness, then the school student campaign with five focus professions.
Two influencers extend the reach. Both complete one-day internships in the Green Professions and try the jobs themselves. The reels, 60 to 90 seconds long, appear as collaboration posts with the ministry. The reel on the agricultural services specialist currently stands at 142,000 views, 85 reshares and 209 direct shares. It has been running since September 2026.
Five career ambassadors, apprentices from forestry, gardening, home economics, agriculture and dairy technology, show on the StMELF Instagram channel: “Ich mache den Job wirklich.” (I really do the job.) They share knowledge and facts, tell personal experiences and clear up prejudices. Recurring series give the channel a steady rhythm: Q&As, “Jobs in 60 seconds”, “A day as a …”, carousel posts with training facts, the quiz format “Which Green Profession are you?” and “What I didn’t know before my training”. It has been running since September 2026.
A central campaign page and separate subpages for all professions bring the information together. The focus professions are farmer, home economist, gardener, forestry worker and dairy technologist.
Media campaign: visible along daily life
The umbrella visuals and the profession visuals of the five focus professions run in a media campaign with 29 measures in four flights over 5.5 months. The media mix follows the daily life of school students: future pillars with postcards and video in schools, digital screens in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, posters in smaller regions and mega banners in 100 soccer clubs. Online, Instagram and Pinterest run along the daily routine, plus gaming ads, Spotify and radio. Mobile geo-fencing serves banners around schools and fairs, native news ads reach parents, teachers and adults in an editorial environment, and Google ads make the professions easy to find for active searchers.
A landing page for every profession instead of one careers page for all
People who see the campaign should find more information on exactly the profession that interests them. So instead of one careers page for all, every profession has its own landing page. The campaign page gives an overview of all Green Professions and links to the newly designed profession pages. There, the training process, content, places of work and requirements can be presented, and videos of the influencers and career ambassadors can be embedded. The start page of the education section, the ministry’s careers page, was also revised so that the campaign is reflected there.
Social Media
Influencers make the professions tangible on social media
Two influencers complete one-day internships at training companies in the Green Professions and try the jobs themselves. The raw material becomes reels of 60 to 90 seconds, published as collaboration posts with the ministry.
GRAPEVINE selects the influencers, manages the collaboration as project manager and coordinates reels and publication with StMELF. This way the community follows the influencers step by step through the Green Professions.
Example Instagram reel: Magdalena & gardener
HR content production: career ambassadors show the everyday work
Influencers create reach, but no lasting connection. That is why career ambassadors add regular content of their own to the StMELF channel. They act like corporate influencers: people who do the job themselves and show it first-hand. Five apprentices appear on the StMELF Instagram channel: “Ich mache den Job wirklich.” (I really do the job.) GRAPEVINE designed the content: topic structure, formats and messages tailored to each ambassador, with script and shooting schedule.
On shooting days, two GRAPEVINE social media managers produce video and images on site, such as insights into the jobs and people stories. In post-production these become short videos of 30 to 90 seconds, thumbnails, captions and posts with alt texts, matched to the StMELF corporate design. Around 50 video posts are planned. Recurring series give the channel a steady rhythm: Q&As, “Jobs in 60 seconds”, “A day as a …”, carousel posts with training facts, the quiz format “Which Green Profession are you?” and “What I didn’t know before my training”.
Example: Instagram reel: gardener Ludwig as career ambassador
What the StMELF says
“A campaign for 14 occupational profiles, three target groups and a ministry as sender is not trivial. GRAPEVINE translated our technical requirements into a language that reaches school students, without the content losing accuracy. You could tell that they have experience with public clients.”
Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism
Success
First results: ad contacts across Bavaria
The first media campaign, aimed at awareness, achieved over 20 million impressions and ad contacts in Bavaria, online and offline. Outdoors there were 11.7 million ad contacts: 6.3 million through posters and digital screens, 2.7 million each at schools and in clubs. Online added 7.2 million impressions through social media and Spotify and 2 million through gaming and banners. GRAPEVINE and StMELF have worked together since December 2025. At the same time, a communication base emerged that can be used beyond the collaboration: a central campaign page, separate profession pages and an extensive pool of material for StMELF.
20M+
Impressions and ad contacts online and offline
11.7M
Ad contacts in (D)OOH in Bavaria
7.2M
Impressions through social media and Spotify
Nominated: HR Excellence Awards 2026
The campaign “Die Unersetzlichen” is on the shortlist of the HR Excellence Awards 2026, in the category Public Sector. It was submitted by the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism, with Grapevine München GmbH named as the implementing agency.
The category honors projects that strengthen the public sector as an employer, make modern HR work visible and reach employees and applicants better. For us, the nomination is above all a confirmation of the shared path: making professions better known that a ministry is technically responsible for without being an employer itself.
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Public sector employer branding: frequently asked questions about the campaign
GRAPEVINE developed the campaign “Die Unersetzlichen” (The Irreplaceables) for the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism. The agency, with offices in Munich and Wiesbaden, handles concept, creative, media planning, social media and influencer collaboration. The collaboration has run since December 2025. You can find more employer branding examples from other industries in our cases.
GRAPEVINE has been developing public sector employer branding for over 20 years, including for ministries, municipalities, health insurers, municipal utilities and the central bank. Campaigns have been created for the AOK Federal Association, AOK Niedersachsen, the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism, the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection (Wasserprofis), the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Hamburg Fire Department, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the City of Munich, the City of Cologne, Stadtwerke Augsburg and Techniker Krankenkasse. They range from image campaigns to apprenticeship marketing.
First, the campaign clarifies what connects the professions and what they contribute to society. From this come an umbrella campaign for all professions and target group campaigns that show individual professions in concrete terms. Career ambassadors and influencers provide the proof, and social media carries the messages into the daily lives of young people.
Apprenticeship marketing reaches young people where they already are: at school, on the way to school, on social media, in gaming and in clubs. People who talk about their daily work are effective, for example apprentices as ambassadors. This makes a training path tangible and applying a natural next step.
Ministries make occupational groups known, but the training takes place in companies. A campaign like this therefore concentrates on awareness, image and orientation: it creates interest in the professions, and the companies fill their training positions themselves. GRAPEVINE aligns messages, channels and profession pages with this division of tasks.
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