“It’s all about finding the right mix of infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment,” says Georg Schick and laughs. The Global Product Manager with many years’ expe­ri­ence working at Uhlmann has been involved in numerous trade shows and product presen­ta­tions, but jogging on a virtual conveyor belt while simul­ta­ne­ously explaining all the bene­fits of an Uhlmann machine was new even for him.

In a video that was part of the first digital product training event in May 2020, he did just that – and his global sales colleagues loved it. In this training course, Schick and other colleagues focused on the new S 500 seri­al­iza­tion plat­form and the new ECP 12 end-of-line pack­aging machine, including Track&Trace. Around 250 partic­i­pants were dialed in.

High Tech in the Swabian Alb

The videos for the live training sessions, which are run using Microsoft Teams, were produced in Blaustein near Ulm. This is where the equip­ment is located, including a so-called green screen to create such digital effects. Georg Schick and other colleagues performed in front of the green “curtain”, so to speak, and later video footage of the running machine or the Uhlmann studio was blended into the green area.

These pre-produced videos were then played during the training. “For us, it did feel a bit strange acting out the role of an enter­tainer,” say Konstantin Gerbold, Global Product Manager, and Ralf Brehm, Team Leader Design End-of-line Machines at Uhlmann. All three were part­ners in the training sessions. “But we did a good job of passing the ball to each other, which helped.” The Uhlmann team on the shoot often includes up to 15 colleagues, in front of and behind the scenes.

Sales training should also be enter­taining

The commu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion with the video crew on loca­tion was also very effi­cient and fast. Georg Schick describes how the videos were produced: “We often adapted the script spon­ta­neously on the eve of the shoot. After 22 years in my profes­sion, impro­vising is not exactly diffi­cult for me,” he says and laughs. Still, he says, it’s a chal­lenge to make the videos both engaging and enter­taining.

Marion Neubrand, marketing specialist at Uhlmann, describes the advan­tages of this new digital approach: “With these digital live training sessions, all sales colleagues world­wide can be trained simul­ta­ne­ously and also more intensely than would be possible in analog form. The chat func­tions make it possible for all colleagues to partic­i­pate inter­ac­tively.”

Exhibiting at the virtual trade show

Uhlmann also goes with digital for the trade shows, which again includes the use of pre-recorded videos. When it became clear that many trade shows would fall victim to coro­n­avirus, uhlmann.live was launched – a digital plat­form packed with all the topics that would have been exhib­ited at the real Inter­pack, for example. Visi­tors were still able to contact Uhlmann directly, of course.

For the Chinese CIPM expo in November, addi­tional videos were produced for the BLU 200 + C 200 + S 500 + ESP 12 line, for Produc­tivity Plus and Pexcite. “Digital trade shows are a real boon for visi­tors,” says Marion Neubrand. “They can view content more often and are not tied to a fixed time. Language barriers are not an issue either, which was espe­cially impor­tant for the Chinese expo. We produced all of the videos in English and trans­lated them synchro­nously. The user could then choose which version to watch.”

Content is currently being produced for a training course and a customer video on the BEC 400 and ES 60 machines. This time, the colleagues get to prove their fitness on an Uhlmann conveyor of the end-of-line pack­aging machine.

Uhlmann aims to enhance its digital appeal

But Uhlmann’s digital commu­ni­ca­tion strategy has even more to offer. For example, the Marketing team is already working on a virtual show­room at Group level, which will then be expanded into a digital sales plat­form. We will be reporting on this topic in pactuell.
This will be supple­mented, among other things, by the Uhlmann app where you can down­load docu­ments without having to log in. So the signs are all pointing to a digital future!

“We are really pitching in, here, and are confi­dent that it will pay off,” says Ralph Brey­maier, Head of Marketing. “This doesn’t mean we will lose the personal contact with our customers; as soon as it’s possible again, we’ll also partic­i­pate in real trade fairs and events, for example.” Uhlmann then wants to use the best of both worlds, by combining the ‘personal touch’ and the oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by the digital world, while supporting our customers on every step of their journey.