General Overview MARHER's objective is to identify key competences of a new professional, innovative and creative figure, able to make the most out of values and stories: the Heritage Marketer Heritage Marketing can take a fundamental role, connecting our past to the future. Valorising Corporate Heritage does not mean simply telling stories but "communicating through stories", that is, creating narrative universes through which a company enters into an emphatic relationship with people, managing to arouse emotions in public. Markets are increasingly becoming narrative arenas where, alongside the intrinsic quality of products, the ability of brands and companies to know how to evoke a universe of stories, traditions and values (cultural and ethical) is fundamental to stand out among the competitors. Therefore, being able to craft stories and portraying company values is becoming a crucial skill to master to exert an attractive value towards increasingly attentive and aware customers. Project Objectives 1) Definition of a NEW PROFESSIONAL FIGURE: the Heritage Marketer 2) Creative and INNOVATIVE TRAINING, able to support SMEs to promote, in terms of marketing and brand reputation, their own history and their brands and products - Enhancing competences in order to develop the Heritage Marketer figure; - Creating a training course on strategies and tools for Heritage Marketing, problems and solutions linked to heritage marketing and corporate storytelling - Creating training focused on narratology and corporate reputation, corporate traditions, heritage valorisation. 3) IMPROVE EMPLOYABILITY of low-skilled and unemployed and recently graduated who, in the periodic employment rankings of recent graduates, are systematically in the last positions. Improve unemployed people's chance to compete in the job market. 4)IMPROVE THE COMPETITIVENESS OF EU COMPANIES by enhancing what characterizes and differentiates Europe from other continents and markets: its secular history. Interested Target Groups The project wants to elaborate on new teaching materials aimed at three crucial components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem: young potential entrepreneurs, professionals within business support organizations (accelerators, incubators, development agencies) and current entrepreneurs. Intellectual Outputs Overview IO1 includes a GEOGRAPHICAL MAP of Europe to show users simple sheet describing best cases of Marketing valorisation, the storytelling of corporate stories and tradition applied to enterprises in EU in order to use them as show-cases of heritage marketing potential at local/national and international level. It will aim at showing different practices and supporting potential participants in advancing their professional development. Moreover, the consortium will gather open access information on which of the existing models have been implemented in order to successfully apply storytelling in SMEs. IO2 is the definition of the guidelines for a skill-set of fundamental competences for the new figure of the Heritage Marketer’s CV. Skills-set means here a combination of hard and soft skills that are necessary to build a series of competences, knowledge and skills useful for the Heritage Marketer to work properly on content to boost brands, products and services. The guidelines for the skills-set will have as a basis the competences identified by the most recent studies on heritage storytelling, heritage valorisation for content production. IO3 will consist of the creation of a module learning for the definition of hard and soft skills that are fundamental for the new Heritage Marketing figure. From the point of view of the learning activities, the module will be based on case studies of Heritage valorisation analysis of European firms collected during the project (IO1). The final assessment at the end of the module will consist of the evaluation of a heritage content produced by the students, replacing more traditional methods of assessment (questionnaires, essays etc.)
The project’s objective is to identify key competences of a new professional, innovative and creative figure, able to make the most out of values and stories: the heritage marketer. We aimed at developing a creative and innovative training, able to support SMEs to promote, in terms of marketing and brand reputation, their own history and their brands and products. Therefore, we aimed at: -Enhancing competences in order to develop the Heritage Marketer figure; -Creating a Training course on strategies and tools for Heritage Marketing, problems and solutions linked to heritage marketing and corporate storytelling -Creating a Training focused on narratology and corporate reputation, corporate traditions, heritage valorisation. The project would as a result contribute to the creation of new job possibilities and therefore improve unemployed people's chance to compete in the job market. The project would improve the competitiveness of EU companies by enhancing what characterizes and differentiates Europe from other continents and markets: its secular history.
Unlike other global players, Europe is a continent rich in history, also concerning many European companies. This history has a great cultural value, yet it does not represent a significant competitive advantage for EU companies. Heritage Marketing fills this gap. It indicates the ability to create added value, for products and brands, starting from their peculiar and discriminating characteristics such as history and tradition. Heritage Marketing covers a variety of activities, which imply not only tangible material objects, but also a system of values, traditions, knowledge, and lifestyles that characterize a firm. According to Eurostat 2016, in 2014 over 6 million of jobs have been related to "storytelling" skills in the EU. Therefore, being able to narrate and sell a product or a place or a company it is becoming a fundamental business competence, since it drives emotional engagement resulting in enhanced business results. By telling stories of their organization, their origins and their founders or other stories that can, directly and indirectly, promote brands and products, our new heritage marketers will contribute to the attractiveness of EU companies, at the same time creating more job opportunities in Europe.