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The Nasscot

The Nasscot

The nass-magnet-mascot

The Nasscot has arrived and since January 2018, it has been serving as the endearing distinguishing feature and official mascot of the company group nass magnet.

This friendly, eye-catching mascot is well received and boosts our brand awareness and sense of community. Furthermore, our Nasscot conveys effective promotional messages, interacts with our target market and substantially softens the rather stiff image associated with a manufacturer of solenoid valve components.

A friendly smile gives the corporate group a more exciting appearance for certain applications, and aims to reflect smiles onto the faces of our target audience. Fleeting content is rapidly forgotten, but visual impressions embed themselves in the memory for the long haul.

Martin-R. Bartz, our new employee in the Marketing department and editor of our company magazine iMAGE tells us about the development process behind the Nasscot...

Nasskottchen

It seemed a normal day like any other, the computer was already humming away to itself and a comforting aroma of coffee filled the apartment. Outside the early birds twittered their merry songs of spring and the first rays of sunlight were appearing over the roofs of the houses. But it seemed this day, among hundreds of others, was to be different from the rest…

I was media designer looking for a job.

I‘d learnt my craft at one of the best advertising agencies for Flash applications at the time, although demand in this field steadily dissipated and the company in question eventually went bust.

For months, I wrote job application after job application in vain and kept my head above water with freelance work - which somehow did the trick - but I‘d almost given up on the prospect of a permanent position.


When it seemed like a completely lost cause, out of the blue Raphael, a former fellow student with whom I‘d spent my final year of education at school, wrote to me.

Since we left school, he‘d managed to become the Marketing Manager for the company he‘d trained at, nass magnet GmbH - no surprises there. Even back when we‘d been in education, I was always thinking: „That‘s someone I‘d like to collaborate with later!“

And now the time had come, as I finally had an opportunity to do so. He told me that there was a vacancy in „his department“ and explained what I‘d have to do to apply.

Without further ado he put everything in motion and that very same day I found myself facing a task which, provided I could complete it to the satisfaction of those concerned, would hopefully lead to a new job in the Marketing department of Hanoverian nass magnet GmbH. Hope again, at last. However, I now had to start producing copy, as this test piece consisted of creating Facebook posts on behalf of nass magnet.

A real challenge, because to date I‘d rarely composed written content. Obviously, typography is also part of design and I‘d certainly learnt that, it‘s just that writing copy as such and generating content at the level of the letters themselves was a whole new ballgame compared to nudging pixels around the page and creating animations. But this was THE chance I had been waiting for, as it were, and there was no way I was going to miss it.

So I tried to complete the sample piece entrusted to me as satisfactorily as possible. Arranging the words on the paper, I stared at the company‘s logo and started to doodle around it, lost in thought.

The result speaks for itself and shortly afterwards ended up as the well-known and universally admired mascot of the company group nass magnet, the „Nasscot“.

The little fellow was graced with neither a planning period, alternative concepts nor further research – its creation was that simple. When I submitted the text-based task for the vacancy, I included the Nasscot as my own personal contribution of sorts and waited a little while for the company‘s reply.


A few weeks later, another e-mail from nass magnet arrived in my inbox, this time inviting me to sign an employment contract.

The Nasscot won them over from the start, despite the fact that the people I‘d impressed weren‘t even part of my creation‘s target audience.“

Martin-R. Bartz
Marketing, nass magnet GmbH

Evolution_N_-_paper2

iMAGE interviews
The application panel

„We were extremely excited by the „Nasscot“‘s appearance and the first impression it made on us,“ explains departmental head R. Laschke, responding to the question of how the application for the vacancy was received in the Marketing department. „It was the first time that the Marketing department had asked an applicant to complete such an important task as an application project, and Mr Martin-R. Bartz still managed to exceed our expectations,“ adds Managing Director K. Kirchheim. „You can‘t help but smile at the sight of such features for our logo. It was an immediate success, and the effect is brilliant,“ explains Head of HR A. Gelking.

R. Laschke, Head of the Marketing department since 2016, remembers the circumstances fondly: „Naturally, for us it was primarily about the assignment, how it was completed and Mr Bartz‘s skill as a writer. Because we cover a very specific and extensive field of activity in the Marketing department, it‘s long been the case that a ‚normal application‘ is no longer adequate if you want to apply for positions in a creative environment. The requirements now range from software skills, professional experience and a professional pathway to work samples — it‘s a question of assessing creativity, sensitivity and knowledge about the subject of ‚design‘ itself. That‘s why I had the idea to ask applicants to complete an assignment primarily aimed at the specialist area corresponding to the vacancy, while also leaving freedom for creativity“

„This was a trimmed-back version of the assignment,“ jokes Deputy Managing Director M. Weper. „Mr Laschke sometimes requires far too much from his applicants. We, which is to say Klaus Kirchheim and I, had to step in again and remove three of the tasks he had intended to set.“

iMAGE: „How were the results judged and how did it look?“

R. Laschke: „We were genuinely fascinated. I‘d forwarded my objective criticism and recommendation to Mr Kirchheim, Mr Weper and Mr Gelking beforehand, along with the results. Then we came together to form an application panel.“

A. Gelking: „I first heard about the plan in the e-mail forwarded by Mr Laschke and I was pleasantly surprised. nass magnet doesn‘t usually ask applicants to complete any assignments, but the results spoke for themselves — it was a success.

Of course, it requires some groundwork from the head of the department and could deter potential applicants, but we‘re happy to report on our success and perhaps another department will decide to ask their applicants to complete a small assignment in future as well. To me, it seems modern and appropriate; from my perspective, nothing precludes us performing another trial.

Returning to the main subject, we were all agreed that the results were positive and left Mr Laschke to make the final decision.“ K. Kirchheim interjects: „At any rate, we were so impressed by the Nasscot that we unanimously wanted to pay Mr Bartz €200 on the spot for his work.


Head of Marketing R. Laschke:
Intended purpose, rules for use and availability of the Nasscot

Since then, we have been very proud of our Nasscot and we are always continuing to build on it. Ideas for new applications and purposes are in the pipeline as well.

The Nasscot is being continually developed and we provide all employees in the nass magnet corporate group with the latest version of the Nasscot, as well as information on where it can be used and what for, under the ‚Templates‘ network folder on the Intranet.

I won‘t reveal more at this point, but you can certainly all look forward to exciting new content for the Nasscot as well as some fun new versions!

Nasskottchen_Editionen

Raphael Laschke
Head of Marketing, nass magnet GmbH

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