Carhartt Spotlights Skilled Trades on Labor Day

Despite a newfound appreciation for essential workers, the U.S. continues to face a major skilled labor shortage. Recognizing that this shortage has drastically impacted many industries, and with a long history of supporting hardworking people, Carhartt wanted to own the Labor Day holiday by reminding people about life-changing career opportunities in the skilled trades.

Forty years ago, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich took out a classified ad in an LA newspaper that landed him and Metallica co-founder James Hetfield the job of their dreams. Partnering with Metallica’s All Within My Hands organization, Zeno recommended Carhartt to take a page out of the band’s playbook to recruit the next generation of laborers the same way the band did in 1981.

Zeno helped Carhartt place a want ad to recruit job seekers to a stage building workshop to learn about skilled trade jobs in live events. Zeno documented this workshop in a rockin’ hero video, which was used to spread awareness via owned social and an integrated approach of earned media relations with paid support. Zeno also leveraged the shopping holiday to create a photo asset with a call-to-action for consumers to shop at Carhartt.com on Labor Day. Carhartt committed all online Labor Day sales to benefit All Within My Hands Metallica Scholars program, a major workforce education initiative providing direct support to students and technical education programs.