The Up To Date Festival (UTDF) has been held in Białystok for 13 years now. It attracts the attention of not only electronic music fans, but also due to an extraordinary approach to promotion, marketing specialists. It was no different with our team – the thought of cooperation was electrifying them. We asked ourselves: how, as a company producing wheels for agricultural machinery, should we present ourselves during the festival and what will be the purpose of our participation? On the contrary to the usual approach, we first developed a method of communication, and only then did we decide what the whole action should serve.

In the Podlaskie Voivodeship, Pronar is widely known, while not many people have heard about the Pronar Wheels Department operating in it, in which we position ourselves as a “brand in the brand”. It is connected with separate communication, social media, etc. Additionally, for the needs of the festival, we communicated using #NASPAWANI (Naspawani is a play of words in Polish language which in free translation means “a well-welded one”). The # alone is the answer to our stand, where under the Pronar Wheels tent participants had the opportunity to stand “behind the steering wheel” of a real welder and weld previously cut steel elements that finally formed the Up To Date Festival logo inscribed in a round disc.

During the two days of our stay at the festival, over 100 people took part in the welding activities. To our surprise, the welding station was very popular among women. Moreover, both young and old people were welding. As a fun fact, we would like to quote a situation when a young woman tried her best at welding on the first day and on the next day she brought her mother with her. As the organizers themselves noticed, our stand was crowded all the time and on the second day there were even several meters long queues.

There was an interactive welding machine with VR goggles waiting for the youngest and those who were already “well welded” (we checked sobriety at the stand), but the possibility of becoming a real welder overshadowed the VR machine. Here is another anecdote – two ladies after a negative reading from the breathalyzer, especially did not consume drinks for the next 2 hours to be able to grasp the welder in their hands. The participants were welding to the late hours at night, on the first day until 1:00 a.m., while the second stand was closed at 2:30 a.m. Not because there was a shortage of volunteers, we ran out of our welding elements! A total of 14 shields, i.e. 196 elements, were welded, which gives 11.5 hours of welding. The shields, together with the signatures of the artists of this year’s UTDF edition, are to be auctioned during next year’s Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, in the form of statuettes.

Pronar employs over 3,500 people and due to the constant expansion we need new employees. The Pronar Wheels Department itself needs one hundred welders and the other units of the company need another four hundred. Therefore, we decided that the festival will be a good place to undertake recruitment activities with an emphasis on the position of a welder.

Although women work as welders in Pronar, men were much more interested in taking a job. Nevertheless, contact details for our HR department were left by 39 people, expressing their willingness to get acquainted with the job offer or to arrange a recruitment interview. The decisive factor for people without work experience about the willingness to conduct further talks, in the case of a welder’s position, was the possibility of acquiring welding skills at the Pronar Academy. Thus, it can be concluded that the prospect of learning a profession and very attractive employment conditions were decisive for the willingness to “change industries”.

During the first talks with the UTDF organizers, there were many crazy, but also exciting ideas for wider cooperation. For this reason, we hope that during the next edition of the festival, as the title sponsor, we will be able to spread our wings of creativity and implement at least some of the bold concepts. One thing is certain, the Up To Date Festival team are the right people for such tasks.

Summarizing the whole venture; the reception from both participants and organizers was very positive. It exceeded our expectations. On the other hand, at which other festival do we get the possibility of welding by ourselves? Regarding recruitment issues, we still have to wait for concrete results, but we consider 39 out of 100 people who agreed to be contacted by our HR department a good result, encouraging us to look even more in non-obvious places.