DM Bulgaria: The Druggist profession

Lifelong learning and development have become key topics among the Employer branding community. These practices are being actively implemented in the corporate world, providing adults with numerous opportunities for growth. However, there is one company in Bulgaria that directed its efforts towards involving high school students in such a long-term project.

This visionary is the locally represented Austrian retail brand, DM, who invented a whole new profession – druggist – and developed it as a career choice for this audience.

Since 2020, the brand initiated its own Dual learning program for students in 8th-12th grade jointly with professional high schools across the country. In 2024, we, at Paragraph 42, a preferred partner of Ketchum in Bulgaria, implemented big awareness campaign focused on the unique initiative, allowing pupils to graduate as “druggists” – an unparallel professional qualification that can be only received through DM’s program.

In order to be more efficient, we opted for a challenging approach – to direct the communication not only to students, but also to their parents, who very often are the key decision makers, when it comes to education and development. To deepen the long-term effect, we had partnerships with influencers, an established educational students’ platform and media.

The campaign results were wonderful! For 5 months, we reached 1 750 000+ people and generated 750K+ video plays on social media, with very high engagement rate.