A guest article by Jeanette Wygoda on the visit of the DPRG North regional group and the IC & Change working group to Hapag-Lloyd in Hamburg.
Hapag-Lloyd’s headquarters on Hamburg’s Ballindamm are not only familiar to Hanseatic citizens, the traditional building is also a popular photo opportunity for tourists. We were therefore delighted to be invited by our colleagues to a joint DPRG afternoon of the Northern Regional Group and the IC & Change working group on February 19, 2019 in Hamburg’s city center.
Around 50 DPRG members and guests accepted the invitation of Nils Haupt, Senior Director Corporate Communications at Hapag-Lloyd AG, and Andrea Montua, a member of the Executive Board of the Northern Regional Group, on February 19 in Hamburg. A joint lunch with a view of the Alster was followed by a first look at the history of one of the leading container shipping companies: Today’s Hapag-Lloyd AG was formed in 1970 from the merger of HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd. HAPAG’s roots go back to 1847 when the shipping company “Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft” was founded. Visitors to the headquarters can still read HAPAG’s motto today: “My field is the world”.
The namesake of Ballindamm, Alber Ballin, joined the company at the end of the 1880s and was to shape its development for the next 40 years. For example, he laid the foundations for the start of cruise tourism. Ballin was also an excellent networker and counted the German Emperor Wilhelm II among his friends, for whom he set up a room in his house.
However, Ballin also had a formative influence on Hamburg’s urban development, as he made Hamburg great at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century by having the “Emigrant City” built in the Veddel district. Here, emigrants could recover from their journey across Europe before embarking on the arduous journey across the Atlantic. In 1905, a family from the Palatinate also prepared for their voyage to America at the emigration center. The grandson of this family is now President of the United States.
The emerging container business in the 1990s fundamentally changed the world of shipping companies. The merger to form Hapag-Lloyd AG in 1970 ensured the survival of the North German shipping companies and laid the foundation for further growth. “We are beneficiaries of globalization,” says Nils Haupt. This is also reflected in communication: only around 15 percent of employees still work in Germany, the rest are spread across the globe.
Hanseatics and shipowners don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves and tend to be reserved when it comes to communication. “This mix is a challenge for communicators,” admitted Nils Haupt. But his team has now successfully mastered the challenge. The guiding principles of Hapag-Lloyd’s corporate communications are to initiate and accompany the cultural change internally and to stand out from the competition in terms of communication externally.
In his subsequent presentation, Tim Seifert, Team Leader PR and Internal Communications, reported on the rapid development of internal communications: in just a few years, internal reporting grew from 0 to 700 internal reports in 2018. This impressive figure led to a lively discussion with the audience. One participant asked whether 700 reports per year was not too much for employees. Seifert reported that colleagues really appreciate the large selection and pick out the topics that interest them. There is also no need for a sophisticated strategy to get in touch with employees: “You can reach people with common sense,” he concluded.
Hapag-Lloyd Communications has set itself three priorities for 2019: Successfully communicating the company’s new strategy and overcoming the challenges of potential trade restrictions in terms of communication, as well as the new extremely restrictive fuel regulations from 2020.
Finally, Laura-Jane Freutel, expert for film and social media at Hapag Lloyd, gave an overview of the B2B company’s social media activities. Not only business networks such as LinkedIn and Xing are used, but Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are also part of the carrier’s social media portfolio. Deliberately setting itself apart from the competition is one of the premises; seeing employees as influencers is another. The aim of the intensively used Instagram account, for example, is to give people insights into the world of container shipping that would otherwise remain closed to most of us. Moving content also plays a major role in this: Hapapg-Lloyd now produces around 75 videos per year. From tutorials and timelapses to slideshows, the range is wide.
All in all, it was a truly informative afternoon at Hapag-Lloyd, a company with a long tradition, and a successful start to 2019 for the Northern Regional Group. Some of the future event dates have already been set – feel invited to join us (also) next time:
May 9: Visit by the Northern Regional Group and the IC & Change working group to “Telekom hilft” in Kiel – a look behind the scenes of Telekom’s social media activities
September 26: IK & Change working group visits BOSCH in Stuttgart
November 27: IK & Change working group in Frankfurt am Main
Copyright lead image: Victoire Joncher / Unsplash