The A.Hak brand

Eveline Dijkers, Marketing and Communications Manager at A.Hak, provides a clear picture of the challenges for communication professionals in the onshore sector. The biggest challenge? Staying the course while the daily grind always takes its toll.

The role of communication managers in large-scale contracting is gaining importance; they operate in an extremely turbulent environment. The pressure on communication departments is high, and issues are often extensive. Significant impact must be achieved with limited resources. Eveline has two employees in her team and works closely with specialists.
“As issues become more complex, communication and ‘teaming’ are essential. In the contracting industry, marketing and communication is often a small department where requests from colleagues keep pouring in. Impossible? No, but it does require the manager to master the ‘balancing act’ and maintain good relationships with all partners.”

From traditional to out-of-the-box
In the onshore business, much is based on mutual trust between contractor and client. To prevent over-reliance on relationships, you also want the corporate brand to be strong. Eveline: “Fortunately, our reputation is very strong, and that’s something you can build upon as a brand. Within the organization, I am a pioneer in marketing and communication. Marketing in the contracting industry is still quite traditional, with trade fairs and staff meetings. My message to the MT is: Hold on to traditional values, but also go out of the box more often.”

A.Hak is among the top 25 largest contractors in the Netherlands. The company is growing rapidly and performing well. The water and energy transition provides a tailwind, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to show our best every day.

From print to a TikTok award
A.Hak is a good employer for its people, works with sustainable materials, and delivers photogenic projects. And we make sure to show it. Eveline: “The message to me five years ago was: ‘you can change everything except the logo.’ We transitioned from paper to 100% digital with online magazines, campaigns, and a boost on social media. Believe me, the management had to get used to this quite a bit. They were afraid to let go of the traditional staff magazine, and honestly; our A.Hak campaigns are quite out-of-the-box. The mentality here is “just act normal”. Then I come with a different message: we absolutely must show how cool we are and step outside our comfort zone.”

A.Hak’s very first social media campaign immediately plunged into the deep end with men dancing to TikTok beats at an A.Hak site. Eveline: “I found it exciting myself. Would this be well-received?” It proved to be the springboard to success for A.Hak’s employer branding. This autumn, the online campaigns earned A.Hak a Grand Prix Social Media Award. Eveline says, laughing: “I totally didn’t expect us to win, so I was just at home on the couch that evening. But immediately after winning the Award, the impact became clear, and we saw that this is a great appreciation for our brand. As a team and a company, we can truly be proud of that.”

How do you stay (H)up-to-date?
The search behavior of our target audience has changed significantly. You see it and you notice it. AI is becoming increasingly important; everyone is already unconsciously using it. ChatGPT has rapidly become a new search engine. Eveline explains: “We see that social media is primarily used as a search engine by young people. On social platforms, young people search for brands, companies, job vacancies, and inspiration. Especially for employer branding, TikTok and Insta are leading social platforms. Our campaigns continuously follow one another; to keep your brand top-of-mind, you often need to innovate.”

Keep it exciting, funny, current, and keep surprising. If we continue to improve our employer brand and reach new employees, then we are winning. Eveline concludes: “It’s also challenging for our people at work to participate in campaigns. In all our “advertisements,” we work with real ‘Hakkers,’ which is an essential part of our success factor. We will continue to do this in 2025 as well.”