Pas­ka kaupun­ni

The pop­u­la­tion of Oulu reached the land­mark of 200,000 peo­ple in 2016. To cel­e­brate it, the City of Oulu decid­ed to update Finns’ knowl­edge and image about Oulu with an inno­v­a­tive image cam­paign. The cam­paign spoke both to the peo­ple and the media in a way that aroused emo­tions and action.

Brief

Oulu is the fastest grow­ing city of Scan­di­navia and the fifth largest city of Fin­land, and its pop­u­la­tion reached 200,000 peo­ple in 2016. The growth had been so rapid, that Finns’ knowl­edge about today’s Oulu was hope­less­ly out­dat­ed. In the sur­vey, not even a sin­gle one out of the hun­dred Finns inter­viewed knew that Oulu had a pop­u­la­tion of over 100,000 peo­ple.

Also the rep­u­ta­tion of Oulu need­ed a boost. The over­all image of Oulu was labeled by a false idea about “a small post-Nokia cri­sis city”. The exit of Nokia and Microsoft did cause a cri­sis to the city, but it is in the past. There is already a need for a high-lev­el pro­fi­cien­cy. Also new busi­ness­es and posi­tions are emerg­ing in great vol­ume.

The City of Oulu request­ed to update the city image with a few prompt mes­sages

Cre­ative solu­tion

Since Oulu is, as the strat­e­gy says, smart, brave and fair, we decid­ed to tell about Oulu’s strengths in a cre­ative and coura­geous way that tru­ly inspired the Finns – espe­cial­ly the peo­ple in Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

In the cam­paign, Oulu cap­tured a cen­tral piece of Helsin­ki – 33 dis­plays at the metro sta­tion of the Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion.

In the cam­paign mes­sage Oulu wished peace and qui­et for Helsin­ki and donat­ed an ad-free metro sta­tion for a week. The dom­i­nance was 100 %.

We also want­ed to acti­vate Finns to com­mu­ni­cate about Oulu. They could choose their favourites from the 60 Oulu-relat­ed pho­tographs at the cam­paign site and those were released at the station’s huge ad board. The Finnish Oulu-based singer Suvi Teräs­niska launched the cam­paign on Face­book by being the spokesper­son in the cam­paign video.

Strat­e­gy

A smart core mes­sage, a strict seg­men­ta­tion for the met­ro­pol­i­tan area and an effi­cient sched­ule were empha­sized in the cam­paign strat­e­gy.

The pri­or­i­ty was a mes­sage about com­fort­able and acces­si­ble Oulu. The well-known fact that Oulu has a great know-how in ICT, was know­ing­ly left out of mar­ket­ing and PR. We focused on the attrac­tive, urban Oulu, that is also close to the nature.

The campaign’s core and mes­sages:

• Replac­ing ad boards with Oulu-relat­ed pho­tographs at the metro sta­tion of the Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion – bring­ing Oulu clos­er to Helsin­ki
• Did you know that super com­fort­able Oulu has grown to be one of the largest cities of Fin­land – the fifth largest to be exact
• Choose pho­tos now, they will be at the sta­tion dur­ing week 3
• Best regards, your friend Oulu

The pri­ma­ry tar­get group was the peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing in Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Oth­er tar­get groups were: the pol­i­cy­mak­ers influ­enc­ing Oulu’s devel­op­ment liv­ing in met­ro­pol­i­tan area, media, Finns in gen­er­al and the peo­ple of Oulu.

The cam­paign was launched just before Christ­mas Eve. The cam­paign was designed to be most active dur­ing the hol­i­days – the time when the use of social media and dig­i­tal media increas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly as print mag­a­zines are not pub­lished.

The cen­ter of the cam­paign was the web­site helsinki.oulu.com which served all of the tar­get groups.

Results

cam­paign time (22. Dec. 2016–21. Jan. 2017)

Col­lab­o­ra­tion, video pro­duc­tion
Klaf­fi