Find Yourself in Finland
“Travel far enough, you might meet yourself”
David Mitchell, post-modernist British writer describing the opportunity
Strategy
Year
2023
Project in a nutshell
Find Yourself in Finland is a broad yet highly ownable creative platform for Visit Finland. It’s has been crafted to support and to trigger cohesive, culturally relevant creative activations, communications and campaigns that are as unique, unconventional and authentic as Finland itself.
We want to evoke the experiences, people, nature and sensorial states that are only found in this special place.
Contrary to a common belief among Finns, Finland is not widely known out in the world. To tackle this, Visit Finland had already made several successful marketing campaigns.
Despite effectiveness they were missing an organizing narrative that would connect them together to build bigger brand equity over time.
We realized we needed a connecting platform to reach our business goal of making Finland the most desirable travel destination in the Nordics by 2025.
The marketing strategy gave us direction: it outlined that we should build on the overall theme of happiness, after all Finland has been ranked as the happiest country in the world for several consecutive years. We may not have globally known monuments and landmarks – we have something better. Happiness!
But what is ‘happiness’? The word carries different meanings to different people. And what is happiness in Finland? How could we connect our local perception of it to a broader cultural context that is relevant to our foreign audiences? How could we make it right true to the brand core, defined as ‘preserving emotional and sensory experiences that have an impact on a greater human level’?
Insight
“Genuinely, I have not thought about Finland as a destination before.”
Adam, a traveller from Manchester describing the challenge
Insight
In a shaken-up world one out of two people are revisiting their personal purpose
Global Survey by [our company]
According to Skift’s Travel Mega Trends “travel’s new cadence is more deliberate, introspective, and soulful… With an emphasis on safety, sustainability, and profound experiences… Without wrecking the climate and local quality of life in the process”.
This made sense for our target group: experienced travellers who avoids mass tourism and popular travel destinations, whose values match those of Finland and who have above average income and education.
After looking at trends research done by us and others, and discussing directly with 100 people from eight countries from our target groups, we validated that there is cultural shift in play – from travel with an externally focused status motivation (how does this make look?) to an intrinsic motivation (who am I and why am I here?). This is connected to a bigger trend of the search for meaning in this age of uncertainty.
We understood that we should portray Finnish happiness as an inner journey of discovery to a calmer, more present state. And we had to encompass those quirky cultural situations, unparalleled natural wonders and weird or unexpected encounters that simply wouldn’t happen anywhere else.
During our insight gathering we stumbled upon a line that had been used in an earlier tactical campaign. It held a bigger potential we began to uncover.
Find Yourself in Finland
Platform narrative
To us Finns…
happiness is not unbridled joy. Nor is it sheer delight, or whimsy. It’s not street parties or ponies. Rainbows or sunshine.
In Finland, happiness is also not about the accumulation of thrills, things or likes. You can’t pin it, snap it, share it, like it, or troll it.
Finnish happiness is quiet. It’s calm and presence. Slow and developed, it’s between the trees in our dense, moss-floored forests and in our cold, clear lake water. It’s in our sunlit summers and our snow-lit winters.
Finnish happiness is fluid. Something we take the time and space to observe, to feel and to be. Because here in Finland, being happy is a being-with-oneself-ness. That becomes a knowing-of-oneself-ness.
Sensorial, mindful, meaningful, elemental, it’s found in our nature, our traditions, our culture. In us.
So, when you visit Finland, this curious Finnish happiness of ours will be here for you to find, too. As you seek it, it will grow in you. And when you leave, it will stay with you.
Find Yourself in Finland.
Find Yourself in Finland works as an invitation. As a promise. As a challenge. As a confirmation.
It hold numerous creative opportunities from spiritual to situational, from esoteric to emotional, and from self-confident to self-deprecating.
It plays into the twin insights that Finland is both one of the most under discovered of the Nordic countries – and the region’s most unconventional. It’s a unique, mysterious, curious place of untamed nature, magical tales, deep traditions and extreme weather. And it’s a place where happiness is found.
A state of calm and presence that’s closely related to mindfulness, Finnish happiness is a state of being that threads through every encounter and situation its visitors will experience. In this way, journeying to Finland is never simply about discovering a new country and its unexpected moments. It’s also a journey of discovery – to a calmer, more present state that, even when you leave Finland, will never leave you.
Creative Platform Description
Why this works
Our platform applied
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Come. Be here. Stay a while.
Find Yourself in Finland as a spritual invitation – We created an engaging, emotionally-led awareness campaign coined ‘Trust the Wilderness’ to promote the unique beauty of Finnish Lapland in the summer (S/S 2023) for travellers in Germany and the Netherlands. In Germany 9/10 people viewed the skippable Youtube ad until the end. Example of creative on Youtube.
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Vesku the Reindeer
Find Yourself in Finland as an esoteric challenge – Our continuation to the Trust the Wilderness campaign to promote Lapland as a summer destination (S/S 2024), we created the world’s first Artic wild animal influencer.
Vesku challenges you to Trust the artic nature and to encounter unexpected people, places and creatures.
Follow Vesku on Instagram.
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Always on (Site & Social)
Find Yourself in Finland as a promise – Finland is an open place that welcomes you to come as your full self.
On Visit Finland’s Social Media presence, we’ve created whole host of content series that stem from and connect back to our platform explicitly and implicitly. Go have a look on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook where we are outgrowing our competition in both followers and engagement by reach.
