Helsinki City

Helsinki has everything to make international tech talent feel at home. The problem is, they don’t know about the city’s most lucrative features. We have worked with the city’s marketing team to solve this issue through creative branding efforts. Our campaigns have resulted in 10,000+ candidates for local tech companies to hire, and for Helsinki to welcome as potential citizens.

Services

Brand campaign
Screenwriting
Copywriting
Art direction
Website development
Design
Team extension

The tabloid-worthy brand awareness campaign

Someone’s swift morning commute can be someone else’s saucy scandal – at least in this tabloid-worthy campaign concept. Helsinki Exposed is a tongue-in-cheek way to expose Helsinki’s daily delights to the creme-de-la-creme international talent. The campaign draws attention to Helsinki’s everyday benefits through tabloid-like headlines and paparazzi-powered imagery, and then calls to action: slam your laptops shut and book a one-way ticket to Helsinki – pronto, bitte.

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A paparazzi-powered imagery concept

The paparazzi movement was born out of frustration at overly stylized celebrity photos and the desire for something more true to life. We felt the same way about city marketing, and captured the city through the lens of a papa-paparazzi. Through fake candid images of Helsinki people ‘caught red-handed’ doing real Helsinki things, we exposed the side of the city that doesn’t usually make it into glossy business brochures. So smile, you’re in Helsinki – and on candid camera, too!

A world exclusive! This website reveals Helsinki's work-life secrets

Staying true to the campaign idea, the tongue-on-cheek verbal concept combines scandalous headlines and “shocking” stories of everyday life in Helsinki. Those stories are collected on the mock tabloid landing page, including everything from “You won’t believe how quickly people commute!” to “Kids can walk to school by themselves!” and “Meet the workers who don’t burn the midnight oil!” And, as the goal is to encourage international talent to relocate to Helsinki, we also feature local job opportunities from companies like Rovio, KONE, Supercell, and Zalando.

Helsinki Exposed – the Slush outdoor edition

Every November, the global tech A-list has both its eyes and flight routes pointing towards Helsinki and Slush, the world’s leading startup event. We welcomed the who’s who of tech with an extensive outdoor campaign that doubled as a scavenger hunt. It featured companies such as Wolt, Swappie, Oura, and Varjo – some of the fastest-growing companies in Europe that have shaped Finland’s technological landscape.

Helsinki Home-delivered – perfect city experience for the work-from-home era

When international tech talent can’t come to Helsinki, we put the city in a box and send it to them. That literally means putting Helsinki essentials into a branded box and delivering it wherever the lucky recipient lives. To get one of those (for free), we asked people to join a talent pool from where Helsinki-based tech companies could contact them regarding job opportunities.

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Branding Helsinki as the world’s first City as a Service (CaaS)

SaaS stands for Software as a Service and CaaS stands for City as a Service. Playing with this metaphor, we listed Helsinki’s top features, filthiest bugs, and craziest in-app purchases. Using the same tech-savvy narrative throughout the video and website, the campaign’s target audience felt we were talking their language. Notifications sent and received.

Welcoming the who’s who of tech to the Nordics with a brand campaign that bared it all

Every November, the global tech A-list has both its eyes and flight routes pointing towards Helsinki – and Slush, the world’s leading startup event. In 2022, we welcomed them with an extensive outdoor campaign that doubled as a scavenger hunt. It featured companies such as Wolt, Swappie, Oura and Varjo – some of the fastest-growing companies in Europe that have shaped Finland’s technological landscape. We had already warmed up the audience with a global brand awareness campaign, Helsinki Exposed. The campaign revealed the peculiar perks, great benefits and some brain-tickling secrets the cool-headed Nordic capital has in terms of living and working there. Our role? Everything from creative concepting, copywriting and screenwriting to digital ads and website design.