YOUR FIRST FINNISH FRIEND
| Title | YOUR FIRST FINNISH FRIEND |
| Brand | INFOPANKKI, THE CITY OF HELSINKI |
| Product/Service | INFORMATION SERVICES FOR EXCHANGE STUDENTS |
| Category |
C03. Messaging Campaign |
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Entrant
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KURIO, THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCY Helsinki, FINLAND
|
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Idea Creation
|
KURIO, THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCY Helsinki, FINLAND
|
Credits
| Tommi Opas |
Kurio |
CEO |
| Jari Lahdevuori |
Kurio |
Creative Director |
| Samuli Pehkonen |
Kurio |
Content Strategist |
| Elli Tuominen |
Kurio |
Strategy Director |
The Campaign
Being a foreign exchange student in Finland can be quite tricky since Finns are known for their silence. And most of all in a foreign country you would want a local friend to show you the ropes when getting to know the country.
We decided to give the exchange students a friend - or the closest thing to one: Your First Finnish Friend, a bot that is a bit more talkative than your average Finn.
Creative Execution
We wanted the approach to be as friend-like as possible so we branded the PSA campaign as "Your first Finnish Friend" and made our message-bearer resemble a baby seal: more specifically a Saimaa ringed seal, a native endangered species - also made famous by the Finnish Emoji. The bot gives daily tips about the life in Finland: from housing to schooling, and from work to language and knows all the must-see things and never fails you on those random did-you-knows.
The bot was introduced to the market 1st of September 2016.
After just three weeks 25 % of new exchange student in Helsinki region had subscribed to our bot. And that's just the start of the campaign!
But more importantly we got audience talking --- even a bit too much. Soon they we're asking us where to score chicks or to buy a cheap mattress...
Infopankki was seeing a decline in their website traffic among young audience and especially exchange students.
Since we wanted the exchange students to feel at home, we chose to give them a local friend. And since WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app between friends all over the world and across all nationalities we decided to focus our messaging there. We built a bot to be the closest thing to a new Finnish friend.