CITY ABOVE THE CITY

TitleCITY ABOVE THE CITY
BrandMETSÄ WOOD
Product/ServiceMETSÄ WOOD KERTO LVL (LAMINATED VENER LUMBER)
Category C05. Co-Creation & User Generated Content
Entrant HASAN & PARTNERS Helsinki, FINLAND
Idea Creation HASAN & PARTNERS Helsinki, FINLAND
PR HASAN & PARTNERS Helsinki, FINLAND
PR 2 SEK Helsinki, FINLAND
Production HASAN & PARTNERS Helsinki, FINLAND
Production 2 MICHAEL GREEN ACRHITECTURE Vancouver, CANADA
Additional Company METSÄ GROUP Espoo, FINLAND
Credits
Name Company Position
Tobias Wacker hasan & partners Oy Creative Director
Sari Heinilä hasan & partners Oy Account dicertor
Mikko Saavalainen Metsä Wood Senior Vice President
Henni Rousu Metsä Wood Marketing Manager
Viivi Kylämä Metsä Wood Digital Communications Specialist
Leila Kontturi Metsä Wood Project Manager
Mick Scheinin hasan & partners Oy Copywriter
Karoliina Harjula hasan & partners Oy / hasan communications Communications Manager
Mikko Oksanen hasan & partners Oy Graphic designer
Luca Rossi hasan & partners Oy Web Designer
Jacob Gardner hasan & partners Oy / hasan motion Production manager
Salla Tuomi hasan & partners Oy / hasan motion Producer
Anna Nurkse hasan & partners Oy Digital Officer
Luiz Lazcan . Director / Animator
Janne Rehmonen . Editor
Rebecca Lamberg hasan & partners Oy / hasan motion Production Co-ordinator
Heidi Eriksson hasan & partners Oy Account Manager
Michael Green Michael Green Architecture Principal – Architect
Asher deGroot Michael Green Architecture Architect

The Campaign

After finding a unique insight which was relevant for our product (25% of existing buildings are strong enough to carry additional floors made out of wood), we created the ’City Above the City’ initiative. We involved the global architect community and called on all architects to share our quest for liveable and sustainable cities via the City above the city architects’ competition. The entrants were encouraged to select a centrally-located building in one of the world’s most populated cities and develop an innovative wood design solution that adds additional floors using Kerto® LVL as the primary material. We received 174 entries from all over the world. The winners were chosen by an internationally well-known jury.

Creative Execution

We provided background material, research, and information on the competition’s website. In order to be credible within the expert audience and to engage, we teamed with a renowned architect and wood construction expert helping us to promote our cause and get the call for entries to the global architects' competition right (Michael Green architecture). The call for entries was featured in global websites displaying all architect competitions. We also created a first press kit containing a call for entries video explaining the insight, idea, and cause, supporting images for media to display, as well as terms and conditions. In phase two we announced the jury to media, in phase three we shared the winners and in phase four we shared interesting entries divided into different themes (e.g. extensions for iconic buildings). Simultaneously we did local PR with help of e.g. the entries made for the city of Paris.

Results

The call for entries and the results of the competition, 174 stunning entries were featured, discussed and shared in leading global design, architecture, and mass media as, Treehugger, Yahoo, Designboom, Newswire, Architectural Review, ArchDaily, da? architectures, Clad magazine and by local expert media. This resulted in extensive coverage and an in intense discussion within the core target audience. During 2016, the campaign reached a PR value of 1.2 million euros in print and online PR of 5.9 million euros, in total earned media of 7.1 million euros. With the core audience now being more aware of the new opportunities, there’s a rising trend in building additional floors made of wood on existing structures, and Metsa? Wood’s Kerto construction material can be found in many ready-to-build case studies.

We invited the architect- and construction industry to keeping cities liveable and providing living space for millions in very short time by creating an engaging cause with a meaning and purpose – building the "City above the City" – building extensions made of wood. We got a global community of critical experts directly to work with us for a long time, providing a vast amount of content for our campaign with the City Above the City architects competition.

We invited the architect- and construction industry to keeping cities liveable and providing living space for millions in very short time by creating an engaging cause with a meaning and purpose – building the "City above the City". We got a global community of critical experts to work with us, providing a vast amount of content for our campaign. Whilst we were using that content for several PR bursts (we clustered the entries in different themes and found several new different angles for media to have enough content and stories for many months), the campaign was planned to live a life on its own as well, and every week participants of the competition and media are discussing entries in publications, on conferences, on architects’ websites... To support our local businesses we specified the locations to be in our key markets, getting lots of local PR as well.