WE'LL DO IT FOR YOU

TitleWE'LL DO IT FOR YOU
BrandEKSPRESS MEEDIA
Product/ServiceEESTI EKSPRESS
Entrant OPTIMIST GROUP Tallinn, ESTONIA
Idea Creation OPTIMIST GROUP Tallinn, ESTONIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Oliver Lomp Optimist Creative Creative Director
Magnus Lužkov Optimist Creative Creative Director
Mirjam Simmer Optimist Creative Project Manager
Bruno Palmik Optimist Creative Art Director

The Campaign

People tend to forget that journalists have to put themselves in uncomfortable situations and even risk their lives to get information. We formulated the main concept: “There are situations, where you wouldn't want to find yourself in; there are people, you wouldn't want to meet; and places you could never gain access to. And you don't have to. We'll do it for you." With the visuals, we put the public face-to-face with Imre Arakas, the former leader of mob in Estonia, and took them inside Donald Trump's campaign rally, and to the civil war ravaged streets of Mali.  For the first time in the history of advertising, our radio spot starred a person  serving a life sentence for the murder of four people. The voice-over was recorded inside, exclusively for us. We also created some clever word-play mementos to support the concept.

Creative Execution

Time was tight and the preparation process a nervous one as the “heroes” of our campaign were very different to who we are used to dealing with. ??We needed to convince a former Estonian mafia figure Imre Arakas to be our model for outdoor, print and digital visuals. Luckily after long negotiations he agreed. ?Even harder task was getting Anatoli Nikolajev a prisoner serving life read our radio clip. As voice recorders are not allowed in Estonian prisons, a phone call was our only chance. After meetings with different contacts, the prisoner’s sister sent a text to the prison. It took several lenghty phone calls to get what we were after. A few of the hurdles to overcome included the prison being a noisy environment and the fact that Nikolajev had never done a radio ad. Creating the ad took us more than a month.

The results of the image campaign exceeded all expectations - the volume of subscriptions was almost double (177%) compared to the initially projected estimates.   Our campaign proved extremely successful, gaining a lot of attention across the country, and garnering a lot of praise from our competitors. What is more, the controversial radio spot was featured by foreign news portals as well.  Campaign dominated on Estonian advertising awards event Kuldmuna and received three awards (campaign, radio, outoor(. Campaign recieved also prize in White Squre (Minsk).

Eesti Ekspress wanted a subscription campaign for the end of the year that would rearm its value for the existing clientele and get the attention of potential new subscribers. Eesti Ekspress was not able to offer discounts, but wanted 1000 new subscriptions in a country of 1.3 million.

We decided to turn the classic subscription campaign into an image campaign, so that potential clients would want to subscribe to Eesti Ekspress for its content and not for some reward.