Goals and objectives
SKiB, or Svenska Kulturfonden i Björneborg (Swedish Culturefund in Pori), is a foundation focusing on life-long learning, well-being and the richness of language. As Finland is a bilingual country, with both Finnish and Swedish being official languages, this is especially important.
The foundation, based on the western coast of Finland in the city of Pori, has a history of over a hundred years. They maintain a day care, a primary school, a secondary school as well as services of senior living. SKiB is focused on bringing up the students in their learning institutions to be bilingual, active citizens while at the same time supporting local culture and encouraging seniors to live active and social every-day lives.
The goal of this campaign was to combat persistent negative preconceived notions about the foundation and their bilingual activities carried out in Swedish. The goal was to raise awareness of SKiB as an agent of local culture and education and better the brand image of the foundation. With the help of raised awareness, SKiB wanted to recruit new children and employees for the day care center. They wanted to communicate about senior living to possible future residents. By busting prejudices, the aim was to increase the brand value of SKiB and create a change in brand perception: not just for bättre folk, as Swedish speaking people are sometimes referred to, but for all local folk. The main massage of the campaign was to solidify that everyone is welcome in the foundation and its activities!
KPI's
Main KPI’s for this project included maximum reach in the regional target group consisting of people in the Satakunta county surrounding the city of Pori.
Other measurable KPI’s included generating interest for the foundation’s services and open positions, including getting 10 children to sign up for the day care’s under 3-year old groups, getting people to attend the day care's show-and-tell open for the public, finding new employees for the open child care employment positions and receiving interest in the senior living through contacts from the public.
The marketing campaign and it’s KPI’s were set to be measured especially from August of 2022 through the end of the year 2022.
Target audience
The marketing efforts were planned to reach local residents of different ages living in the Satakunta county surrounding the city of Pori.
Relevant target groups were especially parents of small children, especially in the areas of Ulvila and Pori, in regards to the child care services, as well as senior citizens, in regards to senior living services.
The aim was to reach both those who had yet to hear of the foundation and it’s work, as well as those already familiar with SKiB.
Strategic approach
The main strategy of the campaign was concentrated around three main points: high ad awareness, a bold and easily distinguishable approach as well as strong relatability.
Solutions with high ad awareness were crucial in order to reach the people in the area and get them to act - a lot was asked of them in order to apply for jobs and enroll their kids in school services, so luke warm wouldn't do.
In order to achieve this, the strategy focused on taking a bold stand and making material that could even be seen as controversial in order to shake false notions of the foundation in a brisk way – since bringing storytelling written in Swedish to a Finnish-language newspaper could be considered even annoying. But it also guaranteed a strong reaction and the high ad awareness the campaign was looking for. Just glancing at the page you noticed something different, that would draw the eye to investigate further.
In addition to bold choices, the campaign wanted to make sure the content was relatable and approachable, especially since it had an added goal of increasing job applications. This was accomplished with the use of real people from the foundation sharing their stories, which brought the foundation closer to consumers. It helped to show the personal side of the foundation, which consisted of real people – not just those Swedish-speaking better people, a common prejudice in Finland.
Creative idea
”Only for Swedish speaking people. Expensive. For a bit of a better crowd.”
These were just a few of the preconceived notions plaguing the SKiB foundation that were hard to root out – and flat-out wrong! The outdated ideas were in desperate need of shaking up and replacing. The creative was focused on disproving there notions and replacing them with the truth, in an innovative and modern way that focused on content. The theme quickly became busting myths with creative storytelling.
The real people at the foundation became the center of this mythbusting, by giving their authentic faces and voices to the cause. Stories featuring first-grader Iiris, experiences from seniors’ language classes and the passionate pursuits of high-schooler Lidia gave an honest view of the foundations’ day to day efforts and people. The stories were based on the different branches of the foundation’s activities and the perspectives based on their mission statement: “for the advancement of bilingual opportunities, life-long learning and equality for all in Pori and Satakunta”. All of the foundation’s activies are still guided by this mission first defined by it’s founder in 1919 – even the creative approach of their marketing.
The approach to language as bilingual and inclusive was at the heart of the idea, and presented both a challenge and a possibility for storytelling. The main vehicle for storytelling was centered around a custom print magazine as well as native articles online that would collect the tales - all bilingually. The bilingual element was an important part of the magazine’s concept design, as it was very important to the foundation that the content is published in Finnish and in Swedish while making sure that the experience is still consumer-friendly.
Channels used
The customer magazine ’Svenska. Talande. Pori.’ (meaning Swedish-speaking Pori) was created as the SKiB foundations very own media and was at the heart of the campaign. It was distributed between the local newspaper of Pori, Porilaine. A digital version of the magazine was also created and available online.
The native articles associated with the campaign were published on the larger local news site satakunnankansa.fi on the front page. The articles are also accessible through the navigation of the site.
Content distribution and promotion efforts
The customer magazine ’Svenska. Talande. Pori.’ was distributed between Satakunnan kansa’s adjacent newspaper Porilaine as a print insert to 55 000 households in Satakunta. A hundred copies were distributed to the foundation’s different brick-and-mortar outlets. The magazine as also part of the digital copy of Satakunnan Kansa for one week, as well as accessible online in the Satakunnan Kansa app after this.
The native articles were published on the front page of satakunnakansa.fi as part of the news feed, with each article receiving five days’ worth of visibility.
The first article relating to child care was published online on satakunnankansa.fi as well as in print form in the Satakunnan kansa newspaper as a 1-page native article. Traffic was also driven to the article online with additional impression-based visibility on the site.
The second native article focused on senior citizens. It was edited based on an article in the customer magazine and was the very first bilingual native article ever released on satakunnankansa.fi featuring written content in both Finnish and Swedish. The article also promoted the customer magazine as a whole and directed readers to the digital version online.
The customer magazine was also published on the foundation’s own website. The foundations own channels, such as Facebook, were also used to further promote both the magazine and native articles.
Campaign results, ROI, and efficiency
The campaign was a great success.
The campaign achieved an over-all reach of 304 814 contacts. For comparison, in 2021 the number of inhabitants in Satakunta county was 214 000, so the goal for maximum reach in the Satakunta area was well-met.
Considering the reach and the campaign's over-all investment of 22 050 euros, that’s 7 cents per pair of eyes, making it a great return on investment! Additionally the client commented that the use of content marketing resulted in a lot of “positive buzz” in the foundation itself, with feedback stating that “this was exactly what we needed”.
The day care center received an increased amount of contacts after the publication of the native article and on show-and-tell day open to the public more people than expected attended! The goal was to have 10 children enrolled to the day care groups for under 3-year olds, but due to the increase in interest, a whole new group had to be set up! By January 2023 all of the day care’s positions were completely filled. This was especially attributed to the native article which featured a regular family from Pori sharing why they chose day care provided by the foundation.
Three new child care employees were recruited based on the campaign. According to the client, the recruitment ad on the last page of the customer magazine reached more prospective employees than other tried forms of recruitment marketing.
The bilingual execution was accomplished well, as the magazine was even used as part of teaching and lessons in the school the foundation is in charge of. The magazine was used as a way to test Swedish skills, by comparing the Swedish and Finnish text that were side by side on the page. The way all the content was available in the both official languages was also seen as an act of equality.
Online activities were successful as well. The amount of renewed interest in the foundation was evident online, as website traffic grew by a huge 31% from August 2022 to November 2022. This was also partially due to the magazine being available on the foundation’s website and the native articles directing traffic to the website.
The native article about the day care also performed well in regards to averages. The article received over 70% more page views than the average on the site. The second native article about senior living worked very well in reaching the right profile of readers – the article reached readers between 45-74 better than the site’s user profile indicates in general. In the oldest segment of 65-74 the article performed especially well - the article’s readers consisted of up to 32% of this age group , while the profile for the whole site consists of only 18,7% of this age group!
The Foundation’s Facebook posts regarding the native articles performed above averages as well. Posts were seen organically by 5717 people. This is a considerably high number, as normally organic posts reach is counted in hundreds – not thousands.