The Ministry For Foreign Affairs Of Finland and its country promotion website ThisisFinland wanted to enhance the country brand with its annual Christmas advent calendar.The global target group was extensive but as a country image is formed at an early age, we especially wanted to reach teenagers. Paid media was not an option.The planning and production was quite small. We had to find a solution that was digital and had PR potential. According to brief and brand strategy, we were required to build on the national character in a way that creates a true but sympathetic image of a digitally savvy people. No numerical objectives were set,as nothing like this had been done before. As the economic situation in Finland could be better,we knew that any public expenditure would be looked at critically by the Finnish general public. At the same time, positive publicity was needed more than ever.

From a design point of view, the challenge was to crystallize a unique and complicated emotion or phenomenon into one small graphic element.

The 30 emojis were launched online one by one as part of the Ministry For Foreign Affairs of Finland country promotion website ThisisFINLAND Christmas advent calendar. Mobile apps for Android (Google Play Store) and iOS (App Store) were also created.

Five emojis were revealed at the launch on 1st December. For the launch, we utilized around 80 embassies, press releases and direct media contacts, supported by social media posts and community management. The next 24 emjois were revealed one at a time on the ThisisFINLAND’s Christmas advent calendar site xmas.finland.fi. On 29th December, a bonus emoji featuring ski jumping legend Matti Nykänen was released.

The emojis were an instant hit from the day they were launched, and achieved the best country branding results ever for Finland.