At the heart of our campaign was a cutting story of a tough Estonian family of six, who has thus far managed to defy the odds. However, not without countless sacrifices. As the father works in Finland to support the family, the mother has a full-time job in Estonia raising four children most of the time by herself.

Our message: “Let’s reunite these families by making it our mission to invest in creating jobs in Estonia.”

Since we had no budget to run TV ads, we made a 4.5 minute film for social media that was able to encapsulate the true essence of the problem and show on what scale and how deeply people are affected by it. Part of it was filmed in Finland to cover the father's side of the story and how he copes with being most of the time away from his family. The other part filmed in Estonia demonstrated how the mother and four children lived their day to day lives without their father present. We launched it on Facebook a month before Christmas – the time of the year where people think about being with their loved ones probably the most. Fortunately the story turned out to be so touching that it went really viral.

The results were overwhelming as we saw how many people in Estonia are deeply affected by this. Through social media our film reached almost a third (29%) of the population. The media was buzzing and numerous articles covering our campaign started pouring in as people shared their own experiences. Prime time talk shows picked up on the topic of Estonians working abroad to discuss solutions to the problem. Coop Bank received supportive phone calls from well-respected Estonian entrepreneurs. By the end of 2017 the number of Coop Bank’s business clients had increased by 24% and investment loans grown by 173%. In only two months Coop Bank had made it to the top 10 of most googled words in Estonia in 2017. No other brand was in that list. According to a post-campaign study carried out by the media agency, Coop Bank received an awareness level that was two times higher than another bank launched at the exact same time.