TBWA

Client: City of Lahti
Product: City of Lahti
Title: Lahti - European Green Capital 2021
Media: Experimental / Multimedia
Country: Finland
Date Of Campaign: 1.1.2021 - 31.12.2021

Background: European Green Capital is an official title given out by the European Commission.Since both the title and the city of Lahti weren’t that well-known, it was our job to make them famous. Lahti is the forerunner in sustainability and our goal was also to inspire other cities to take action.

Idea: Using the city as a communications platform, we created a series of events and actions that combined Lahti’s communication themes with the city’s culture, engaged people on a local level and created global news stories. To make Lahti and its environmental milestones famous, we created a series of new projects to get the world interested. 1) Forget city bikes here comes the city skis! The world’s first urban ski-sharing program to promote sustainable transport2) Beer made out of goose poop to communicate about circularity3) Remote workstations placed in the local wilderness to show how important nature is for mental health4) Got the local carbon-neutral hockey team to trade in their jersey numbers for environmental facts and stats. For example Ryan Lasch #19 became #2019 – Lahti a Coal-free city since 2019?Environmental comms is traditionally a field where it’s easy to preach to the choir, but difficult to get new audiences on board. By taking an approach of creating innovative projects that communicate big topics through tangible experiences, Lahti was able to make the environment everyone’s business.

Results: Lahti’s year reached 3.3 billion people through PR and social media. Notable mentions include CNN, BBC, GQ, The Wired, Fast Company and Forbes. Total earned media mentions at the moment are 3908 and the earned media value is 30.5 million euros. At the end of the year Lahti was awarded the title of European Best Sustainable Destination of 2022 and made it as #9 (out of over 400 destinations) in Best places to travel in Europe 2022 competition. Over half a million of travellers from 182 countries voted. Also CNN chose Lahti for their famous "Where to travel in 2022" list. The projects have inspired countless citizens and even other cities to take action. Some of the executions like Remote Workstations and City Ski sharing-program have already scaled across different European cities. The locals also enjoyed the year. Citizens had +15% increase in positive public sentiment towards the Green Capital year.