Lite Bättre

Huvudstadsbladet is one of Finland’s oldest newspapers and the country’s largest Swedish-language daily. But compared to the major Finnish-language newspapers, its potential audience is small. After more than ten years without active marketing, HBL lacked both a clear marketing communication concept and a long-term marketing plan. Its strategic shift from print to digital subscriptions was already underway, but online growth was not yet strong enough to compensate for cancelled print subscriptions. At the same time, the readership was ageing. Younger Swedish-speaking Finns were moving away from printed news or choosing to subscribe to larger Finnish-language media. With Swedish-speaking Finns making up only 5.2% of Finland’s population, HBL could not rely on a broad mass audience for growth.

Finland had just been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year in a row. But a surprising study revealed something even more interesting: Swedish-speaking Finns reported feeling significantly happier than the rest of the population. This gave us a simple but powerful insight: HBL serves the happiest target audience in the world. We translated this into Lite bättre: a concept built around the Swedish-speaking Finnish mindset of making everyday life a little better. It could be something as small as lighting candles on an ordinary Wednesday, adding flake salt to breakfast bread, or taking a refreshing skinny dip in the archipelago.

The thought also reflected HBL’s journalism. Instead of quick clickbait, HBL’s reporters dig deeper and look wider, making the reader’s understanding of the world a little better too. Rather than creating a single big campaign after years of silence, we built a long-term, culturally relevant platform that could live in smaller, continuous bursts. Hyperlocal executions played a key role, allowing HBL to show locally meaningful content to the right people in the right places. It was equally important that HBL’s own journalists and staff believed in the concept. For the platform to be credible externally, it first had to feel true internally.

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The concept gave HBL a renewed role in the lives of Swedish-speaking Finns and a long-term platform for future marketing. Most importantly, it delivered commercially: Subscriptions exceeded target by 160%.

2022 Vuoden Huiput (Text shortlist)