City of Helsinki

Sadboirami

Content Creation

Influencer Marketing

Social Media Management

Digital Marketing

Ambient OOH

How do you make the digitalization of a youth services membership card feel like the biggest heartbreak of teenage life? When Helsinki City Youth Services needed to tell tens of thousands of young people that their beloved “Jässäri” card was going digital, the brief was anything but glamorous. Our solution: turn a bureaucratic change into a cultural moment by creating Sadboirami, a virtual Sadboi artist who poured his heart out over losing the physical card. Through TikTok, music, and mystery marketing, Sadboirami captured teens’ attention and turned an administrative update into an emotional story that spread organically.

Starting point

Jässäri, the Helsinki City Youth Services membership card, is extremely well-known and popular among young people in Helsinki. It grants access to youth centers, hobbies, and a wide range of free or nearly free services offered by the city. Now Jässäri was moving into digital form, and young people needed to be informed about this change.

It wasn’t the world’s most exciting brief, but the change was important and affected thousands of teenagers. The challenge: how do you get their attention, when almost everything else in their lives seems more interesting than the digitalization of a membership card?

We found inspiration in Sadboi culture: a phenomenon that resonates with teens much like the emo subculture of the early 2000s. Where emo was dark and dramatic, Sadboi is about young men openly sharing feelings, often amplifying heartbreak or even inventing it, in ways that connect deeply with their peers. Sadboi is popular partly because it reflects the growing acceptance of men showing emotions, yet still feels rebellious and attention-grabbing.

Approach

We decided to tell the story of Jässäri’s transition as if it were an epic heartbreak. We gave voice to the “only teenager in Helsinki” who would truly miss the physical card and its place in his life.

Thus, Sadboirami was born: a virtual artist—sensitive, dramatic, and authentic—who shared his heartbreak across multiple channels. He produced heart-wrenching TikTok content, released a breakup song, and finally revealed that his great sorrow was caused by nothing more than Jässäri going digital.

The virtual influencer was created by combining Sound + Face + Technology:

Sound We chose Fetti, one of Finland’s leading artists in his genre, to be Sadboirami’s voice. Fetti brought credibility and even co-wrote the lyrics, ensuring the song was genuinely good, not a parody.
‍Face For the look, we cast Oula, who had the confidence and Sadboi style to complete the persona. His appearances were performed with Fetti’s voice as overdub.‍
Technology With a small budget, we used Suno to cost-efficiently compose the base of the track, then re-recorded instruments to make sure the final song felt authentic and human.

The campaign kicked off with cryptic teasers: Sadboirami’s TikTok channel and posters with QR codes in youth spaces, pointing to the new song’s release date. Stickers and posters created buzz, especially in youth centers, sparking speculation: who was Sadboirami?

Because TikTok’s regulations prevent the city from directly targeting under-18 audiences, we relied on Sadboirami’s own channel to spread the word organically. The content resonated with teens while subtly delivering the core message: Jässäri is going digital.