MSL The Practice - Community Engagement Campaign of the Year

Company: MSL The Practice, Bucharest, Romania
Company Description: MSL The Practice is the most creative and the most awarded PR agency in Romania, with more than 300 awards and nominations for more than 150 communication campaigns, made for companies in various fields. The agency is part of MSL Group and locally, it is part of the largest communication group, Publicis Groupe Romania.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Community Engagement

Nomination Title: Romanian Hygge/ Storia.ro

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: October - December 2020

CONTEXT

Staying at home might have been fun at the beginning of the pandemic, but many started to feel trapped in a house that became insufficient to accommodate all their new needs. Romanians started to look for ways to make their current homes cosier or to search for new homes. People were expecting more from a home - office space, terrace, private space for calls, or started looking for houses instead of apartments.

BRAND CHALLENGE

Storia.ro was a challenger brand in online real estate, with ambitious objectives, but with a lower awareness level than its competitors. With slashed marketing budgets, we had to gain competitive advantage and stay relevant.

TARGET

Core target: 25-44 years old, singles and couples, urban areas, high/ medium income, looking to buy a house within the next 12 months and with a budget over 60k euro. They could be at their first purchase and consider it a lifetime one. Due to their lack of experience, they're anxious and hard to convince, but at the same time, they check all real estate websites available on the market.

Secondary target:all Internet users, 25-44 years old,urban areas, high/ medium income, who might consider using the platform in the future.

OBJECTIVES

1. Raise the prompted awareness of the brand from 20% to 30%, measured on Internet users in 3 months.
2. Reach the same level of visits as our main competitor, Imobiliare.ro. In the previous quarter, we had generated 12% less visits than the market leader.

INSIGHT

When you spend all your time in the house for long, your need to feel good and to accommodate work, leisure and family within the same space becomes paramount. During the pandemic, many lost the good feeling of staying at home.

STRATEGIC APPROACH

Change the perspective about time spent at home. Make Storia.ro the brand that understands what homes should feel like by giving us the perfect word for it.

BIG IDEA

Romanian Hygge - We wanted Romanians to follow the Danish example and bring more hygge into their lives, but Romanians don’t have a word to describe this concept. So the campaign idea was to find together with consumers a way to relate to it, by defining it in a Romanian word.

DEVELOPMENT

Kick-off: Story of Jasper from Denmark, looking for an apartment in Bucharest. He asks for people’s help to define hygge in Romanian.
Phase 1: 10,000 people responded to our survey to understand what makes a comfortable and cozy home for Romanians.
Phase 2: Then 3,000 people tried to invent a new word to describe hygge in Romanian. Two popular Romanian writers also took this challenge. The winner was BINISTE (a combination of two Romanian words – one that means “good feeling” and another that means “silence”). It was proposed by the public and voted online by the public.
Phase 3: Finally we made this new term widely used through content, influencers, social media, mass media and theEmbassy of Denmark in Romania.

The campaign was the talk of the town and we knew it was a success when we realized the new word proved real potential to enter the popular culture. Small businesses began using BINISTE in their social media communication, local producers started making different ornamental objects depicting the new word, people who followed the campaign started using it in their social media posts and stories.

Prompted awareness from 20% to 57%
Market leader in online traffic
Over 3,000 people invented new words in Romanian, even though there was no contest or reward for it
+359% online visibility (2x higher than the main competitor)
500.000+ visitors on the campaign website (92% new users)
+440% share of voice on Facebook (28x higher than the main competitor)
220.000+ interactions on campaign content
2,500 earned stories
279 social media posts from 20 content creators brought a3.1 million reach
100% positive TOV

Campaign Kick-off Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cep4xKqm-lY&;t=11s

The Two Writers Debate - posted on campaign's website:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13DKjWDMTc

Mood Video for Biniste - video to introduce consumers the winner word and explain the localised concept of hygge:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOdqkpwjGdY
Campaign Website:https://hygge.storia.ro/;