MFA: Finnish country branding campaign Capital of Metal won a prize at Digital Communication Awards in Germany

Quadriga University of Applied Sciences launched the annual event in 2011. The highly regarded competition for communications and marketing prizes is participated by prestigious brands and marketing communications offices. In 2019, prizes were awarded, for example, to Siemens, Adidas and Lidl. The prizes are presented by a jury consisting of professionals in marketing communications.

"In our country branding work, we boldly highlight different phenomena in our society. Culture plays a key role in a country's identity and in Finland's story. The metal community in particular has been making Finland known in the world for decades. We were very pleased to be able to carry out the campaign in collaboration with several public and private actors,” says Laura Kamras, Director of the Unit for Public Diplomacy.

We arranged a campaign for finding the Capital of Metal in summer 2018. The campaign found that Lemi, a small town in Finland, has the largest number of metal bands per inhabitants in any Finnish localities. At the same time, the campaign highlighted Finland's position as a global centre of the metal world with the largest number of metal bands per capita.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs carried out the campaign in cooperation with the Tuska Festival, Sony Music Finland and the following ten Finnish cities: Helsinki, Tampere, Jyväskylä, Joensuu, Kuopio, Vaasa, Kemi, Lahti, Lappeenranta and Oulu. The creative agency Merikallio & Son participated in the design of the campaign.

More information:

• Digital Communication Awards: https://www.digital awards.eu/
• Capital of Metal: https://www.capitalofmetal.fi/

Inquiries and requests for interviews: Laura Kamras, Director of the Unit for Public Diplomacy, tel. +358 295 351 558.

The Foreign Ministry’s email addresses are of the format firstname.lastname@formin.fi.