"Welcome to Estonia" brand to be hijacked

It was 5 days ago when I was wondering that “Welcome to Estonia” should be reconsidered. Didn’t take even a year. Done.

The new approach to the “Welcome to Estonia” changed the slogan “Positively transforming” into “Positively surprising”. Good choice. I like surprises, who doesn’t? Digging deeper into the new brand book and website, released by EAS, I realize that this all is a big brief to what’s up to come.

Instead of directing all resources out of Estonia, this time the attention in pointed to local inhabitants, to enhance the self-consciousness of local people, so they could be the best delegates to the world. In case somebody has forgotten our roots and essence, EAS has put together very thorough brand book. A guide to the Estonia (n)‘ s soul. It also gives guidelines what to tell when creating an advertising message for “Welcome to Estonia” or for somebody who is just short in words. Guidelines are created for four major groups:

• Tourists (tourism) 
  
• Businessmen (business) 
  
• Temporary students and inhabitants (immigration)
  
• Native Estonians (inner-tourism)

The workgroup seems fairly professional, the studies conducted thorough and time passed from previous campaign has been long enough to learn from mistakes. As we are dealing with “surprises” here, then I believe in Estonian people’s creativity and boldness. We are the people of innovation. We are small, we can afford it.

At least now nobody can say that the new campaign is boring, bad or ineffective as everybody has a chance to speak up or create their own communication ideas, which are better.

It seems that the workgroup has also read the book by Alex Wipperfurth “Brand Hijack- Marketing without Marketing”. Giving the power to the people. It has many pros and cons, in this case i hope the pros will win.