Suomen Yrittäjät

Yrittäjät is a well-established organization, known across the country, but their brand aesthetics has been carrying design roots from their birth in the 90’s. Our challenge? How to take a seasoned icon and turn it into a relevant player in today’s marketing field.

Yrittäjät needed a refresh that would keep them recognizable to their existing audience, while intriguing new target groups, especially the younger generations and the entrepreneurs-to-be.

Our strategic approach was to fully change the way Yrittäjät viewed their marketing. They needed to move from individual, scattered campaign endeavors into a coherent, conceptual way of communicating. Yrittäjät, with its many independent offices across Finland, needed a consistent thread that would tie together all their communication under an agile concept strategically addressed to real entrepreneurs.

To better understand the target group, we thoroughly studied the marketing field. We noticed that marketing aimed for entrepreneurs wasn’t portraying their real day-to-day life. Entrepreneurship was still seen as something vague and impersonal, lacking the emotional touch-points that the Finnish youth could identify with.

We needed to bravely crack open the prevailing idea of an entrepreneur life – and go beyond the business framework and into the heart of an entrepreneur. So, we created a marketing concept that celebrates entrepreneurship in all its glory but also in all its hardships.

We based our concept in honest and open storytelling of entrepreneur life with real people and their real-life successes and losses. Within the concept, the audience gets to travel to the good and bad days of entrepreneurship with documented stories tied within a consistent photo- and videography.

Our main campaign concept extended to all elements of the Yrittäjät brand. In tone of voice, we created the feeling of an approachable organization through vivid entrepreneur stories through various channels. We also used the tone derived from our concept philosophy to rewrite the company offering and unique selling points, as well as strategically crystallizing the whole Yrittäjät service.

This storytelling then transcended to their brand photography and videography, where we focused on real people, real entrepreneurs, across all manner of professions. We told the story of their very real struggles, triumphs, and daily lives.

In look & feel, as well as creating a plethora of new graphical assets, we modernized their well-known Y -symbol and typographic hierarchy.

By utilizing the existing brand work of an esteemed organization, we refreshed the Yrittäjät brand to the design level and attention-to-detail of the modern, quality-conscious consumer. All our work was ultimately updated into the Yrittäjät brand manual.

Together with the client, our persistent work with the well-resonating campaign quickly found its audience. And as a trusted partner and lead agency for Yrittäjät, we have the ingredients for greatness, and our story together is just beginning.