'Access via Finland' campaign promoting the Southern Finland Transport Corridor is a success
The North European Logistics Institute (NELI), which is run by Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences, is spearheading the transregional ELLO project, which has been set up to significantly boost the international profile of the Southern Finland Transport Corridor. The Access via Finland campaign, which aims to develop the joint marketing of the region's logistics companies, started up at the beginning of 2011.
The marketing campaign serves the entire logistics network in Southern Finland and is geared towards organisations that decide on transport routes. The campaign has particularly focused on appealing to international business destined for the Russian market and industrial companies and logistics operators. The campaign has helped to give Finnish route marketing a cohesive appearance and highlighted the security of transporting goods through Finland, as well as the service potential and troubleshooting ability of the Finnish logistics sector.
The marketing campaign has provided an opportunity to test new digital marketing communications methods. The biggest hit with visitors to the campaign website has been a digital "route game", which features case examples of the flows of different goods through Finland. A Google Ads advertising campaign has managed to attract half of all visitors to the website. The web pages have acted as an excellent channel by which to raise the profile of the Finnish route, as there have been some 24,000 visitors from 83 countries in just ten months.
The Finnish route has also been marketed at international trade fairs over the past year. The Access via Finland brand has been on prominent display at major events, including TransRussia, Russia's biggest logistics exhibition held in Moscow, the Transport & Logistik exhibition in Munich, which is the biggest logistics exhibition in the world, as well as the CILF fair in Shenzhen, which is China's largest and the world's second largest logistics fair. The huge amount of interest shown at the exhibitions shows that, even after a few years of economic decline, the Finnish transportation route is still in demand.
In September, Access via Finland invited the international media to visit Finland's logistical centres. As a result of the visit, a number of articles have already been published and a Russian delegation is coming to take a closer look at Finnish logistical know-how on the strength of those articles.
New business opportunities opened up at the trade mission event in St Petersburg in October. Almost 100 Russians attended a seminar, while a contact-building session in the afternoon saw 15 Finnish companies and 30 Russian companies in attendance.
All in all, the campaign year has been a success and the goal is now to continue the marketing campaign with the aid of a follow-up project.
ELLO is a project that is partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and which aims to develop the competitiveness of the Southern Finland Transport Corridor. Through the project, an international marketing campaign is being set up to boost the profile of the transport corridor, new information is being compiled about the performance of the logistics industry and new business opportunities to develop the ecology and safety of logistics clusters are being identified. The project will last from 1 September 2009 until 30 April 2012 and the overall budget is approx. 1.8 million euros.
The ELLO project is being carried out with North European Logistics Institute (NELI), Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences, the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Northern Dimension Research Centre (NORDI), HAMK University of Applied Sciences, Turku Science Park and the University of Turku Centre for Maritime Studies (MKK).
For further information, please visit:
Teija Suoknuuti
NELI - North European Logistics Institute
Project Manager
Heikinkatu 7
48100 KOTKA, Finland
+358 44 702 8517
firstname.surname@kyamk.fi
