Nordic Innovation
Getting an institution heard in the Nordic startup ecosystem.
- /Communication strategy and advisory
- //Stakeholder and media mapping
- ///Animation and film library
Communication strategy, animation and film for the Nordic Council of Ministers’ innovation body.
The Challenge.
Nordic Innovation had the mandate, the programmes and the budget. The founders and investors it existed for had mostly never heard of it. How does an institution join a conversation that happens on stages, in founder communities and in four or five tech publications?
Task.
Nordic Innovation is an organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers, working to make the Nordics a pioneering region for sustainable growth by promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness. It funds and runs programmes across all five countries, with public and private partners in each of them.
Its programmes were aimed at exactly the people who never see an institutional channel: founders, investors, community builders and the small group of journalists who cover them. At the same time the region had a habit of underselling itself. Nordic Innovation described it as a success paradox, a region that produces world class companies and is too modest to say so.
DROBE was asked to build a communication strategy aimed at the Nordic startup ecosystem: who to engage with, what content to make, and how to get into the tech media this audience actually reads. Then to produce the content that carried it, including the film for the digital programme. And to open the doors: we brought Nordic Innovation together with TechBBQ, the Nordic Tech Writers Group and the programme’s own steering group, so the strategy had people behind it and not only content. Strategy first, content second, media third.
By the numbers.
What we did.
Four moves, in order.
1. Who to engage
We mapped the ecosystem country by country: the community organisations, the accelerators, the investors, the founders people listen to, and the ministries already in the room. The conclusion was to go through the platforms the ecosystem had built for itself rather than around them. Then we made the introductions ourselves: TechBBQ, the Nordic Tech Writers Group and the programme’s steering group, the people who could carry Nordic Innovation into the ecosystem.
2. What content to make
Not institutional films. Founders and ministers on camera in the same format, cut short, made where the ecosystem already gathered, in Finland, Iceland, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Denmark, so each event produced a batch of films instead of one. Plus one explainer that could carry a four year programme on its own.
3. How to get into the tech media
The Nordic tech press is small and personal. We worked with the Nordic Tech Writers Group and the route the ecosystem press actually uses: be present at the events they cover, TechBBQ in Copenhagen among them, give them people worth quoting, and let the client speak as a voice in the story rather than as a sponsor. Nordic Innovation ended up quoted in the coverage in its own words.
4. The film that carried it
Innovative Nordic Digital Solutions was a lighthouse project running from 2014 to 2017 under the Nordic Cooperation Programme for Business and Innovation, with the goal of making the Nordic region a digital pioneer. We storyboarded it and animated it into under two minutes.
The animation
Making the Nordic region a digital pioneer.
A programme with five lighthouse projects, three tracks and five governments behind it, told as one hand drawn journey with a Viking holding a smartphone.
Innovative Nordic Digital Solutions, the animation, 1:48
The storyboard
Drawn before a frame was animated.
Seven pages and more than forty numbered frames, action on the left and voice over on the right. The sequence as it was approved.
The logo builds, a map of the Nordics rises with the five countries lit, business people and ministers greet each other, one from every country.
The Nordic Ministers of Business and Innovation have launched a cooperation programme of five lighthouse projects.
The camera races up a mountainside until a summit comes into view.
They have put forth the ambitious goal of developing the Nordics into a pioneer region for new and innovative digital solutions.
A Nordic business man pops up and turns into a Viking carrying a phone as his weapon. Nordic innovations appear one by one along a timeline.
Historically we can be proud of many great Nordic pioneering works, and we have done that pioneering work together.
The whole region lights up. A digital imprint spreads as a shock wave through the countries and erases the borders. Telephone lines pulse between them.
We were the first region to introduce a passport union, and the first to create a regional version of it.
The Viking walks on. A drone tagged NORDIC MADE circles past him. He passes a library, a weather station, a hospital, a police officer.
We have good infrastructure, sound public data and a high level of trust in the public sector.
A row of entrepreneurs appears behind him as the camera pans slowly right.
We also have an extremely talented pool of entrepreneurs, and our countries are always ranked top in innovation.
The timeline returns with today on it, open data and smart government added, and one empty slot ten years out. The Viking steps forward again.
In ten years people might argue that the circumstances were just right. It is not circumstances that make a pioneer. It is decisions. It is actions.
Digital agencies pop up one per country until every country has one, then the map resolves back into the Nordics and the houses connect.
We at Nordic Innovation work closely with the Nordic countries and the digital agencies, connecting the region’s experts.
Light turns across the region, the end line resolves and the swan takes off.
Be the new Nordic public digital pioneer.
The films
Sixteen films from the same strategy.
Recorded in five places: Finland, Iceland, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Denmark. The programme films, ministers and founders on camera, six interviews from Nordic Innovation House, and two from behind the scenes. Fifteen play here; one is password protected.
- Finland
- Iceland
- Silicon Valley
- San Francisco
- Denmark
The programme films
The hand drawn animation for Innovative Nordic Digital Solutions, and the Digital Pioneer film, recorded in Denmark.
The animation, 1:48
Nordic Innovation, Digital Pioneer, 2:11
Ministers and founders on camera
Recorded where the ecosystem met: the Grand Finales of Nordic Startup Awards in Helsinki, Finland, and at Harpa in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Harpa interview, the minister, 3:06
Horizon talks with Bardur Orn Gunnarsson, 2:03
Plain Vanilla on the Nordic perspective, 3:31
Nordic Innovation and Nordic Startup Awards, 2:16
Plain, on being a Nordic startup, 3:31
Nordic Innovation at Nordic Startup Awards, 0:33
Nordic Innovation House
Six short interviews recorded at Nordic Innovation House in Silicon Valley and in San Francisco, one person each.
Anne, 1:50
Eva, 1:27
GRO, 1:29
GRO, second cut, 1:07
Armann, 1:07
Ulla, 1:21
Behind the scenes
The Nordic Tech Writers Group, recorded with TechBBQ in Copenhagen, and the film for the programme’s steering group in Denmark.
Tech writers group, 3:03
Steering group film, 2:13
Results.
Whether the films moved Nordic Innovation’s own reach numbers we cannot see from here, so we do not claim it. What we can show is the library, the strategy it came from, the public record around it, and the people it put Nordic Innovation in the room with: TechBBQ, the Nordic Tech Writers Group and the steering group.
The programme, in public.
Newest first. The coverage, the programme’s own pages and the award seasons.
- EU Startups, the 2016 Grand Finale at Harpa in Reykjavik
- Nordic Innovation, The Nordic Digital Ecosystem: actors, strategies, opportunities, published 2016 under the same programme
- Nordic Innovation, Innovative Nordic Digital Solutions, the lighthouse project 2014 to 2017
- Nordregio, discussion paper on the three tracks and the digital pioneer goal