Introducing Estonia to the world is an ongoing process. By using unified principles, messages, and visuals, our impact is bigger and more cost-effective. The brand visual language and the toolbox provide a solid foundation, which means that each event and campaign does not have to start the design process from scratch.

The clear and positive image of Estonia benefits us all. It helps us to be more successful selling Estonian products and services, it increases the number of tourists, students, and talent coming to Estonia. In addition to the economic effects, the image also impacts our political position in the world and helps to grant our security.

In 2017 EAS introduced the new brand Estonia principles, presentations, graphics, photo bank, and the official Aino typeface. In 2018 the development of these assets continued. An important change was to merge the brand guidelines and the toolbox into a single web page (brand.estonia.ee) to improve the user experience. Now it is even easier for everybody to find and use messages, photos and presentations to introduce Estonia. 557 new materials were added to the toolbox by different parties.

In addition to interest in our experience by a number of foreign countries, the brand of Estonia was also awarded “Best Use of Design” award at the leading location marketing conference City Nation Place Global taking place in London.

brand estonia 2018 summary

Web usage

Brand.estonia.ee web page had 45 659 unique visits in 2018, with 3370 new registered users. Downloads of materials grew 61% over year and reached almost 20 000.

In addition to continuing user feedback, a CSAT survey was also conducted, in which the user satisfaction with content and the technical solutions was evaluated on a scale of five. The result was a very positive 4.2.

Other web pages introducing Estonia also witnessed growth, with Google Analytics showing more than 6 million unique visitors. Compared to last year the number of visitors grew by a million.

Growth of visits:

New tools

557 new materials were added to the toolbox during the year. Including over 30 videos introducing e-health, Estonian food, industry, reasons for working in Estonia, and Estonia in general. Also, the video introducing brand Estonia was updated.

brand estonia 2018 summary

Presentations were updated with materials for introducing our science, industry and business environment. Several existing presentations were all updated and translated to German, French, Spanish and Russian.

brand estonia 2018 summary

Five new industry slogans, used to promote a specific sector, were added (there are 14 industry slogans overall, all of them available here):

  • wood industry “Traditional Values, Smart Technologies.”
  • small sea craft industry “Taking Traditions to New Horizons.”
  • medical industry “Estonia. Where Bright Ideas Meet a Can Do Spirit.”
  • ship building “Estonia. Sea smart.”
  • machinery “Estonia. Producing Excellence.”

To promote the success story of e-Estonia 11 VR-videos were created along with a web page, where everybody can watch and experience them. The videos are an important part of the digital exhibition of the e-Estonia Briefing Centre and by the end of the year they had been viewed over 17 000 times.

Most important events and campaigns

The materials introducing Estonia were used at more than 100 different events in 22 countries.

brand estonia 2018 summary

This includes 32 trade exhibitions where over 200 Estonian companies promoted their products or services. Industries which grew their export potential included food (SIAL France, SIAL China, Gulfood), construction (Nordbygg 2018), wood and furniture (Carrefour International du Bois, IMM Cologne), biotechnology (BIO International Convention), IT and fintech (Mobile World Congress, Money 2020), electronics (Smart City Expo, Electronica 2018), defence (UMEX, Eurosatory), and boat and ship building (Boot 2018, SMM).

“One of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) booths at the exhibition. We should continue using this kind of bold design also in the future.”

—Hansab Group

“Stood out, seemed bigger than it actually was, because of the colours that were used.”

— Haapsalu Uksetehase AS

“Clean, beautiful, eye-catching, usable (good planning for rooms).”

—Threod Systems

In addition to international trade exhibitions, the visual language and the unified messaging was used at conferences, high level visits, networking events and receptions.

The highlights included the speech by the President of Estonia at the World Knowledge Forum in South Korea, the Tallinn Digital Summit and the Create 18 Conference organised by Junior Achievement.

e-Estonia Briefing Centre was visited by 824 delegations with 8800 members, including the king of Netherlands, the President of Austria, the Australian minister of Digital Transformation and IT minister of India.

At the Tallinn Airport a gate area (Gate 3) – used by at least 3 million people yearly – dedicated to introducing Estonia was opened. It is also possible to watch VR videos introducing Estonia at the gate.

brand estonia 2018 summary

The long-term tourism campaign #EstonianWay used 45 global and local influencers/celebrities to promote 243 tourism companies and attractions from all over Estonia to a world audience. The campaign is ongoing, but by the end of year it had reached 90 million people in 102 countries, had 2.1 million video views and 419 000 reactions on social media.

Over 5500 international IT workers from 126 countries participated in the recruitment campaign Career Hunt. The campaign was organised in cooperation with 12 renown Estonian companies, which also contributed financially to the project.

brand estonia 2018 summary

Estonian companies offered the 12 first job positions, of which more than half were instantly filled after job interviews. As a result of the campaign over 250 news stories and articles were published in several countries introducing Estonia as a desirable place to work. As a result of the campaign, almost all the participating companies were interested in repeating the campaign

Also notable is the fact that manufacturer of the new Estonian ID cards and digital ID’s use elements of brand of Estonia.

brand estonia 2018 summary
brand estonia 2018 summary

Feedback and recognition

Different campaigns and tools introducing Estonia won 16 awards last year. The most important of these was the “Best Use of Design” award at the leading location marketing conference City Nation Place Global taking place in London.

Many other countries have shown interest in our experience and we have talked about our brand toolbox at conferences in Finland and Lithuania, we have been visited by delegations from Lithuania and Montenegro and have received written enquiries from Denmark, Netherlands, and Aruba.

Forbes JAPAN published three articles about our brand (read them here, here and here two of which in web and one in print, “Design is good business” special edition). The Lithuanian magazine N WIND also published an article about country marketing.

Plans for 2019

This year we plan to continue adding and updating materials. We will add more photos for business tourism, energy, smart industry, innovative and high-tech products, e-services, data science, open data and AI.

We will create new presentations for “shared service centres” and Study in Estonia and we will update the e-Estonia presentation. The business environment and e-Estonia presentations will be translated to Russian, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese.

EAS Trade Development Agency together with trade agencies will start developing marketing materials for exporting sectors.

We also plan to create guidelines for making web pages and together with the Ministry of Rural Affairs we will create a web page introducing Estonian food industry.

We will also conduct workshops for users of the marketing materials.