Unethical PR in the nearby past in Estonia

When trying to recall unethical PR strategies in Estonia I remembered two incidents - Swedbank's (formerly Hansapank) youth campaign for their NPNK products and services; and the demolition of Sakala cultural centre. I'll try to explain both of them in this blog, at first about the NPNK campaign.

In april, 2005, bigger cities were flooded with rat-signs stating the letters NPNK, they covered all the bus-stops, lightposts, trash-bins and so on. You could find stickers and posters literally everywhere you looked, free t-shirts were distributed in large amounts. At first they stated nothing more than the letters, but a day later a website address appearaed, it was www.zone.ee/npnk, Zone Media provides free web space for everyone that registers. The website claimed to be a website for independent squatters ("Squatting is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting), and their goal remained unclear, yet squats are usually places for young creative people to get together. The campaign appealed to youth and they became carriers of Swedbanks message, unknowingly.

What caught my eye in the first couple of days was that the space where the posters were glued on the bus stations and trash bins, usually a place for ads, was blank beneath the posters. Also, the supplies handed out and glued all over the city must have cost at least a couple of hundred thousand kroons, where would some independent squatters take that kind of money and what what is their purpose? This smelt an awful lot like a lie. A friend of mine was distributing stickers for NPNK, he was hired by the ad agency Tank. By that time it was ofcourse clear that this is some big corporations viral marketing trick. He wasn't told any information on whats behind it, but he was said that it's okay to stick them on Hansapanks atm-s. When I queried the domain www.npnk.ee, of course it was already registered. And what a suprise, it was registered to a ltd company, whose address was Liivalaia 8... guess which companies headquarter is on the same address? Bingo.

After a week NPNK had gotten a lot of publicity - advertisement for free. They got the front cover of Estonias most read daily newspaper, Postimees covered with their logos for 0 kroons, a place that is not even available to buy for advertising. Of course, as we all know from Principles of PR, publicity is uncontrollable. As it revealed that Hansapank had lied on the campaign and claimed to be someone it's not, youth who had respect for subcultures like squatters got angry. At least one official movement was started to protest against Hansapank. They started a squat in Hansapank and demanded the following things:

1. Hansapank will apologize publicly for taking advantage of the squatters subculture, faking a grass-roots campaign, misleading the public and for betraying the trust and cincere wish to support actions like squatting.
2. Hansapank will give up the brand NPNK and campaigns like this and other unethical advertising strategies in their forthcoming economical activity.

It seemed that Hansapank itself was startled as well that their campaign met such a resistance among the very ones they were supposed to influence to become users of NPNK. Being suprised they did at least a couple of things right - they called the protest movement leaders to a meeting. Of course they did not give up on the brand where they had buried a lot of money. But the protesters at least achieved one of their goals - Hansapank apologized publicly and admitted that the campaign, done like this, was a mistake.