The Olympic Committee and the Family Federation of Finland – ‘Et ole yksin’

Sports should be safe – for everyone.

Objective

’Et ole yksin’ -service offers support through a chat and helpline for children and teenagers who have experienced inappropriate behavior or harassment in sports. Miltton’s role in the project was to help the Olympic Committee and the Family Federation of Finland (Väestöliitto) to support the communication of the service in autumn 2022. The target group of the service and its communication campaign were primarily young and amateur athletes in sports clubs nationwide around Finland. In particular, the campaign was aimed at raising young people’s awareness of the service.

Miltton’s role was to manage the communications package for the campaign, which included influencer communications, paid visibility, and the production of social media content for the sports community. The Olympic Committee and the Family Federation of Finland were looking for a partner that would communicate this important service to young people in a convincing, high-quality, and long-term way.

Vision

The Family Federation of Finland and the Olympic Committee’s ‘Et ole yksin’ -service promotes everyone’s right to enjoy sports safely and to be treated equally and with respect. Through a communication campaign, the service aims to show that victims of bullying or harassment are not alone and that they can find support and a safe place to talk. The campaign also aimed to promote the service as an accessible and low-threshold platform where anyone can anonymously share their experience.

The campaign included carefully curated influencers representing as broad a range of sports as possible to reach different target groups. We also included influencers from outside the sports, such as ‘Jäbät & Tunteet’, a podcast popular with young people and hosted by former athletes and coaches. The main message of the campaign was made clear and repeated in all campaign materials. Distinctive creative material, visuals, and carefully worded materials were created for social media channels, making it easy for sports players to identify with. Together with the Family Federation of Finland and the Olympic Committee, we built a set of communication reach and impact indicators, which we monitored and tracked.

Creative Solution

The main message of the campaign – that no one should be left alone – was to be presented in a creative way. No matter what sport you play, you won’t be alone. This was presented through a sports carousel. The second main theme – ease of use and low threshold to get help – was communicated through chat animations. The campaign visuals continued the important message of the service through image choices, tonality and overall look and feel. The result was images and animations that conveyed the serious theme of the ‘Et ole yksin’ -service subtly and recognizably.

We produced material on two levels. We produced general materials for the Olympic Committee and the Family Federation of Finland to share on their social media channels. The generic materials were also made available and shared by small sports federations, clubs, and teams. For example, we created chat animations to communicate the anonymity and low threshold of use of the service. This was also intended to lower the threshold for sports federations to communicate on a difficult subject.

As a second package, we produced sports-specific and customized visual materials for seven major sports associations. This also included influencer communications, with influencers acting as the “face” of the federations’ campaign, comprehensively reaching the sport’s audience. We wanted the influencers to bring an identifiable factor to the target audiences, adding credibility to the issue and the service: with a unified main message, the influencers always shared the content in their own style and tone.

Results

The campaign was a great success in achieving its objectives. The main achievement was the referral of young people in need to the service, which received a record number of contacts and provided help to those who needed it. In social media, the communication package was a great success: the low cost of reach (€2.16) communicated the appeal of the advertising to the target group. The campaign reached almost 700,000 people and the ads were viewed 2.5 million times.

We were praised for the smooth and straightforward cooperation with the Olympic Committee, the Family Federation of Finland and the seven sports federations. The cooperation with influencers from the sports federations was also successful: they were happy to join the campaign for a good and important cause. The influencers received high praise from their followers for highlighting an important issue and increasing the visibility of the service – many followers discussed their own experiences in the comments and approached the influencers with private messages. The Olympic Committee and the Family Federation of Finland described the success of the campaign as follows:

“The key to our successful campaign was the close cooperation with a broad network, which stemmed from a common desire to build harassment-free sports”.