Selling Helsinki's "Russian side" to foreign visitors

Scrap "the Daughter of the Baltic"; the capital is being branded as an exotic gateway of East and West

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By Jarmo Huhtanen
     
      Helsinki is setting about promoting itself to foreign tourists by pushing the “Russian exoticism” angle. The days are numbered for the traditional romantic marketing image of Helsinki as “the Daughter of the Baltic”, because people no longer believe in its drawing power. Helsinki is now being re-branded actively as a gateway or rendezvous-point between East and West - a kind of northern Istanbul, if you like.
      Helsinki has been nurturing its new brand image for two years. The time is nigh for putting it out there and into practice.
     
According to Kari Halonen, the City of Helsinki’s Marketing Director, foreign tour operators have taken the new brand on board without demur.
      “I think there are more reservations about it among the Helsinki residents themselves. People of certain generations have lived through phases that they are not necessarily 100% proud about.”
      Halonen is not perturbed by the locals’ possible misgivings about the east-branding. “I’m not really interested in the personal feelings that there might be among the local population, if the idea actually sells.”
     
“I know there are people in Helsinki, and elsewhere in Finland, who rather wonder at why we are basking in our historical past vis-a-vis Russia and the Soviet Union. But then again this is precisely the exotic feature that draws travellers to come here.”
      Halonen points out that for the locals, the hometown “exoticness” is something that is taken for granted, and the eastern influences often go unnoticed as people walk past them.
      “But many foreigners see it differently, and say ‘Hey, this Nordic city has an eastern feel to it.’”
     
Helsinki’s exotic streak is not all about Russian influences or retro Soviet chic.
      “It shows up in the mentality, in the people, in the culinary culture, in the names of streets, in the language, the cultural events, the architecture - even in design.”
      In future, Finnish design will no longer be marketed as “Scandinavian” but as Finnish, because this “has more edge and more of a historical patina than Swedish or Danish design”.
      In the building of the new brand for the capital, the marketers have consciously taken foreigners - and not Finns from the provinces - as their target.
      “Helsinki rules in the domestic market. We do not consider any other Finnish cities as a threat”.
      The real rivals in the market are Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo.
     
The choice of a visual symbol or trademark has fallen on the Lutheran Cathedral in the Senate Square, viewed from different angles.
      The idea is to make it into the same sort of symbolic image as the Duomo in Milan or Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
      The fortress island of Suomenlinna, already a UNESCO Heritage Site, will become the marketing spearhead for “Maritime Helsinki”.
      Another symbol of the proximity of the sea could be Ville Vallgren’s statue of the nubile Havis Amanda in the Market Square.
      In this instance, the city fathers are waiting for the sculpture’s rights to run out in 2010, 70 years after Vallgren’s death in 1940.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.6.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki´s "Russian connection" has come in handy in the past, too (24.4.2007)

Links:
  City of Helsinki: Tourism & Recreation
  What Wikitravel has to say about Helsinki

JARMO HUHTANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jarmo.huhtanen@hs.fi