Background
Year by year, the chance for a snowless Christmas is getting more common in Finland. In the past ten years snow has filled all Finland only four times during the holidays. Regardless of the weather, Finns are still getting in a holiday mood by singing about a snow-filled landscape and dashing through the snow – the favorite carols from past decades.
The Idea
Snowless Christmas carols arose from the need to remind people of the effects of climate change. By removing snow and frost from Finland's most popular Christmas lyrics, we created a cautionary example of the future of Christmas. Together with the Protect Our Winters organization we created a campaign that literally left no one cold.
Our campaign began with a peaceful demonstration in which a local children's choir performed Snowless Christmas Carols on the steps of the Finnish House of Parliament. The same songs were also recorded as band versions and released on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to spread the message of a Snowless Christmas to every home.
Our outdoor advertising used words of the original Christmas carols to question our future. "What if the snow no longer covers the flowers in the valley?", asked the billboards at railway stations and ski resorts all over Finland. Many top athletes, such as Eero Ettala and Enni Rukajärvi, also supported Protect Our Winters by campaigning on their channels for snowy winters.
The Results
The Snowless Christmas Carols campaign also included a series of snowless Christmas cards distributed to consumers at Ruohonjuuri and Burton Store. This holistic low-budget campaign appealed to the target groups with such force that even Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet wrote about the campaign.
Campaign reach was over 89 Million.
