OBOS, one of Scandinavia’s largest home builders, was one of the main sponsors of SkiTour 2020 with the objective of increasing brand awareness. Our communication challenge was to make OBOS stand out, and achieve coverage despite that the event was produced by SVT and NRK (state broadcasters with no commercial content). Furthermore, it was important to reach out to both young and old target groups.
The link between cross country skiing and a home builder may not seem obvious at first, but it is from the comfort of one’s own home, this sport is most often enjoyed. We also know that 88% of us can’t leave our phones alone when watching TV (Nielsen 2018). This is especially true during broadcasts such as hours-long ski races in the middle of the woods.
The strategy to engage linear tv-viewers, was to introduce the OBOS mascots – three blue guys who spread out along the ski tracks. They became an instant favorite and was a welcome addition to traditional sponsor logos along the ski tracks. If you managed to spot the mascots and tell us what they were doing that particular day on our FB page, you could win 10 000 USD.
Our “2nd screen”-strategy to reach a younger target group, was to establish a TikTok account. From scratch, we gained 34 000 followers and 3,7 M organic views. The massive success came from having great content creators together with the mascots, who captured spontaneous moments from the SkiTour sidelines.
We became the first brand with success on TikTok in Scandinavia, reached 8 M people and increased awareness of OBOS among the SkiTour-viewers with 450%.
The campaign proved to be a highly innovative way to achieve awareness in an otherwise limiting format.



