USING ELECTION NIGHT VIEWING HABITS TO MAKE A RETAIL MESSAGE FEEL LIKE ENTERTAINMENT - ScreenVoice.cz

This campaign connected Bauhaus’s retail messaging to a major national television event. In Finland, municipal and regional elections feature hours-long results TV programmes that track vote counting as results come in. Bauhaus (a major home improvement retailer) partnered with the biggest national broadcaster, Sanoma, to create branded entertainment within this format, using “price” as the central theme.

The timing was strategic. Bauhaus had launched price-focused marketing campaigns the previous October and needed to maintain visibility without becoming repetitive. The team sought a fresh approach – something that would communicate about pricing “in an interesting way” while being “completely new and exceptional” for the brand.

The deadline was non-negotiable. Election night created a fixed target date, making speed essential. The partnership had to move from concept to finished execution on a compressed timeline.”

Campaign objectives

Bauhaus turned a familiar election-night TV ritual into a branded comedy programme that made price the central element rather than a sales argument.

For this campaign, the client wanted to talk about price in a way that also builds the brand, not just in a short-term ‘offer’ message. The advertising needed to be enjoyable to watch, speak in a direct and familiar tone to its audience, and connect with what people were living and talking about at the time.

The solution followed that brief and Hintavaalit (the “Price Election”) was created as a branded entertainment programme and linked it to the municipal and regional elections in Finland. That link shaped both the timing and the tone: the programme arrived when the public already expects results-night television, and it used a humorous tone to make the creative concept even more powerful.

The case also shows how the team protected visibility outside the programme itself. Sanoma promoted the TV programme through a multimedia campaign across its digital network, print, and radio. In print, the promotion ran not only in Finland’s largest daily Helsingin Sanomat and regional Finnish daily Aamulehti, but also on the front page of news outlet HS, alongside smaller print placements.

Creative minds

On the sales house side, Heidi Isohanni highlighted how the team took a “completely crazy” idea and turned it into finished work, as Lasse Nikkari (Head of Formats and Branded Content, Sanoma) described the decision to make brand entertainment and comedy during a period when the news felt “absurdly gloomy.”

Campaign video

The following promotion clip (“Hintavaalit 2025 – Pricing Director Martin’s election speech”) shows the character Martin giving an election-style speech that treats pricing like a campaign promise. He speaks straight to viewers as if they were voters, opening with “good citizen, traveller, hero” and saying the world has changed, which sets the parody tone in seconds.

Results

There are two key performance indicators to keep in mind for this campaign. The average number of viewers of the Hintavaalit programme over seven days was almost 600,000, and the IS.fi stream garnered 1.5 million views.

Bauhaus also frames the work as a base for what comes next. Indeed, the brand plans a multi-year effort around price-focused marketing, linking this TV-ran campaign to their ambition of becoming the number one choice for consumers when it comes to home improvement.