The Creative Marketing Ideas Series: Storia Romania: The Creative Process of Inventing a New Word
Creative marketing ideas from The OLX Group companies that make the future of trade happen
When you see marketing excellence, you know it. It powerfully blends art and science, using data to craft stories and build connections.
Across all our brands at OLX Group, the diversity of the marketing experiences always amaze us. These marketing experiences have the power to stir up emotions and stay in our minds for a long time. They are holistic experiences that create memories.
We’d like to highlight recent successful marketing experiences at OLX Group, and how they’re helping OLX Group drive the future of trade. For this series, we chose a few for you across all our brands in more than 30 countries. For each experience, we’ll discuss the key takeaway and marketing insights.
Check other blog posts in the series: OLX Autos and OLX Brasil
Storia Campaign: The Romanian-style ‘Hygge’
The Takeaway: Storia — Where comfort & coziness are delivered, & new words are invented; The full, business-growing power of the marketing function comes way upstream — from creating markets.
Storia, the go-to platform for real estate in Romania, ran a campaign to find the Romanian word for Hygge. Hygge is a Danish concept of coziness and comfort at home. It’s about wellbeing, and intimacy. To visualize it, think about drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace.
Since COVID-19 has necessitated that we all spend more time at home, the Storia marketing team recognized the importance of comfort and coziness at home. So, they decided to ask Romanians, “What makes you comfortable and cozy at home?”
- 42% of respondents said the presence of another person contributed to happiness in the home.
- 37% of folks said drinking tea makes them comfortable at home.
- 20% of people associated the sound of rain at the window with feeling cozy at home.
- 67% of people used the word “peace” to describe wellbeing at home, with other words like “joy” and “ease” being common.
Following this, the marketing team at Storia set out to create the Romanian word for Hygge — seeing a need for their own term. They made this video, which follows a man from Denmark’s move to Bucharest.
The man is on the quest to find the perfect apartment, seeking to find Hygge. He meets a local friend. To help his friend understand Hygge, the man gives plenty of examples, describing Hygge as a “warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you excited to be home.” The story then dives into what the Romanian term for Hygge should be. The two actors show why this is so complicated, and then ask the viewers to invent the word.
To help with inventing a word for Hygge, Storia turned to two creative writers, Iulian Tănase and Iv Cel Naiv, to help with the task. The diversity and breadth of Hygge’s meaning made it tough to come up with the perfect translation at first. Watch this video to discover the creative process of inventing a new word:
As Iulian Tănase said, you feel Hygge when you’re “with the kids” or “laying around and watching a movie.” More specifically, Hygge is a moment where there’s “inner peace taking place” and your mind goes home.
Expanding on that, Iv Cel Naiv stated that “there’s so much to say” about Hygge. Therefore, the new word “should be about at least two things” and ideally three or four.
With all that in mind, the two creative writers invented the Romanian word for hygge:
A combination of nice and quiet, Biniste is about a positive state of mind and the ability of a space to create peace. In Romania, every apartment or house needs Biniste — because that’s how you feel at ease, comfortable, and happy in your home.
For Storia, the marketing campaign held an overarching business purpose: To prove Storia is the platform where users can find their dream home, a place where they’ll have Biniste. The story of inventing the word displayed a commitment to helping Romanians improve their wellbeing at home.
Key Takeaways
Innovation needs marketing
Too often, we think of marketing in the context of acquiring and retaining customers. Yet Storia’s creative campaign shows marketing excellence is not only a part of innovation, but it’s also a driver of innovation.
By creating the word Biniste, Storia has identified the central need of home shoppers and has delivered value to the Romanian real estate market. Storia recognized the need for Hygge in Romania, especially as the pandemic has kept us in more than ever before. They’ve shown their users that Storia is where you find Hygge — or Biniste.
As you can, innovation and marketing are intertwined. A Harvard Business Review article expands on this idea, stating that “understanding people’s fundamental needs and drivers, identifying customers, and developing the entire go-to-market and usage ecosystem are the essential aspects of marketing — and the ones that the success of innovations, especially breakthrough ones, hinge upon.”
A robust marketing trend analysis reveals the cultural, social, and psychological dynamics that should be addressed in the development of and communication about an innovative product.
Great innovation and great marketing go hand in hand. The Storia campaign is proof of that.
Here are some of the awards the campaign received:
- Best campaign in the Balkans, EMEA Sabre Awards (International PR competition)
- Best campaign in Crowdsourcing & Co-creating, EMEA Sabre Awards (International PR competition)
- Best Consumer PR campaign for an existing product, IPRA Golden World Awards (International PR competition)
- Gold in the Engaged Community category — Stevie Awards 2021 (International business competition)
- Gold for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year — Community Engagement — Stevie Awards (International business competition)
- Bronze in the Interactive & Mobile category, ADCE Festival (European advertising festival)
Check other blog posts in the series: OLX Autos and OLX Brasil
