How to keep digitally advanced Estonia running despite its decreasing population of 1.3 million, and to attract and employ overseas ICT specialists?

We decided to look to our neighbour Finland. A country, where we receive 2.4 million tourists every year. Meaning that there’s a lot of Finns constantly looking for a place to stay. We also knew that young, tech-savvy ICT workers prefer to book rooms on Airbnb rather than some traditional sites. Which gave us an idea...

Instead of just offering a room to rent, we introduced the concept of “Book a Job” and set up a series of job offers on Airbnb. Now it was possible for Finns to book a job with a simple click of a button on Airbnb. Why stay only for one night, why not stay longer and come work in Estonia?

This true guerrilla-style approach was an instant success and was picked up by multiple Finnish print and online media. As a result we reached our main target audience and more than 2 000 000 Finnish readers – much bigger audience than the actual number of people browsing Airbnb listings. Even more, when comparing the estimated value of earned media to campaign's minimal budget (and zero media budget), the return on investment comes out as staggering 5081%.