If we aren’t allowed to talk about the benefits – let the product prove its power. We decided to put our product to the ultimate test. We asked Ian Wright, the world-renowned traveler from Lonely Planet, to do what even toddlers know is forbidden: lick the dirtiest places in Europe. At the same time, Ian consumed our Valio products and interviewed gut health experts during his journey. We filmed this journey and documentary, The Lick-Hikers Guide to Inner Strength, was born.

We contacted the biggest media influencers and bloggers in Finland and invited them to the premiere of our documentary. The event took place right before summer holidays – when Nordic people travel a lot and are more concerned into bad bacteria.

And we did a big bang. The documentary trailers went out one week before our premiere.

The premiere morning started with a few radio interviews – and lickings – at different studios with Ian. Then we arranged a PR event where we first showed our documentary for the first time. At the end of the day the documentary was shown to a big audience on the biggest TV channel in Finland. Ian and the Lick-Hikers Guide also appeared in the main news programs, and even the national non-commercial channel raised our subject in their main magazine program.

Although our content was commercial and produced by the biggest dairy company in Finland, we were able to get the whole documentary on primetime TV on the biggest channel in Finland. During the first week 200 000 Finns (population 5,4 million) had seen it. In addition, we were able to spread the message in earned media: three of the main media outlets covered the story in their journalistic content.

7000 Finns even watched the entire 22-minute documentary via the YouTube pre-roll ad before viewing their selected funny cat video.