Some years ago everybody involved in brand building talked about “living the brand.” Now this has been revitalised to a higher level. FINN.no, an online classified company in the Schibsted Media Group, has proved that it is possible to literally live the brand.

Having had tremendous success for many years and knowing that everybody in Norway is affected by FINN.no in some way or another, they started to wonder: Would it be possible to live only on what you find on FINN.no? They decided to find out whether this could be true or not by founding the smallest country in the world: FINNland.

They invited couples to put their ordinary lives on hold for six months and come and live in FINNland — building up a new life from scratch. During the invitation period they had more than 200,000 visits on the Web site, and as many as 800 couples applied for citizenship in FINNland.

Of course, FINNland is not a real country, but an apartment from where the new citizens will live their lives based on products and services that they find on FINN.no. They move in the 7th of March this year, and will live there for six months. Every week they will get new tasks. In addition to decorating and furnishing the apartment, they are going to look for a lot of things that they find on FINN.no like a new car, a holiday, and new jobs.

People can follow their lives on the couple's blog on FINN.no, Facebook and Twitter. There will be a camera team following them a couple of times every week, so in addition to the blog and photos, we will be able to see how they live there “lives” as well. The audience will also be invited to vote for what the couple is going to do next, what they ought to buy, and the like. It will be interesting to see how it all works — and not least — what effect it will have for FINN.no.

For sure, this is a giant living-the-brand-experiment. We all know that it is harder and harder to gain attention from the audience. And that they expect to be entertained and want all kind of activities if they are going to engage themselves in a brand. It will be interesting to see how well FINN.no will succeed with this “living the brand” campaign.

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