The #EpicEstonia social media campaign was created by the Estonian Tourism Board to promote tourism in Estonia. It offered 97 people unique experiences in Estonia and had them share their experiences on social media. The campaign analyzed the Dragonfly Effect model and was successful in increasing awareness of Estonia and driving a 231% increase in tourism from Sweden. While effective, the campaign could be improved by adding videos earlier to better engage audiences, increasing social media followers, and conducting post-campaign research.

1. Assignment 2
Social Media Campaign
#EpicEstonia
By
Muath A. Bin Hussain
Jack Welch Management Institute
Dr. Emad Rahim
JWI 518, Marketing in a Global Environment
May 29, 2016

2. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 1
Abstract
#EpicEstonia is a hashtag that represents the social media campaign that was created to
promote tourism in the country of Estonia. The campaign went viral and people were engaged
in the campaign. This report analyzes the campaign using the Dragonfly Effect Model using
both the wings and design principles. In addition, recommendations to improve the campaign
are provided in this report. This report is an assignment of the course of JWI518 Marketing in
a Global Environment to reflect students learning and understanding.

3. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 2
Introduction
Estonia is a European country. Not so many people know about it. And a lot of people just
heard about it recently. The Estonian government decided to increase awareness, grab
attention and build interest of people around the world (Week 8, Lecture 2). In order to do so,
the Official Tourism Board of Estonia have created a social media campaign using
#EpicEstonia hashtag in social medias such as twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
The campaign started in July 2015. Based on some blogs, #EpicEstonia campaign went viral
and people were engaged. It is considered as one of the top influential social media
campaigns in 2015 (David, 2015).
#EpicEstonia campaign is based around research that suggests people increasingly book their
holidays based on what other people say about their own experiences (Simpson, 2015).
The campaign started by asking Estonians to suggest some experiences that Swedes can
enjoy, then they enhanced the look and feel of these experiences and promoted 97 “epic
experiences” to Swedes to compete and win the prizes of enjoying these experiences.
Winners’ experiences were montaged and published in YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to
tell the stories.
In this report, we analyze and evaluate the campaign using Dragonfly Effect Model and
provide recommendations to improve such a campaign to have more impact.
The campaign website and accounts in social media are the following:
Platform or Media Account or Link
Website https://www.visitestonia.com/en/
http://epicestonia.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/visitestonia/
Twitter @visitestonia
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/visitestonia/
Instagram @visitestonia

4. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 3
Analysis and Evaluation of the Campaign
The way this campaign is analyzed is by using the Dragonfly Effect Model. There are four
wings to the model and around 17 design principles under these wings. We will use these
wings and principles to analyze and evaluate #EpicEstonia social media campaign.
Wing 1: Focus
For the social media campaign to be effective. The campaign manager should put clear focus
on certain things such as: Audience (Humanistic), actions or tasks (Actionable), metrics
(Testable), clear goals (clarity), impact and meaning (Happiness). These things are the design
principles of the first wing: Focus.
Humanistic. The campaign focused on adventurous Swedes who like to travel and do
some activities while travelling. The focus was on their need to have a unique experience in a
new country that is “epic”.
Actionable. The campaign defined certain tasks with short term goals to achieve long
term goals. The long term goals are to increase number of tourists in Estonia and increase
people awareness. The short term goals and tasks to help achieving the long term goals are:
 Give 97 people epic journey to Estonia. (The number 97 represents the number of
years Estonia has been independent)
 let these people record and share their experience with others
 publish these experience in social media using #EpicEstonia hashtags
 increase number of talks about #EpicEstonia so more people become aware of it.
Testable. Campaign’s metrics to monitor progress and success are focus around how
many people participated in the campaign, saw it, or showed interest. These metrics are the
following: number of winners, number of tweets and post in social media using hashtag

5. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 4
#EpicEstonia. Website visitors, number of views of YouTube videos, number of followers
and subscription. All these metrics are used for the short term goal. And for the long term
goal, the main metric can be the percentage increase of number of tourists.
Clarity. The goal is clear for the campaign and they stuck to it. They want to increase
awareness about the country and engage people to talk about it and share their experience.
The main and critical target is to have 97 winners to share their experience. Otherwise the
campaign is subject to failure.
Happiness. If short and long term goals are achieved, Estonian people and audience
will be happy. The happiness can be achieved by recognition, enjoying experience and
sharing personal feelings and experience. And for the campaign’s people, achieving goals
will bring happiness to them and the Estonians.
Overall, #EpicEstonian campaign did very well in the first wing and its design principles.
Wing 2: Grab Attention
It is critical for the campaign to grab people’s attention. Using the design principles of this
wing, this is what #EpciEstonia did in the campaign:
Personal. The hook they used is to offer free adventurous journey and experiences. It
grabs the attention of those who like to try new things. The campaign offers 97 persons a
different new experience.
Unexpected. These 97 people will consume a product; tourism, and they will talk
about it and share their experience. “People like consuming and then sharing new
information” (Aaker et all, 2010). And this is what the campaign provided, a journey to
Estonia, and platforms to share your experience with others. This is not expected and it is
considered as a good opportunity.

6. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 5
Visceral. This is a principle in which #EpicEstonia did not do well. Although the
campaign website shows picture of Estonia, videos or sounds to trigger senses were not
available at the beginning. There was no promotional video for the campaign. However, in
later stages, the campaign produced videos to share the experience and they included music
and sound to trigger senses.
Visual. “Show it, don’t tell it”. #EpicEstonia used a website and photos to grab
Swedes’ attention. However, at the begging there was no video or clip that can grab more
attention. But once winners went through the experience, they produced videos to show the
experience.
This was the first tweet by the official account to announce the campaign in twitter:
https://twitter.com/visitestonia/status/616503794285867008
In the second wing; grab attention, #EpicEstonia did a moderate job. They could have done
better in this wing as we will discuss in the recommendations section.
Wing 3: Engage Others
The campaign successfully engaged two types of audience; Estonians, and Swedes (target
customers). Estonians participated in designing and suggesting epic experiences that Swedes
can enjoy. Swedes participated and engaged in competing to win the prizes, which are the 97
epic experiences.
Using the design principles, here we evaluate the campaign on this wing:
Tell a story. The campaign allowed winners to tell their stories by producing videos
and share them to others so people can see a story for each experience. The winners were
considered as social media ambassadors.

7. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 6
Empathize. The campaign did well in this design principle with the Estonians. The
emotion of pride and loving the country was triggered. As a results, Estonians participated by
suggesting epic experiences to the campaign. For Swedes the campaign empathized the
willingness to try new things and be adventurous. About 6550 Swedes applied to these
experiences. (“Epic Estonia Case Study”, 2015).
Authenticity. The campaign tried to show the unique characteristics of the country
and its people. It was authentic and it showed that by displaying their cultures, maps,
traditions, arts and activities. For example, one of the experience was to dive into the only
underwater prison in the world.
Match the media. The communication, message, and context were aligned. The
videos they published about winners’ experience were on time and during the campaign.
Wing 4: Take Action
The campaign must have some metrics and results that include others to take some actions.
The campaign managers should empower and enable people to take these actions. In this
section we analyze how the campaign did in the design principles of this wing.
Easy. Whether you applied to epic experiences to win, or you want to travel to
Estonia on your own, the website campaign made it very easy for you. Collaborating with a
travel and tourism agency called Tallink, it was, easy to arrange your trip to Estonia
Fun. The fun part is on the winning reward. Applicants have a chance to win.
Although they do not compete, but it sounds fun to wait for the results.
Tailored. Giving the options of 97 experiences, people preferences were considered.
The experiences were classified in one of these categories: health and beauty, nature and

8. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 7
adventures, food and cuisine, music and entertainment, family activities, or culture and
history.
Open. Communications means were provided in the website and also in the social
media accounts. Although the campaign went viral to reach other countries, only Swedes
were targeted.
The campaign empowered audience to take action and did a good job in following the design
principles.
Campaign Results
The campaign outreached different countries very well and increased people awareness about
the country and the potential tourism programs. Some of the numbers and results of the
metrics mentioned in the first Wing are the following (“Epic Estonia Case Study”, 2015):
 6550 applicants to the #EpicEstonia experience
 97 winners. And they shared their experiences
 Bloggers shared information and the number of reaches to these blogs was 2,090,500.
 178,841 likes on Facebook’s posts by social media ambassadors
 1,817 #EpicEstonia pictures on Instagram and 156,451 engagements.
 Ambassadors have 806,342 followers on Instagram
 Total reach in social media: 3,115,883
 Traffic to visit Estonia from Sweden was increased 231%.
These numbers showed that the campaign was successful and achieved short and long term
goals.

9. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 8
Recommendations to Improve the Campaign
#EpicEstonia campaign was effective and achieved its goals. However, there are some
improvements that we recommend in this section. The recommendations are as follows:
 To engage more people and grab their attentions, the website Epicestonia.com should
have other languages to reach more people, especially English. Despite the fact that the
language used is English in social media, visitestonia.com, and YouTube’s videos, the
campaign website does not show clearly if there is an English version. I used Chrome
translation tool to translate the website.
 It would be better if the campaign used a teaser video to promote the campaign and
improve the design principles of Visual and Visceral of Wing 2: Grab Attention,
 The number of views per experience video is not consistent. The earlier videos on
average have been viewed more than later videos. To improve the number of views, it is
recommended to add unexpected events in each video to grab people attention and attract
them to watch most of the videos. This is part of the design principle of “Unexpected” of
Wing 2: Grab Attention.
 In the videos produced to show the ambassadors’ experiences, I would recommend
showing them talking a little bit about their feelings to make it more personal and
authentic. This recommendation aims to improve the design principles of “Tell a story”
and “Authenticity” of Wing 3: Engage others.
 Applications might be more interesting if it is in a style of competition other than lottery.
In their website, they called them lucky winners. It would be more interesting and fun if
there is some kind of competition between applicants. This is will improve the design
principle of “Fun” of Wing 4: Take Action
 It would help the campaign and tourism in Estonia to make a marketing research and
surveys after the campaign to measure people awareness globally and also understand

10. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 9
needs and wants. As the campaign reached different countries, it is an opportunity for
Tourism Board of Estonia to benefit from the good results. The surveys would help
people feel their personal needs and wants are expressed. This will help also in the design
principle of “Tailored” of Wing 4: Take Action
 The campaign could have increased the number of social media followers of visitestonia
accounts if they used the accounts differently and in unexpected ways. Things such as fun
facts about Estonia, or interesting dialogs with people in social media would have created
better engagement and grabbed more attention to increase number of followers.
Conclusion
#EpicEstonia is a social media campaign that wen viral on 2015. Its reach was good and
many people were engaged. The purpose of the campaign is to increase the number of
Sweden tourists who visit Estonia and increase people awareness about the country and the
potential tourism experiences.
The campaign did a good job in implementing the Dragonfly Effect Model, which resulted in
good numbers in social media. Traffic to visit Estonia from Sweden has been increased by
231%
Although the campaign was successful, there are some areas of improvement and
recommendations that may lead to better results and more impact.

11. JWI518 - #EpicEstonia Social Media Campaign 10
References
Aaker, Jennifer Lynn., Andy Smith, and Carlye Adler. The Dragonfly Effect: Quick,
Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2010.
David, E. (2015) Top 10 influential social media campaigns in 2015. Adhere.
http://www.adherecreative.com/blog/top-10-influential-social-media-campaigns-of-2015
Epic Estonia Case Study. (2015) Visitestonia. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqJmS7gSUxk
Simpson, J. (2015) 12 Best social media campaigns and stories from July 2015.
Econsultancy. https://econsultancy.com/blog/66769-12-best-social-campaigns-and-stories-
from-july-2015-2/
JWI 518, Week 8, Lecture 2, Integrated Marketing Communications: Optimizing the
Marketing Mix