Bob the Robot and Manifesto Create Star-Studded Campaign to Promote New Film 'Tom of Finland'

Bob the Robot united with Manifesto to create a digital marketing campaign for the movie “Tom of Finland”. #IAMTOMOFFINLAND ended up being a viral hit and huge success.

Touko Laaksonen, also known as Tom of Finland, is the most well-known Finnish artist in the world, whose recognisable style gave gay men a whole new, masculine identity. He was admired by great names such as Warhol, Mercury and Mapplethorpe but for Finns, the identity of the artist was revealed only after his death. Now in 2017, as part of centenary celebrations of Finland’s independence, the country finally wanted to share the true story of Tom of Finland. 

The biopic, directed by Dome Karukoski, is a great story about courage, love and freedom. The problem, however, was that most people still saw Tom of Finland only as pornography. We needed to ensure that Finns knew the movie was about so much more than the somewhat provocative art.

In the marketing campaign Finnish celebrities – including the former U.S. ambassador to Finland - posed in Tom of Finland-style studio pictures. The main goal of the campaign was to add awareness of the movie and activate people to stand for the values of the movie. To make sure everyone could participate, an image generator was created where one could make an individual Tom of Finland photo and share it on social media to share the values of the movie.

“Over 150,000 Tom of Finland profile pictures were created with the photo generator, which is a huge amount. Many pictures were also created outside of Finland despite the fact that the user interface was only in Finnish” Bob the Robot’s art director Henri Haka describes.

During the premiere week, all Finnish media outlets noticed the phenomenon and the movie quickly became the most watched LGBT movie in Finland, leaving behind even Brokeback Mountain. 

As part of the campaign, Tom of Finland emoji's were also created. The most flirtatious emoji's were given a Tom of Finland treatment. One of the campaign emoji's even got invited to be part of the official Finland emoji's created by the ministry for foreign affairs.