Learning about other phenomenal social campaigns is always inspiring and great fun. We were honoured to be part of the judging panel at this year’s session on ‘The Best of Social Media 2016’ hosted by our friends at Travel Perspective as part of World Travel Market.

As judges we had two favourite campaigns – with a clear front runner – and the audience were right behind us too and voted for a worthy winner.

We were looking for creativity, great execution, new ideas a campaign that delivered something innovative, and that there were some stonking results.

Our winning campaign had a great strategy behind it and an objective to address a real business need. All opportunities had been exploited in both social and for traditional media giving a truly integrated campaign.

Huge congratulations to Visit Finland, who were represented by social media communications coordinator Eva Kiviranta giving a storming presentation to outline just how incredible their 100 Days of Polar Night Magic campaign was, and still is.

Produced by Visit Finland in partnership with Finnair the campaign talked to five important markets for the destination, all obviously with direct flights to the destination, and ensured that there were lots of reasons to get excited about the 100 days of dark, cold Finnish winter.

Using a tried and tested formula to find people to join an expedition, a revamp of the ‘best job in the world’ platform, the 100 Days of Polar Night Magic offered the chance to experience the wonders and challenges of winter in the Arctic circle. All captured as video content, and shared throughout social media, the winning five explorers did everything from rally driving on ice, to learning how to be a reindeer farmer.

The worldwide media attention around the call for explorers to join the Polar Night Magic mission was phenomenal, leading to over 4,000 people applying to be part of the expedition. There have been over 600,000 visitors to the campaign website at polarnightmagic.com, and one of the winners fell in love with Finland so much that there are relocating to the country.

Of course, there was a substantial budget behind this campaign, but the team delivering it still ensured that it worked on every level and that no opportunity was left unexplored. The results across all areas of earned media were amazing.

Well done Visit Finland, we love your work.

We have to also share a nod to the stiff competition who also presented very worthy campaigns – the Belize Tourism Board for a snapchat campaign to engage DJ Khaled (look this one up, it is one of the most fun destination campaigns we’ve seen all year); Costa Brava Tourism and Emilia Romagna Tourism for #eurofoodtrip; and Sarah Lee from Captivate for #DriveUS1.

Fellow judges were Jeremy Jauncey, CEO of Beautiful Destinations; Jennifer Howze, Britmums co founder; Jeremy Head (or Jeremy number one for those who were in the room), travel writer and creative lead at iCrossing and from Siren, Sarah Rathbone.