Sub Offers Added Value for Advertisers with Substanssi Seminar

Finland's Sub is all about entertainment. With a heavy focus on popular series - both domestic and foreign - Sub is the No. 3 commercial station in Finland, with some 1.5 million daily viewers in a country of 5.3 million. That's a big chunk of the TV-watching public. Which makes Sub attractive to advertisers and business partners. But getting advertisers in an age of falling ad revenues takes more than just attractive viewership numbers. So Sub organizes Substanssi, a once-a-year seminar for its business-to-business customers, marketing directors, media and advertising agencies and others.

"The Substanssi seminar is about creativity and business," says Katariina Kantola, responsible for B2B PR and Publicity at Sub. "It's also about Sub leading the way to tomorrow's media and marketing. We know that there are hundreds of B2B seminars in Finland, and from the beginning we wanted the Substanssi seminar to be different. It's a kind of 'distillation' of what Sub is all about: creative, modern and a leading media and business partner."

The seminar is not just a chance for Sub to show it's cutting edge, it's a chance for its customers to see the exclusive launches o f new products.  "This year's seminar was about design and why good design is good for business," Kantola says. "We launched a new product, Design Week, where the top Finnish designers design marketing for our customers."

Speakers included  trendspotter and a futurologist Magnus Lindkvist from Sweden; senior writer for the design blog thecoolhunter.net, Tuija Seipell - a Finn living in Vancouver; and Idealist Group creative director and a founder, Saku Tuominen. "Lindkvist's topic was about marketing in the year 2020, Tuominen spoke about the future of television, and Seipell explained why good design is relevant to one's business," says Kantola.

The response to the seminar was very positive, both to the program and how it was organized. "The speakers got good reviews also," says Kantola.

Substanssi, which was held for the first time last year, has become an annual event - just one of several business-to-business seminars held during the year by Sub's owner, MTV Media. "Our next business-to-business event will be the launch of spring 2011 programming in November," says Kantola. "The year 2011 is also Sub's 10th anniversary, so there will definitely be more events for the celebration!"