For the past 70 years the volunteers of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service (HGSS) have devoted their time and extensive experience to rescuing missing and injured persons and providing assistance during extreme situations. Since they like to keep up with emerging trends in techniques and technologies, they turned to an innovative communication approach with domestic and foreign public through social networks as early as in 2017. Three years later, CTA komunikacije team and HGSS decided to further mark and celebrate the creativity of people who risk their lives for others by creating the first tweet exhibition in Croatia, called Trending #HGSS70.
The main idea or “who would in their rightful mind would organize a tweet exhibition”?
To add a little context to the event, Trending #HGSS70 was displayed from September 18 to 25, 2020 in Zagreb’s Urania Gallery, during an epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In other words, gathering of more than 30 people in a small indoor space was not possible, cafes were open until midnight, trips to other countries are reduced to a minimum and it felt like going out was something that happened the last time Croatia had qualified for the Eurovision finals. We therefore decided to go back to analog and allow people to go out to an attractive and epidemiologically safe event, while having a good time and getting to know Twitter as a platform.
After creating the concept of the exhibition, marketing and communication plan as well as visual identity, the only things left to set up were the integral organization of the event and the physical setting of the exhibition, where we joined forces with skilled HGSS members. In addition to the careful selection of themes on the exhibits and the presented tweets, the space was designed in an interactive manner. Visitors were able to take a closer look and try out the HGSS equipment, talk to the rescuers of the Service and listen to their interesting and breath-taking stories, and see their posts in real time with #HGSS70 on Mediatoolkit’s Zeed. We used Urania’s built-in grandstands for a mountain-shaped exhibit, another metaphor and a great photo wall in front of (and within which) many visitors immortalized their visit to the Exhibition.
Communication strategy on social networks
In order to interest as large an audience as possible with a budget of 0 HRK, we reversed the standard forms of HGSS professional communication in which they search for a location of missing persons, while continuing to use slight irony and sarcasm that has made them a favourite communicator in the eyes of the public. In addition to the visuals that clearly conveyed that these were tweets, we also created attractive descriptions that attracted new followers, and reminded the current ones why we love HGSS both offline and online. This is how announcements like “A rare case in which we send the location and you come for us”or“As we are well known for our frequent delaying of the end for many, we have decided to extend the duration of the Exhibition for you until 22:00!”
Creative visuals and funny communication on social networks also attracted media attention, thus transmitting the campaign to television and radio stations. In addition to guest appearances in Dobro jutro, Hrvatska/Good Morning, Croatia, the exhibition was announced in all central news programs on national television, with Croatian and international media portal writing about it.
With the results of the Trending #HGSS70 exhibition, we conquered another peak for the HGSS.
In only ten days, which is how much the event and its announcement lasted, the results of HGSS broke many previous records. More than 660 visitors arrived at the exhibition in one week, which is far above the average of visitation of Zagreb’s museums and similar events. In addition to 90 publications on media portals, 13 articles in the press, eight guest appearances and television services and fifteen radio shows, the numbers on social networks have increased significantly.
With an exclusively organic reach and a budget of 0 HRK, the profiles of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service were followed by almost 600 people on all social networks, and the posts reached more than 260,000. Users on Facebook alone had over 12,500 interactions with posts related to the Trending #HGSS70 tweet exhibition, while Facebook’s event reached over 28,500 people in less than two weeks. On Twitter, the number of profile visits in the period since the beginning of the exhibition has seen a large increase by 60%, while on Instagram the reach of posts has been more than 55,000.
CTA Komunikacije wish to thank everyone who helped organizing the tweet exhibition in Zagreb, Jelena Devčić from Invictus for the concept of the Exhibition, the team of 2Dizajnera for extraordinary visuals in both digital and print versions and the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service for their trust and cooperation. If you wonder how it all looked, we have a great video from the exhibition!
