Sokos & Emotion

Since its founding in 1952, the domestic department store chain has had significant untapped potential for earned media visibility. Through strategic communication collaboration, we have successfully found new ways to make this iconic brand more prominently visible across editorial and social media platforms.

The Client

Sokos, part of the S Group, is a department store chain dedicated to helping customers discover their style. With an online store and 21 department stores located in the centers of Finland’s largest cities, Sokos offers a wide range of products spanning beauty, fashion, and home categories. Alongside the Sokos brand, Sokos Emotion specializes in beauty and wellness, serving customers through 39 stores across Finland.

The Sokos and Emotion brands are known for their expert customer service and high-quality product selection, year-round meeting consumers’ diverse needs. For decades, Sokos has been part of Finns’ everyday lives and celebrations and continues to evolve as a modern, customer-oriented department store for style.

The Challenge

Even before our collaboration began, the Sokos and Emotion brands were occasionally featured in editorial media throughout the year. However, the visibility was primarily focused on individual beauty product selections, and the breadth of the assortment or expertise in style did not come to the forefront. The department store brand or its spokespersons were rarely the center of public attention. Additionally, finding ways to support social media visibility, a key channel for the brand’s target audience, was a challenge.

At the starting point, external communications needed more commercial objectives, clear processes, and a systematic approach to building consistent, earned multichannel visibility. Moreover, it was essential to incorporate a broader perspective on service and expertise alongside product messaging. This perspective is at the core of the department store concept and helps shape the desired brand image.

The Solution

We began our collaboration by enhancing Sokos and Emotion’s brand image through the qualitative and quantitative development of earned media visibility. Through workshop-based collaboration, we defined a PR strategy and an action plan to implement long-term commercial communication and PR activities. As part of this partnership, we helped the client organization build new communication practices and a culture that engages experts from various areas in communication roles, thereby improving efficiency.

In external communications, the brand message has been distilled into style expertise, covering the needs of an individual stylish life—from beauty to fashion and home decor. A diverse group of spokespersons, from purchasing managers to expert sales representatives, strengthened Sokos and Emotion’s public positioning during our collaboration.

The tactics included press releases, media pitches, experiential events, journalist meetings, influencer PR, and other content. One of the annual highlights is the joint PR event for the Sokos and Emotion brands and their suppliers, which, true to the department store concept, brings together the most compelling themes in beauty, fashion, and home under one roof in an inviting and inspiring way.

The Results

During our collaboration, the earned visibility of the Sokos and Emotion brands has multiplied — with several dozen articles written about the department store and over 400 social media posts published within just two years. Media visibility has been evenly distributed throughout the year, aligning with commercial seasons, and a range of Sokos spokespersons and experts from various product categories have been given a voice in public.

Editorial media coverage has been concentrated in Finland’s most significant news and lifestyle publications, resulting in potential reach numbers of tens of millions. This has strengthened the brand’s competitive position in terms of Share of Voice. Additionally, the collaboration has enhanced media relationships, leading to increased inquiries from journalists and filling PR event seats within just 24 hours at best.

Thanks to these communication efforts, Sokos and Emotion are perceived by the public as relevant players who understand customer needs and convey them engagingly. The results demonstrate that Sokos is an attractive brand whose message resonates both on the store floor and in the media.