All liquorice should be like this

The collaboration of Avidly and Kouvolan Lakritsi’s, which started in 2015, has included brand development, multi-channel content production, advertising, media communications, package design and community-based campaigns. The brand activism of Kouvolan Lakritsi has never amounted to mere words. 

In addition, a new online store for Kouvolan Lakritsi has been designed and built on the Shopify platform.

Since 2018, working on an annual MaaS (Marketing as a Service) retainer has enabled Avidly's services to scale with Kouvolan Lakritsi’s needs and growth.

Kouvolan Lakritsi was among the first Finnish companies to respond to the distress caused by the war in Ukraine by donating 100% of its e-commerce sales through UNICEF to children and families affected by the war.

To get the aid to its destination as quickly as possible, the whole campaign was conceived, prepared and launched in one morning. The campaign made use of Kouvolan Lakritsi's online store, social media channels, blog and media communication. The media budget for the campaign was 0€.

The fundraising initiative exceeded everyone's expectations. During the campaign period 2.-6.3.2022 Kouvolan Lakritsi reached over 500 000 people on its own social media channels and over 1 000 000 pairs of eyes through earned media. Website visitors increased by 2916%, and during the first 2.5 days there was not an hour when no liquorice was sold. The final donation total came to a whopping 126,000.14€.

The Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church awarded the Kouvolan Lakritsi with a tribute for their remarkable volunteer movement and humanitarian support to the Ukrainian people. The campaign also received an honourable mention at the Finnish Comms Awards in the category Fundraiser of the Year 2022.

The e-commerce rebuild of Kouvolan Lakritsi was initiated by the need to automate processes and make the online store more user-friendly at the same time.

In the design of the new Shopify-based online store, a wide range of interfaces were taken into account, as the online store was to work seamlessly with other systems in use. Special attention was also paid to UX and UI design to ensure a sweet user experience.

In its first full year of operation (2022), sales of the new online store increased by 10% compared to the previous year. The new integrations also significantly reduced the manual work needed in the different stages of the buying and selling process.

Kouvolan Lakritsi's many bold campaigns and promotions have also delighted over the years.

For example, in 2020, Kouvolan Lakritsi and its partners' "A new start in Kouvola" campaign offered one person a job at the liquorice factory and an apartment in Kouvola. The campaign was awarded an honourable mention in the national competition in city marketing.

In 2023, Kouvolan Lakritsi, together with its partners, organised a competition for children to design a liquorice box, with the prize being a class trip to the amusement park Tykkimäki and the liquorice factory. A total of 170 classes from all over Finland took part in the competition.

The final ten drawings were voted for more than 14,838 times on Facebook. 

In the same year, a fundraising campaign was carried out in cooperation with MIELI ry, where four MIELI boxes containing different types of liquorice were used to raise funds for preventive mental health work. The campaign raised 10 200€.