Urban populations will grow by a staggering 2.5 billion people by 2020, and urbanisation is outpacing the ability to build affordable and sustainable living space. Wood construction is the best way to battle climate change and house a growing urban population. Wood, however, is a misunderstood alternative to concrete and steel even among professionals. Metsä Wood’s main product, Kerto® LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber), is light, fast and green with multiple uses and benefits in construction. It is the only material light enough to build on existing structures. The task is to make a global expert target group of building professionals aware of this and to inspire them to plan and build building extensions with Kerto.

After finding a unique insight which was relevant for our product (25% of existing buildings are strong enough to carry additional floors made out of wood), we created the ’City Above the City’ initiative. We involved the global architect community and called on all architects to share our quest for liveable and sustainable cities via the City above the city architects’ competition. The entrants were encouraged to select a centrally-located building in one of the world’s most populated cities and develop an innovative wood design solution that adds additional floors using Kerto® LVL as the primary material. We received 174 entries from all over the world. The winners were chosen by an internationally well-known jury.

We provided background material, research, information on the competition’s website. To be credible within the expert audience and to engage, we teamed with a renowned architect and wood construction expert helping us to promote our cause and get the call for entries to the global architects' competition right (Michael Green architecture). The call for entries was featured in global websites displaying all architect competitions. We also created a first press kit containing a call for entries video explaining the insight, idea, and cause, supporting images for media to display, and terms and conditions. In phase 2 we announced the jury to media,in phase 3 we shared the winners,in phase 4 we shared interesting entries divided into themes.

The call for entries and the results of the competition, 174 stunning entries were featured, discussed and shared in leading global design, architecture, and mass media as, Treehugger, Yahoo, Designboom, Newswire, Architectural Review, ArchDaily, dà architectures, Clad magazine and by local expert media. This resulted in extensive coverage and an in intense discussion within the core target audience. During 2016, the campaign reached a PR value of 1.2 million euros in print and online PR of 5.9 million euros, in total earned media of 7.1 million euros. With the core audience now being more aware of the new opportunities, there’s a rising trend in building additional floors made of wood on existing structures.