Those of you who live in Finland are perhaps well familiar with the YTV Journey Planner, which is a door-to-door planner that gives you advice on the best public transport connection to your destination within the Helsinki region, and its “big sister,” Matka.fi, which is a similar tool for the whole country.

While the YTV Journey Planner and Matka.fi are both great tools in themselves, what’s really interesting is how YTV has had the brain to use the engine that was created for the journey planner in its campaign Rikastu. Käytä joukkoliikennettä. (“Get rich. Use public transit.”)

In the campaign, the user gives the exact addresses of point A and B – typically, the user’s home and his/her workplace – and then the monthly cost of making that journey a) by car and b) by using public transit is calculated for the user. Now he can see how much money he’d save by hopping on a bus instead of driving. The data for the calculations is taken from the engine originally created for the journey planner. So the YTV campaign is based on sheer fact; it’s all based on the personal data that the user himself has given. Pretty convincing, huh?

When advertisers think about the high cost of creating a new concept and building a web service, what they should really think about is whether the concept can be used later, and how, to create new services based around the original concept. Because that’s how they can save money, and get to see their online services grow.