Isamaa hires agency that campaigned for Reform

Isamaa has hired Kontuur Leo Burnett, an agency that previously worked on election campaigns for the Reform Party, for its campaign for Estonia’s 2027 parliamentary elections, ERR reports.

Isamaa Secretary-General Andres Metsoja said the party began preparing for the parliamentary election campaign after last October’s local elections. The party had kept costs down in that campaign and did not hire a creative partner, he said, but decided it needed a professional creative team for the parliamentary elections. After meeting several agencies, Isamaa chose Kontuur Leo Burnett.

Metsoja said the agency had experience advising several political parties and that the party hoped the relationship would last beyond a single campaign. He added that the immediate focus was securing the best possible result in the upcoming election campaign.

Kontuur Leo Burnett creative director Urmas Villmann told ERR that the agency’s cooperation with the Reform Party had ended after the party’s relatively poor showing in the local elections. He said the split was not acrimonious. The Reform Party has hired Tank, an agency that had previously avoided political advertising, for its current campaign, the party’s Secretary-General Kristo Enn Vaga told ERR on Tuesday.

Villmann said Kontuur Leo Burnett did not enter the Reform Party’s agency competition because it believed the party already knew its work and ideas. Tank won the competition, he said.

After hearing that Kontuur Leo Burnett’s work with Reform had ended, a group of Estonian entrepreneurs approached the agency, Villmann said. The agency agreed to meet another group on the condition that the relationship would be long-term rather than a one-off arrangement.