Estonian PR Award 2015 laureate: we owe half of our success to PR

On the 7th of December, the crew of the movie Tangerines was awarded the Estonian PR Award 2015 for professional and successful PR work, which helped make Tangerines the first Estonian movie to be nominated for an Oscar. 

Producer Ivo Felt stated in his speech, accepting the award, that the Tangerines crew decided to try out for an Oscan after the film had appeared at 30 festivals and received excellent reviews. He explained, “When we start making a movie, we want to bring Estonian audience to the cinemas and have the movie shown at prominent festivals. Being invited to the Oscars had seemed an unattainable dream. We were all new to the experience and primarily relied on our PR partner Tatiana Detlofson, and that’s where our success lies.”

Tangerines PR manager Madis Tüür, producer Ivo Felt and president of Estonian Public Relations Association Aive Hiiepuu. Photo by Anna Aurelia Minev.

Estonia annually presents a movie to the Oscars. Ivo Felt says that future Oscar candidates should definitely use good marketing to get screenings in the U.S. to guarantee even greater success. Only then, with the help of PR, is it possible to get people to come watch the movie. Tangerines began from zero and only reached U.S. cinemas after the Oscars – in that sense, the success of the movie was outstanding.

“We owe nearly half of our success to PR,” admits Ivo Felt. “From the moment Tangerineswas nominated for the Oscar, we made it our goal to participate in important meetings and be available to the media around the clock. Communication with the American journalists was always to the point. For instance, I got a call saying that a Hollywood reporter needed my answers within the hour. So I parked my car by the side of the road and – because I didn’t have my laptop with me – gave the interview over the phone. That’s why we were there,” he explains.

Tatiana Detlofson, the person at the head of Tangerines’ Oscar campaign in the U.S., is already busy with the campaign of another Estonian co-op, The Fencer. The makers of Tangerines are also part of the campaign to a lesser degree as the Estonian representatives. The movie was presented for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar by the Finns.

Marketing a movie begins from the moment production is confirmed. By the time of the release, people should already be anticipating the movie. Ivo Felt muses, “I remember I was sitting at the shoot in Georgia, thinking whether anything we were doing qualified as news. I’ve always tried to find things that speak for themselves, instead of creating news artificially.”

The Estonian Public Relations Association awards the annual PR title to the person whose communicative activities have had the greatest impact in Estonia.

Estonian Public Relations Association is a professional association that was founded in 1996 as an umbrella organisation for public relations practitioners in Estonia. The Association brings together public relations professionals from all over Estonia. It has currently 90 active members who are employed in public and private companies, public sector organisations, non-profit organisations and PR-agencies. The association is member of the international professional network Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management and Estonian national Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations.