Haaga-Helia wins Nordic TikTok Ad Awards for the second time

Haaga-Helia took first place in the Greatest Impact category. The prize was €20,000 worth of advertising credit on TikTok. Last year, Haaga-Helia was also successful in the same competition with its TikTok University campaign. The awards gala was held in Stockholm on 19 November 2025.

The campaign was the result of outstanding collaboration. Haaga-Helia’s journalism students and teachers, together with the university’s communications, marketing and alumni teams, worked hand in hand with Bob The Robot on planning and implementation.

According to research, TikTok has become the most important news source for young people. However, TikTok news has lacked one crucial element: a timestamp. Without a publication time, news can continue to circulate long after its original release date. Outdated news appears fresh, which distorts reality and undermines the overall credibility of journalism.

The campaign sought to address this issue. It was launched at the end of April, challenging Finnish media houses and journalists in various ways to include timestamps in news videos published on social media.

The message quickly reached newsrooms: within just a few days, several media outlets responded to the campaign, and Helsingin Sanomat, MTV Uutiset, Kauppalehti and YLE, among others, adopted timestamps. In addition to these concrete results, the campaign sparked widespread discussion on social media, where journalism students created content.

The TikTok Ad Awards jury was impressed by the campaign’s impact:

“Haaga-Helia’s campaign highlighted an important problem hidden in plain sight: news without timestamps confuses and can mislead. The campaign generated over 17.8 million views and brought about immediate change: almost all Finnish media houses started using timestamps.”