Helsinki Targets Pamela Anderson With Billboards in Canada to Encourage a Finland Roots Visit
The Finnish capital has launched a personalised outreach campaign offering the actor a tailored one-day itinerary and a symbolic invitation to reclaim her family name.
Helsinki has launched an unusually personal tourism campaign aimed at persuading Pamela Anderson to visit Finland and explore her Finnish ancestry, extending the invitation beyond the internet and into the actor’s neighbourhood in Canada.
In recent days, the City of Helsinki’s marketing partners placed billboard adverts along a highway on Vancouver Island, near the community where Anderson lives, urging her to travel to the Finnish capital.
The physical adverts follow an online push that city officials say attracted significant attention, prompting the campaign’s expansion into Canada.
The effort began with a dedicated webpage built specifically for Anderson, greeting visitors with a direct question addressed to her and presenting a curated, twenty-four-hour itinerary designed around Helsinki’s signature sights and local rituals.
The suggested route includes a walk around Töölönlahti Bay, a vegan breakfast, visits to the National Museum, Senate Square, and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, before ending with an evening sauna.
A short promotional film forms the centrepiece of the outreach.
In it, Finnish actor Janne Hyytiäinen introduces himself and playfully encourages Anderson to “join the Hyytiäinen family,” inviting her to arrive not only as a visitor but as “Pamela Hyytiäinen.”
The name reference draws on Anderson’s own remarks about her family history.
She has previously said she would like to adopt Hyytiäinen, the original surname of her paternal grandfather, Herman Hyytiäinen, who later used the name Anderson after emigrating from Finland to Canada.
In interviews, she has described the idea as part of a broader wish to reconnect with her roots.
City representatives have described the initiative as a continuation of that public interest, framing it as a light-hearted but carefully structured invitation rather than a conventional celebrity endorsement deal.
The campaign’s page also points to the actor’s familial links to Finland, including the origin of her grandfather’s surname, and suggests Helsinki as a practical meeting point between small-town heritage and a modern Nordic capital.
Municipal officials said the billboards are scheduled to remain in place for two weeks, after which the city will assess the campaign’s next steps.
The webpage is expected to remain live during that period.
As of the latest updates, Anderson has not publicly responded to the invitation.
The campaign arrives as Finland continues to compete for attention in a crowded global tourism market, leaning on distinct national signatures—design, museums, walkable waterfront districts, and sauna culture—while experimenting with more personalised, story-driven outreach designed to travel quickly on social media.