Visit Sweden has extremely limited funds, and relies completely on engagement, PR and earned views. The goal is to make more people all across the globe more interested in Sweden as a destination. To succeed, we need to create campaigns that show what Sweden is about (including beautiful images) and at the same time are unexpected and extremely talk-worthy. There is a desire to include several of Sweden’s travel reasons, such as nature, swimming, shopping and experiences – but also the Swedish mindset. The goals are earned PR globally, engagement, website visits and an increased interest in Sweden as a destination. This campaign was the first under our new platform and creative concept “A Destination of a Different Nature”.

To create a story that would get global PR, we presented a solution to an odd, but very real problem: that people all over the world constantly mix up Sweden and Switzerland. To make it authentic and extra interesting, we decided to address the campaign to the Swiss officials. In an official manner, we reached out to them with a solution. We proposed that we should make both countries more distinct by deciding who talks about what. Switzerland can talk about banks – Sweden can talk about sandbanks. Switzerland can talk about particle accelerators – Sweden can talk about winding down. And so on. The proposed division was presented in a legal contract which we urged the Swiss officials to sign.

The insight was that Sweden had a real problem, which was relevant all over the world. For the Swiss it was relevant and engaging because they shared the same problem. For the rest of the world it was relevant and interesting because they were either part of the problem (couldn’t tell the difference), could relate to the problem (Austria/Australia, Alabama/Albania, Slovakia/Slovenia …) or simply found it fascinating, crazy or funny. The key message was for the Swiss officials to help us end the confusion by signing the contract, and everything landed in Visit Sweden’s tagline “A Destination of a Different Nature”. The creative target audience was the Swiss officials – but the real TA was global media and, in the end, potential tourists around the world. The assets were made to feel as formal and real as possible, compelling the viewer to wonder, 'Is this an official message from Sweden?'

The hero film, directed to the Swiss officials, was posted on Youtube, Twitter and Instagram – of course with a number of Swiss official accounts tagged. We also launched the landing page where they could download the agreement. Simultaneously, we distributed a press release containing the results from our survey, hero film, contract and full story. And the campaign immediately spread across the world. After a few days, we started posting short videos in social, reminding the Swiss officials about the contract. When we got the first video response from a Swiss ambassador, about 2 weeks into the campaign, we swiftly produced a reply and posted it in social channels. This wasn’t a big campaign. The media budget was extremely small for the job to be done, and we didn’t have tons of assets – still it engaged both media, public and Swiss officials.

The choice to direct the campaign to just a few, to in the next step get global attention worked extremely well. 1000+ articles were published in 45 countries (potential reach 1.4 billion), and it was discussed on television news in the US, France, Japan and more. The quality of the coverage was very high, and included long segments in TV and articles in the largest news media in many markets, including Forbes, Huffpost, The Times, Independent, Le Figaro, Le Monde, 20 Minuten, Die Zeit, NZZ … The tone of the coverage was overwhelmingly positive (also in Switzerland). In addition to the massive media coverage, the campaign generated loads of engagement and user generated content. The comment sections on Youtube and Instagram were filled with positive replies, support of the contract, personal stories and suggestions. Video replies were created by media companies, unpaid influencers, and even ambassadors. The huge Swedish brands Volvo and IKEA got inspired and posted their own campaign responses. At visitsweden.com, where you could learn more about Sweden, the interest was record high, with an average dwell time of 10 min. After the campaign, the evaluation showed that 89 % of the viewers became more interested in Sweden as a destination. To sum things up: the campaign was a huge success and crushed all goals and expectations set by Visit Sweden.