ICELAND ACADEMY:

THE WORLD’S FIRST ACADEMY FOR TOURISTS

Most tourism campaigns are aimed at attracting potential tourists.

But we had a very different challenge – to get tourists to behave responsibly when they visited our unique country.

So we knew we had to approach things differently.

The creative breakthrough came during a conversation with members of the Icelandic rescue service who were talking about some of the irresponsible behaviour they had experienced from tourists. While talking about the problem, one said, “I don’t actually blame tourists – they’ve just never been taught to behave any differently.”

This provided our inspiration.

We realised our audience needed an education, not a traditional marketing campaign.

So together with Promote Iceland, we created Iceland Academy - The world’s first tourism academy. It would form the centre of all our marketing with the sole ambition of turning bad tourists, into good ones.

ICELAND ACADEMY:

MOST EDUCATIONAL TOURIST CAMPAIGN EVER

Iceland Academy rolled out over three ‘educational’ terms across the year.

Using a multi-platform (paid, owned, earned) approach we delivered global strategic sell-in with bespoke pitches across media sectors at launch and subsequently to introduce our Autumn/Winter term content, further supported by tailored press trips.

Subjects covered everything from ‘Avoiding hot tub awkwardness’ to ‘How to take a safe selfie’ on our online Academy hub, which contained all free online classes with embedded links to owned social channels.

Throughout, we invited tourists to engage daily with the content across owned channels and by successfully completing The Academy classes, receive graduation status.

850 Icelandic tourism companies participated in bringing the idea to life through every facet of the tourism industry.

A wider package of photographic assets, tutor biographies, Facebook Live classes, interview opportunities and digital badges were also created for local market activation.

1) QUALITY COVERAGE

Iceland Academy generated over 1186 articles, of which 99% has been positive.

Key titles included BBC News, USA Today, Die Welt, Mashable, PSFK and Lonely Planet.

“Head, armpits, crotch and toes: Hilarious new video teaches spa etiquette to confused visitors to Iceland.”

- Mail Online

2) GROWING RESPONSIBLE TOURISTS

Tourists consumed over 150,000 hours of Academy content.

More importantly, 99.3% of said the campaign made them want to act responsibly in Iceland.

Academy videos were watched 8.2m times across our YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and InspiredbyIceland.com.

Throughout, we had more than 19.5k graduates from 75 countries.

“Hooray, I’m a graduate - I will be putting these lessons into action soon!”

- Kym Tula, Academy Graduate

3) A COMMERCIAL SUCCESS

The Academy generated global earned media coverage of +£15.8m, at an ROI of 7:1.

Consideration of Iceland amongst tourists who have engaged with the content increased 30% year-on-year.

ICELAND ACADEMY:

A RADICALLY DIFFERENT MODEL FOR TOURISM MARKETING

Our target audience are Enlightened Travellers. They live in urban areas in North America and Europe, are well educated and open to new experiences.

The challenge for Iceland Academy was how to educate this audience without being seen as too authoritarian or worthy. Holiday’s are the best things in life; no one wants to be bored by them.

We had to create a radically different model for tourism marketing that thought more like an entertainment brand than a traditional ad-led approach.

The Iceland Academy Model Conventional Tourism Marketing

Approach

Entertainment-led Ad-led

Role

Train tourists Promote country

Lead Media

Owned, Earned & PR media Paid media

Our owned website hub formed the heart of our campaign, used to centralise all consumer activity with earned and PR playing a supporting role in creating momentum, with paid used to amplify our biggest stories.

INSPIRED BY ICELAND:

THE GROWING NEED FOR RESPONSIBLE TOURISM

As Iceland’s popularity grows annually, it has become essential to develop responsible tourism.

Iceland is a unique country with an unspoiled nature and a strong culture. For the long-term health of the tourism industry, it’s vital that tourists learn to treat both with respect.

But responsible tourism isn’t easy to develop – it requires a different type of tourism marketing that does more than just encourage people to visit a country, it needs to change their behaviour too.

As a result there are very few documented cases of country marketing having any effect on responsible tourism, anywhere in the world.

So with Promote Iceland, we set three objectives for the country’s 2016 Inspired by Iceland marketing campaign:

Culture

1. Champion responsible tourism in culture.

Behaviour

2. Educate tourists to behave responsibly in Iceland.

Commercial

3. Increase consideration of Iceland.