Visit Sweden has a clear but challenging objective: with extremely limited funds, create global awareness about, and interest in, Sweden as a destination. This means that a campaign not only has to present appealing locations, but also be so interesting that media all over the world picks up the story. For this campaign, it was also important that we presented locations all across Sweden – in all 21 regions that Visit Sweden have divided the country in. The brief was to come up with and execute a global PR driven campaign (with The US, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands as main markets). The objectives were to generate global impact and present Swedish destinations via organic articles and on visitsweden.com.

The key message was ”Discover the originals” – referring to the places that has given name to IKEA products. And the creative idea was to reclaim the names, and let people know that Bolmen is more than a toilet brush, Ektorp more than a sofa etc. The strategy and research in combination with the creative idea gave us a strong, fun, unexpected and unique story that we knew would engage both media and the target audience. And since the story was so relevant, the places were always present. The story was told through film, social assets, native articles, visitsweden.com and a press release. And to really maximize the PR potential, we didn’t limit ourselves to using words. We took action. So, together with local politicians, we launched a new official tourism slogan for lake Bolmen: Bolmen – more than an IKEA toilet brush.

We decided to use IKEA’s fame and pop cultural status because of three main reasons. 1: it was extremely relevant – IKEA’s products and our places share the same names. 2: IKEA’s product names were already generating engagement and interest, and had been used for entertainment in stand-up comedy, memes, Youtube sketches and talkshows like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and The Ellen Show. 3: The idea made it possible to present tourism destinations in a surprising, engaging and news-worthy way.

The key message was ”Discover the originals” – referring to the places that has given name to IKEA products. The target audience were global tourists interested in unique and unexploited destinations. The integrated PR campaign consisted of an event where we unveiled lake Bolmen’s new official slogan, a film that told the full story, social assets, merch and of course the press release.

The campaign started with the PR event at lake Bolmen, where we unveiled the lake’s new slogan. Since media attended the event, it was picked up the same day. Directly after this, we released the rest of the campaign (film, social ads etc.) and distributed the press release globally.

The campaign started on November 29, 2021 and ran for 6 weeks. During these weeks we continued to work the press and did interviews in The Fast Company and other publications. The few media placements we had (this was a low budget campaign made to generate PR) included the billboard by the lake, social ads, YouTube and native articles. Bought media was limited to the key markets UK, USA, Germany and the Netherlands, but the press release was distributed globally. Even though the PR impact was huge, this was a tiny campaign media and budget wise.

The campaign generated more than 700 articles and 300 blog posts in 49 countries, with a potential organic reach of 2,1 billion. The story was covered by news-, travel-, lifestyle- and design media, including CNN, BBC, The Fast Company, Lonely Planet and Apartment Therapy. The impact was also reflected on visitsweden.com, where ”average time on page” increased with 82 %, to 7,49 min.

The few native articles we had performed really well, a proof that consumers really engaged with the story. ”Number of readers” exceeded the goals with 148 % and dwell time was 176 % over benchmark. The paid views for the 15 s versions beat benchmark on most points. For example, in the UK the completion rate was 88 % (benchmark 70 %).