This campaign was a direct, timely response to a major cultural moment dominating the global media conversation, with the goal of earning global media coverage to elevate Iceland’s position on travelers’ consideration lists.

The work was not part of a larger umbrella campaign but a stand-alone piece of creative with the goal of increasing earned media for Iceland. As part of our partnership with Inspired by Iceland, we have a standing brief to tap into cultural and emotional conversations to get us coverage, not just in traditional travel publications, but reaching a large global audience across categories. We also needed to do so in a way that was unique to Iceland's tone of voice and personality.

So when Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of his virtual reality Metaverse became a huge cultural discussion, we saw it as the perfect opportunity to put Iceland's actual reality at the center of the conversation and do it all in Iceland’s unique, playful voice.

In response to the Metaverse launch, Visit Iceland introduced the “Icelandverse,” a physically immersive, open-world experience that’s literally just the country of Iceland. The parody social film featured Chief Visionary Officer Zack Mossbergsson reminding travelers that Iceland is visually stunning, actually real, and can be experienced today—no silly-looking VR headsets required.

When producing the film, we purposefully mimicked key scenes from the original Metaverse launch and also incorporated nods to other moments that had been a meme on social media, like Mark Zuckerberg’s generous use of sunscreen while surfing.

We juxtaposed those scenes amongst a plethora of Iceland’s incredible natural experiences: geothermal water that is actually wet, northern lights you can see with your eyeballs, puffins you can watch, horses you can ride, and waterfalls you can stand near.

Inspired By Iceland on creative development and media strategy at breakneck speed. Within days of the Metaverse launch, we had devised an earned-first global media launch strategy to tell the story of the Icelandverse.

At a time when audiences were craving humor and every destination was contending for traveler attention, we chose a tongue-in-cheek approach, nodding to this significant cultural moment to help us stand out from the usual travel destination message track and tell a non-traditional story to a broader global audience.

Our key messages focused on the launch of Icelandverse and on reminding travelers around the world about the superiority of actual reality in Iceland. We invited them to discover breathtaking surroundings and endless landscapes in Iceland’s amazing reality, themselves.

We drafted a unique press release utilizing the same humor and tone of voice behind the campaign, complete with toolkit and assets from production, to ensure a media-worthy story that could be shared with global media, including key markets France, Germany, UK, and the US. A tailored distribution strategy identified the most influential voices the story would resonate with to drive maximum cultural impact.

The launch timing ensured we captured the world’s attention, hooking into the news around the Metaverse. Access to Sigga Dögg Guðmundsdóttir, Head of Visit Iceland, also enabled markets to secure media interviews with key broadcast, consumer, and trade media publications, allowing for bigger feature pieces beyond the initial launch announcement.

The Icelandverse quickly gained global attention as the video racked up over 6 million views on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even Facebook. Within 24 hours of going live, Mark Zuckerberg himself weighed in, commenting, “Amazing. I need to make a trip to the Icelandverse soon.” And with over one thousand global news stories from major outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail, The Economist, Washington Post, and CNN, the campaign earned over 6 billion media impressions—leading Inspired by Iceland to declare the “Icelandverse” their most successful marketing campaign ever, just 10 days after the film’s launch on social.