Kudos to the Swedish Tourist Association. All I can say is genius.
There are moments in marketing when someone has a crazy idea and nobody says it can’t work or we can’t do it. Then they do it, and it’s awesome. That’s the stuff of ‘Mad Men’ legend and lore and I think this is one of those moments.
I recently read an article about the Swedish Number. It’s a Swedish phone number answered by volunteers in Sweden to talk about their country, or anything really. The number started out as a gimmick. The Swedish Tourist Association hoped that they might get 2500 volunteers to signup to take incoming calls and share their sentiments on Sweden.
What’s happened in a little more than a month is 30,000 volunteers have signed up and fielded more than 160,000 calls. The Swede volunteers don’t have a script or talking points. They are encouraged to just have a conversation with the callers. Most volunteers report that some of the calls aren’t specifically about tourism at all, but they talk about issues like politics and racism, and other callers are just lonely.
The Swedish Tourism Association says, I don’t care. The point is to give visitors an inside look at the people and culture of Sweden. Think about that for a minute. As marketers, don’t we all want to have an open, unfiltered conversation with our consumers that is more about an honest relationship that a marketer telling someone what to think? And that’s exactly how the Swedish Tourism Association viewed the hotline. They felt fellow Swedes could do a much better job telling people what they think of Sweden and what they like best than any marketing message could ever accomplish.
To date, the Swedish phone number has received calls from over 183 countries, with the largest quantity of calls coming from the U.S. You can visit the website and check out some of the call statistics for more details and to get the number and call for yourself.
In a world of Google answers, social media likes and automated phone transactions the human connection is often lost. This unique marketing campaign shows us that the human connection and word of mouth advertising is still some of the best marketing your dollars can buy.
Written by Melinda Goodman
Managing Partner
Melinda@FullTiltMarketing.net
