(Part three of a three part series)
Reykjavík, Iceland - Þetta reddast (It will all work out okay) is a common saying and one which, perhaps, sums up the people of Iceland and their outlook.
The Inspired by Iceland campaigns have excelled when they identify big news and piggy back that fast flowing stream to grab international attention.
Icelanders are good on their feet, can judge the global current and will take the odd risk.
Sveinn Birkir Björnsson, director of marketing communication at Business Iceland, says the saying it's all going to work out might b something of a motto, a descriptive or aesthetic way of thinking.
“We don't tend to take too much time planning things or having long term thoughts and long long term plans in Iceland,” he says
“We like to put off making a decision as long as we can and make a decision in the moment. To me, this is a part of our DNA, quite literally.
“In Iceland, you can never make long term plans because of the weather, and nature. You can expect any sort of weather at any time of the year. And if you're making plans for three weeks or three months, that plan is going to be shot.
“You have to play it by ear all the time.”
Before the technology of today, Icelanders were dependent on nature.
“This is something that is fostered within the Icelandic character, across generations," says Björnsson.
“We'll find out it's going to be okay. It's all going to work out but I don't really have the plan for it just now.”
Magnús Magnússon of Peel, the local Icelandic agency, agrees that Iceland is unpredictable and always an adventure.
For the Icelandverse clip, a parody so good that even Mark Zuckerberg liked it, the team looked for and found a location with beautiful green moss out the window, the Blue Lagoon retreat.
“We went there the day before the shooting, and we took pictures, and we shared them with the team, and everybody was excited,” he says.
“And then we woke up and everything was white and just covered in snow, you couldn't see any moss. We had to get hot water from the Blue Lagoon and pour it over the ice, just so we could see moss.”
One other saying in Iceland which was used a lot in the collaboration for the campaigns of Inspired by Iceland is “On with the butter”.
For those who’ve tried to churn butter by hand will know the effort required. Keep going even when your arms threaten to drop off.
“Of course it makes no sense when you say it like that but it’s a direct translation from Áfram með smjörið.
“But it just means to get going or start working or just go on," says Magnússon.
"So it’s become some sort of a work ethic for us. We want to create something amazing and we would end many a meeting with On with the butter.”
After Icelandverse, the campaign went back to plan, including Mission Iceland, because Iceland is often compared to space and many space movies have been shot there.
At the time, the news was full of billionaire space tourists, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and of billionaire Elon Musk's rockets.
“And so we sent a billboard to space to speak to those space tourists,” says Stevie Archer, executive creative director at SS+K in New York.
They hooked it up to a weather balloon and sent it into near orbit. And it said: “Why don't you come to Iceland instead?”
NPR, the public broadcaster in the US, reached out to a NASA scientist and she confirmed that Iceland would be better than space.
The most recent work was to outsource email for those on holiday, based on the insight that in this hybrid world we are swamped with messages, via email, text and message systems such as Slack.
There are no boundaries anymore. And the team asked: “How do we help people coming to Iceland not have to deal with the work part?”
And the answer: “Let's find a substitute that will handle work for you so that you don't have to. You can tell everyone to leave you alone.”
And logically (or so they say) Icelandic horses should be able to write emails.
“Icelandic horses are the only horses in the world with five gaits,” Archer says. “Those horses are amazing and talented and can probably type anything.”
And so they built a giant fully functional keyboard and taught the horses to type with their hooves and OutHorse your inbox was born.
Steve Archer sees Iceland as a dream account.
“Not just because we get to make the ridiculous,” she says. “But the reason we do those things is because we and all our agencies and our clients work really well together. We're super collaborative.
“The clients are incredibly creative people. They come from creative backgrounds themselves.Many of them were journalists and they've worked in Iceland for years and years.
“This is a culture and they push us to make things more interesting and it's not often that you get clients that are truly creative partners. They have pushed us to be more bold and more brave and loosen the reins (no horse pun intended).
“As clients too they have written jokes like some of the Icelandverse lines: ‘Wouldn't it be funny if we did this?’ And it was so funny. People in Iceland love this.
“They give us real dialogue. The client actually named the character in the Icelandverse video, Zack Mossbergsson, the faux name.
“So it's been kind of a joy to have a client and a brand and a destination that's so unique, and knows who they are, and will really commit and want to do such fun stuff. It's ridiculous, really.”
Magnús Magnússon of Peel agency says it was great fun because of that global team.
“We've been working with creators from Britain and from the US and they're totally different,” he says
“And when it merges with Icelandic humour, it can make something really interesting.
“Like our horse email, that's another thing that came up as a silly idea, but then it just started building and we just ran with it.”
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