(Part two of a three part series)
Reykjavík, Iceland - The off the wall idea was to create a tourism campaign to unleash the deep weariness, frustration and angst built during the pandemic lockdowns.
Stevie Archer, executive creative director at SS+K in New York, and the team put together a mock up website for the Iceland pitch for what they initially called Scream Speakers.
The goal, early in the pandemic, was to ensure people kept Iceland top of mind when the world returned to travel.
Inspired by Iceland replied: “Just go do it. Go make it. We'll figure it out.”
“We started working almost immediately in about April of 2020 and launched our first campaign,” she says.
The main idea was: Looks like you need Iceland. This positioned Iceland as an antidote to whatever the rest of the world was being hit with at the time.
“It’s such an escape from the rest of the world being an island out in the middle of the Atlantic,” she says.
“We thought: ‘Okay, how do we address and be the answer for people in these moments?’
“And the first thing that we wanted to address was the fact that we're all stuck in our homes, nowhere to go. And to let out all this like angst, frustration and pent up anxiety about the world.
“And so our first idea was called: ‘Looks like you need to let it out.’ And we set up seven speakers in the seven regions of Iceland hooked up to a website that let anyone in the world, from anywhere, go online and record themselves screaming.
“And then it would be played live in Iceland across a gorgeous fjord, or a field of flowers or in front of a waterfall.
“And into the abyss of Iceland, you could just let all of it go. And then you could watch it in real time, get played back, and you got a video of your scream being played.
“And it really took off. You could listen to other people screaming if you chose. But because it was so beautiful people were sitting on the site and just watching: This is so gorgeous, I just want to stare at this all day.”
Sheep would pass by and lick the cameras. People in Iceland started showing up where the speaker locations were and saying hello to people.
“So it became a little bit more than the screaming,” says Stevie Archer.
The promise: “Looks like you’ve been through a lot. It looks like you need to let it out somewhere big, beautiful and open. It looks like you need Iceland. Record your scream from anywhere in the world and we’ll release it in Iceland. You’ll feel better, we promise.”
Archer didn’t get to Iceland in person until 2021. “We were all in lockdown and couldn't travel anywhere,” she says.
“We've done so much of it remotely with our agency partners in Iceland. They're there and they're Icelandic, so they're able to navigate production for us. We have a really great working relationship.
All up, six campaigns have run.
“All of our work is primarily designed to drive earned media, first and foremost and get international broad coverage in the press and really break through,” she says.”
In the northern winter of 2020/2021, with the world gone crazy and everyone doom scrolling through metres of dark news, the Iceland team created an antidote -- joy scrolling, a 22.7 metre long website where all the content was Icelandic videos and imagery.
Then in the spring of 2021 a vaccine started to roll out and travel became an option.
“We needed people to get back out there and make a big trip,” says Archer. “And with Iceland, one of the things that is a necessary item to travel there is hiking boots, because everything is rugged and you need these shoes to climb the side of a volcano.
“And so we created unique boots that we called sweat pants boots.
“This is the weirdest idea. We took people's actual sweatpants that they'd been wearing for like a year during COVID, sitting on their couches and not doing, just staring at their computer screens. We said if you come to Iceland and bring us your sweatpants we will turn them into hiking boots that are suited to travel all through Iceland.”
At a pop up store in Reykjavik, an Icelandic textile designer would take the pants and then turn them into the world's first sweat pants boots.
In the late northern autumn of 2021, came the Icelandverse, piggybacking the news agenda established when Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg’s announced the metaverse.
“We were in the midst of concepting for a campaign for that fall and winter when Mark Zuckerberg announced the metaverse two days before the client presentation,” says Archer.
“We put in something at the end of the deck, to spoof Zuckerberg’s video.
“Our clients said: ‘Yes, let's do it’. And within about 12 days, we had produced the full video and put it out in the world.
“About 24 hours after it went live, Mark Zuckerberg responded and commented on Facebook, and then it was off to the races. The whole world was talking about it.
“And not only did he comment on that video, he actually went to Iceland the following May. He posted on his Instagram from the Icelandverse a photo dump of him and his wife, in the lagoons and with the sheep. He fully embraced it.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.