At the end of 2011, Sweden’s Tourist agency, Visit Sweden, put into work a new idea aimed at energizing people around their brand. With Visit Sweden’s brand being Sweden, they decided to let Swedes tell the world about it.

The Idea

Visit Sweden was looking for citizens to run the  @Sweden twitter handle for a week to present their thoughts and insights of Sweden. They wanted to showcase ideas that aren’t normally offered in traditional media, turning Sweden’s citizens into evangelists for their product, Sweden. Individuals would nominate people for the contest and every week a new Swede would get to be the voice of the country.

The Problem

Controversy arose when one of the particular curators made some offensive comments using the @Sweden twitter handle. The particular tweets attracted a lot of negative attention to Sweden.

Overall

Visit Sweden’s idea of loaning out the country’s twitter handle was an innovative and bold move. In my opinion, this strategy led to mixed results. On the one hand, they attracted 25,000 followers from 120 countries. For a tourism agency the vast range of countries attracted is very positive. However, the negative press attracted must also be considered. The story of racist tweets was picked up many news agencies and painted Sweden in a bad light.

Visit Sweden did not censor the posts from its curators and this makes sense as it makes the tweets more authentic. However, when giving consumers what is essentially the voice to your brand you must be careful. Visit Sweden should have done a better job screening their potential curators. Had they done this, they would have prevented the scandal of posting such extreme views.

Check out the campaign here.