Bolmen is a picturesque lake in Sweden, where visitors can explore an unspoiled natural environment in a canoe, hike down trails or pick berries. But it is also the name of a toilet brush sold by Ikea.
When Visit Sweden was planning its latest tourism campaign, it realized that many Swedish names of popular Ikea products are taken from real places in the country. Yet most people outside the country don’t know this and, instead, associate hard-to-pronounce Swedish words with mundane household items such as trash cans and shelves, rather than exciting travel destinations.
This poses a potential problem for a tourism body trying to attract visitors. Now, Visit Sweden is encouraging people to “discover the originals” and explore the destinations that inspired Ikea’s product range.
As part of the campaign, Bolmen, the lake in the southern Swedish province of Småland, has developed a new slogan: “Bolmen—more than an Ikea toilet brush.”
“We do appreciate that Ikea has named a product for our beautiful lake and that Visit Sweden is bringing global attention to this. But now we would like to show the world that Bolmen is so much more than an item with which you clean your toilet,” explained Magnus Gunnarsson, chair of Smålands Sjörike and municipal council member in Ljungby.
There are other examples, too. Järvfjället is the name of an Ikea office chair, but it is also a mountain in Lapland with hiking and cross-country ski trails. Skärhamn is a drawer handle sold by the retailer, as well as a fishing village on the island of Tjörn and home to an art museum. Kallax, the moniker for an Ikea shelving unit, is also a coastal town known for its annual fermented herring party, one of Sweden’s culinary traditions. The list goes on.
Ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors created the campaign, which features a tongue-in-cheek film attempting to entice visitors by boasting of the actual places behind Ikea’s range.
“In Sweden, we are proud of Ikea and in a way you can say that they helped us make Swedish places world-famous through the names they borrowed for their products,” Visit Sweden chief marketing officer Nils Persson said in a statement. “Now we want, with warmth and a twinkle in our eye, to show the originals behind the product names and invite the world to discover the whole of Sweden.”
CREDITS:
Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors
Client: Visit Sweden
Client Supervisor: Nils Persson
Project Manager: Nils Ekstrand
Account Director: Ann Spennare Bengtsson
Account Executive: Johanna Bringefält
Art Director: Johanna Hofman-Bang
Copywriter: Marcus Hägglöf
Writer: Elisabeth Christensson
Designer: Håkan Larsson
Planner: Alena Sucher
PR Strategist: Robert Johnsson
Agency Producer: Magnus Kennhed
Production Company: BRF
Director: Torbjörn Martin
Assistant Director: Artur Wolgers
Executive Producer: Rikard Åström
Producer: Hampus Gunnarsson
Editor and Online: Artur Wolgers
Sound: Ljudbyrån
