Visit Norway | Destination Marketing Campaign

Our task was to position Northern Norway as the ultimate Northern Lights destination, and SAS as the airline that flies you there.

Norway is beset by a mystical beauty. Legends and folklore have been used to explain everything from the structure of its mountains to the cause of the Northern Lights. Inspired by this tradition for mythology, we decided to blur the lines between fact and fiction a little further, creating our very own promised land which we named Nordlys.

Located in Northern Norway’s vast aurora zone, ‘Nordlys’ – Norwegian for ‘Northern Lights’ – became a motif conceived for the region as a whole; a curious term designed to celebrate the region’s celestial beauty and its rich association with the natural light phenomena through social media.

To introduce Nordlys to the world, we enlisted some of the best nature photographers in the game as well as the most effective influencers in travel marketing.

This hand picked team were not just chosen for their following and engagement, but also their photography style and willingness to embrace the concept. They spent a week in Norway creating new content for the campaign, sharing their experiences with their followers along the way.

A dedicated visitnordlys Instagram account played out across three key source markets (UK, USA and Germany), providing the perfect stage for our mystical world.

Using a highly visual mix of storytelling and Norse mythology, we managed to captivate a global audience.

 The Visit Nordlys Instagram page experienced incredible growth, gaining over 10k followers in just over three weeks – reaching a total amount of over six million unique users.

Using Google Trends, we were able to see that Northern Norway enjoyed its highest search volume in five years and, for the first time in two years, Northern Norway ranked above Iceland. Significantly, this surge began on 6 th December – our campaign launch date.

We also saw shifts in conversation share across social media (FB, IG & TW). Pre-campaign, Northern Norway had a 30.2% share in conversation against its lead competitors.

Post-campaign, it enjoyed a 40.6% share. That’s a huge 10.4% (or a 30% increase) in conversation around Northern Norway as a destination. In fact, this was the biggest single month-on-month jump in the last three years.

In addition, SAS Airlines saw a staggering 14% passenger increase to SAS destinations in Northern Norway across the campaign’s three markets (UK, US and Germany).

The campaign was awarded Gold for Best Social Media Campaign at the Travel Marketing Awards, 2019.