Rebranding The Nordic Region
No city without a city-marketing campaign, and no country without a tourism promotion board these days. Place-branding is increasingly popular to keep a city, country or neighborhood known, relevant and well-visited. The Nordic countries are taking place-branding to a new level by creating a new brand for the whole region.
To create this new Nordic brand the Nordic Council of Ministers has commissioned world-leading Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. With the campaign Branding and Positioning of the Nordic Region, the Nordic territories — including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Åland Islands — want to join forces to highlight the values that these countries are respected for, such as openness, trust, innovation, sustainability, and humanity.
Bjarke Ingels
By creating a Nordic brand the collaborating countries build upon the great momentum that Nordic Region currently has, as explained by the council: “The world is turning to the Nordic Region at the moment. The branding project is an effort to make the most of this attention. Launched by the five ministers for Nordic co-operation, the strategy seeks to embody Nordic values, symbols, experiences, and associations, to position the region and differentiate it from the rest of the world.”
For the campaign the Copenhagen based BIG Group will team up with Copenhagen design offices Mensch, Area9 and New York-based Ole Lund Creative. This self-proclaimed creative dream team has won the international pitch with their concept Traces of North, that’s based on the idea of curating “Nordic narratives” around the world.
Interesting about this project is that it’s pretty opportunistic. The official campaign now follows the current success of design and gastronomy from this part of the world. The word ‘Nordic’ is only widely used since Nordic design has become internationally popular in various design fields, but the countries understand well enough that they have to take the most out of this chance. The new Nordic cool has brought the countries together to develop something that’s bigger than good old Scandinavia.
