The Tendo View

When your country is part of a continent that includes France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, you must face stiff competition for tourist dollars, especially in these challenging economic times. So it stands to reason that you would be under pressure to think of innovative ways to market yourself to travelers. But VisitDenmark, the country’s official tourism agency, got a little too innovative with a recent video campaign.

They created a video—later discovered to be a hoax—that they posted on their YouTube channel. It features a Danish woman (an actress, as it turns out) holding a baby. She is talking to the baby’s father, a man she says met in a bar in Copenhagen and had a one-night stand with. She doesn’t want money or anything from him, she says, she just wants to find him and tell him about their son. Her final plea in the video is for him—or anyone who may know him—to get in touch with her.

According to a Danish news site, VisitDenmark CEO Dorte Kiilerich had this to say in a press release: “We deeply apologise that the film has offended a lot of people—that certainly wasn’t the idea. The idea was to create a positive view of Denmark. In order not to continue offending people, we have removed the film from YouTube.”

I wasn’t offended by the video, but the explanation is a little offensive to anyone of average intelligence because the agency is not ‘fessing up about its goals. Rather than contributing to a positive view of Denmark, these marketers were trying to do something controversial to get people talking about Denmark and create some online publicity. Clearly, at some point they realized that any publicity is NOT good publicity.

Apparently overnight stays in the country are on the downswing—perhaps the Little Mermaid and Tivoli Gardens are a tough sell—but still. Sending out a message to travelers that Denmark has attractive blondes who like one-night stands? I don’t think that strategy belongs in the marketing playbook.