Rethinking place branding: call for Nordic trace explorers
Branding of The Nordics is about inviting. Inspiring. Toward conversation and cooperation, to an exchange of thoughts and ideas. Traces of North: Ideas that have inspired the world far beyond the Nordic region.
The Nordic countries are uniting to create a unique place branding enterprise, that turns the concept of place branding up-side down. Instead of presenting the world with images of the happy Nordics and beautiful landscapes, the challenge is to find places, people and ideas worldwide where a Nordic mind-set and shared values have had an impact: Traces of North.
- We are trying to not go down the same alley as almost all place branders tend to do. Consequently, instead of showing The Nordics to the world – we will show the Nordics in the world. We want to find Traces of North and share them as a way to tell our common story, share ideas and start conversations with the rest of the world, says brand manager Tobias Grut from the Nordic Council of Ministers.
As part of the overall effort to promote the Nordic region globally, the Nordic Council of Ministers - the official governmental cooperation between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland - has been tasked with launching and facilitating this common branding effort over the next couple of years.
Help us explore the world
To kick-start the campaign in a true Nordic and democratic way, Nordic Council of Ministers are launching a crowd-sourcing initiative, inviting everybody with a Nordic mindset to help build and strengthen the brand of The Nordics.
Over the next couple of weeks the Nordic Council of Ministers invite potential Nordic Trace Explorers to send in their ideas for traces to be followed. And by mid-June, 8 Trace Explorers will be nominated and sent out on the seven seas, physically, virtually or otherwise. To find, document and share Nordic traces as part of the world wide web of narratives of which we are all a part.
In that sense the branding effort is not trying to tell people that "we The Nordics" are particularly good or better, it is simply trying to find examples of how we have inspired or influenced someone or something somewhere in a positive way.
Traces of North
Traces of North builds on the idea of curating ‘Nordic narratives’ around the world, facilitated by new and sophisticated technology, setting up an open source publishing tool that will share and convey Nordic ‘traces’ for use at events, projects, places, around the world.
These narratives and traces should reflect a Nordic mind-set, a mix of values like trust, openness, creativity, equality and fundamental human rights - universal concepts given a unique Nordic twist physically in for example architecture, design, art and technology and emotionally as expressions of culture, policies and ideas.
The idea was developed by the winners of the bid to create a joint Nordic place branding campaign, that were announced at the end of 2016, including Bjarke Ingels Group, Mensch, Area9 and Ole Lund Creative.
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