The Swedish tourism board has taken an interesting risk in handing their official Twitter account @Sweden over to the tax paying public. It seems that the Swedish Institute figured the very best champions of all things Swede are the people themselves. Following this logic, the rational conclusion was that having regular Joes (the swedish equivalent of Joe? Sven?) tweet about their daily lives would raise awareness about how cool Sweden is as a tourist destination.It’s a bold move, with a different person every week connected by nothing but their nationality and their desire to be the voice of the nation. When it comes to transparency and letting go of the reins, Social Media has always scared those who want to control the perception of a brand, or, in this case, a country. But what happens when the voice of a nation casually informs his audience about his masturbation schedule?
We’re wondering whether it’s an earnest attempt to legitimise the country’s Twitter presence, a cunning effort to get the inside, authentic street view of the best of the country or just a PR stunt.
Time will tell. The project lives at Curators of Sweden, and says very little about their plans. According to Digital Trends we can expect to hear from “a teacher, a priest, an editorial writer, a coffee-drinking trucker lesbian and an ad agency founder who owns his own farm. There’s no end date set for the experiment and will likely continue for at least the next two months.”
It’s a cool and novel use of the platform and worth keeping an eye on.