Wait, Sweden or Switzerland? Rihanna, Joe Biden and Wall Street seem to belong to a large international group that confuses the countries.
Visit Sweden now wants to remedy this confusion with the global campaign "Welcome to Sweden (not Switzerland)".
"That's over 120,000 googles, just in English, every year if Sweden and Switzerland are the same country," says Nils Persson, marketing manager at Visit Sweden to SVT Kulturnyheter, adding:
"It's not a bad thing to be confused with Switzerland. We are two fine countries that have a lot in common, but at the same time we are quite different.
Head of Communications Jim Hofverberg writes in an email that the campaign is a way to show how "Visit Sweden is working to nuance the negative image of Sweden abroad".
Attract tourists
The campaign is being launched internationally in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and China, among other countries, with the aim of making the destination Sweden visible.
Actress Emma Peters explains, with humour, which characteristics belong to which country – such as the Swedish northern lights and the Swiss invention LSD.
"Maybe it's not that you laugh out loud, but rather that you smile. That's more the tone we want to have in our marketing, says Nils Persson to SVT:
Changing image of Sweden
Gang crime, Koran burning and a heightened terrorist threat level have put the international image of Sweden to the test.
Earlier this year, the Swedish Institute expressed concern about the deteriorating image of Sweden in foreign news media and social media reporting.
Visit Sweden is state-funded. Can your campaign be perceived as a bit tone-deaf?
"I really hope not. That is not our intention. We want to talk about the destination of Sweden, because that's our mission. We know that so far, the destination of Sweden is very high out there, and we want to continue with that," says Nils Persson.