WINNER 2017
TRAVEL & TURISM
Brand
VISIT FAROE ISLANDS
Lead Agency
SANSIR & LIQUIDMINDS
Contributing Company
KOVBOYFILM
SHEEP VIEW
The Challenge
The remote Faroe Islands have for many years been neglected by Google Street View. So until recently there was no Street View in the Faroe Islands. Google was simply not interested in the tiny country.
And with only 50,000 inhabitants the Faroe Islands had limited opportunities to market the small islands in the big world
The Strategy
Thus, necessity begat invention. If Google Street View wouldn’t come to the Faroe Islands, we had to make the Faroe Islands visible to the rest of the world in a different way.
The Implementation
We mounted 360-degree cameras on the backs of some sheep with solar cells and a cell phone. The sheep went around and uploaded images via mobile phones and Google’s open API. Sheep View was born.
We believed that the idea was so strong that it could create headlines in the world’s largest media, and we coordinated our efforts to newsrooms around the world.
The Result
Faroe Islands’ ‘Sheep View’ videos boosted tourism! The campaign was a hit. Only 20 minutes after launch the story was on The Guardian, closely followed by BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Daily Mail, Washington Post, Sky News etc. With a budget of just $280,000, the ‘Sheep View’ campaign generated 2 billion media impressions and an estimated PR value of $50 million.
The campaign caught the media’s interest all over the in the world and suddenly Google was a little more amenable. They decided to support us with their equipment, and with the Google Street View team and at lot of volunteer help, we have now created Street View via Sheep View.
In short: We caught the whole world’s interest, increased the number of tourists significantly and created an enormous linking and involvement. All this without a real media budget.
Results of Sheep View the campaign:
Reach: +2.000.000.000
News stories: +7.000
Website stories: 42.200
PR ROI: 150.000 pct. Estimated
PR value: $50 million