Title	DEMOCREATIVITY
Brand	VISIT SWEDEN, BUSINESS SWEDEN AND SWEDISH INSTITUTE
Product/Service	SWEDEN AS A NATION
Category	A09. USE OR INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL OR SOCIAL MEDIA
PR Agency	PRIME Stockholm, SWEDEN
Entrant Company	PRIME Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Position
Tom Beckman/Prime/Executive Creative Director
Shirin Hirmand/Prime/Account Director
Olle Thunberg/Prime/Digital Creative Director
Ellinor Irving/Prime/Media Specialist
Marcus Wenner/Prime/Senior Planner
Patrik Beskow/Prime/Creative
Noak Garberg/Prime/Creative
Mikael Dahlberg/Prime/Creative
Pär Thunberg/Bärnt/Ärnst/Web Developer

The Campaign

Creativity is becoming an ever more important competitive tool for countries to attract talent, trade and tourism in the new global service based economy. The brief was to promote Sweden as a creative country through on one or more of its internationally successful creative industries (fashion, design, music, computer games, advertising, film, literature). The message of the campaign was to support Sweden's brand platform and core values of being open, authentic, innovative and caring. In 2011 Sweden was ranked as the world’s most creative country due to its high levels of talent, technology and tolerance. And tolerance, which was defined as openness and diversity, is where Sweden stands out the most. A small country as Sweden has always been dependent on adopting new ideas from the surrounding world, and it is even more important today in order to stay relevant in the creative forefront. Our strategy was to prove that democratic values such as being open to new perspectives and a diversity of ideas is crucial for creativity to flourish. So we launched the platform Democreativity.com, a collaborative tool designed to create ideas and build on others’.

Results

The brief was to promote Sweden as a creative country through one its internationally successful creative industries. The objective of the campaign was to strengthen the image of Sweden as a creative country in order to attract talent, tourism and investments. The goal of the campaign was an earned media reach of 24 million on a global market. In 2011 Sweden was ranked as the world’s most creative country due to its high levels of talent, technology and tolerance. And tolerance, which was defined as openness and diversity, is where Sweden stands out the most. A small country like Sweden is dependent on adopting new ideas from the surrounding world, and it has become even more important today in order to stay in the creative forefront. Our strategy was to prove that democratic values, such as being open to new perspectives and a diversity of ideas, are crucial for creativity to flourish. So we launched the platform Democreativity.com, a collaborative tool designed to create ideas and build on others’, aimed to inspire creators all over the world. With the help of industry experts, the ideas were summarized in a creative brief. Based on the brief, students at Sweden’s top video game university produced games as a part of their curriculum. The games were then published on Democreativity.com, available for anyone to download and play. Democreativity was promoted by media, by ministers, at global conferences, by universities, and opinion leaders. Total media reach was 147 million and the project received well over 500 game ideas from 126 countries.

We started by partnering with the games industry, Sweden’s largest creative export. We launched the platform Democreativity.com, a collaborative tool designed to co-create a video game by contributing with ideas and building on others’. In order to spark creativity in users, we presented statistics on the most common characters, environment and ways of winning in the best selling games. Users were then asked to contribute with the complete opposite of mainstream video games, which proved to be a good strategy for extracting new and unlikely game ideas from the target audience.

With the help of industry experts, the ideas were summarized in a creative brief. Based on the brief, students at Sweden’s top video game university produced games as a part of their curriculum. The games were then published on Democreativity.com, available for anyone to download and play. Through social media and public relations we engaged people all over the world to contribute with new and unlikely game ideas. Democreativity was promoted by media, by ministers, at global conferences, by universities, and opinion leaders. Total media reach was 147 million worldwide. But more importantly it engaged the people we set out to reach. The project received well over 500 game ideas from 126 countries. Sweden’s top video game college made the project part of its curriculum. And one of the games developed actually went on to be nominated in the Swedish Game Awards.