Title	THE PHOTOGRAPHY BAN
Brand	GRAUBÜNDEN TOURISM
Product/Service	HOTEL ROOMS
Category	E01. Acquisition & Retention
Entrant	JUNG VON MATT/LIMMAT Zürich, SWITZERLAND
Idea Creation	JUNG VON MATT/LIMMAT Zürich, SWITZERLAND

Name	Company	Position
Dennis Lück	Jung von Matt/Limmat	Chief Creative Officer
Alain Eicher	Jung von Matt/Limmat	Creative Direction
Martin Schmidlin	Jung von Matt/Limmat	Texter
Lukas Frischknecht	Jung von Matt/Limmat	Art Director

Why is this work relevant for Direct?

The entire campaign is based on one single call to action: Don`t take pictures of Bergün. And this call to action was turned into a real law, enabled to the Swiss system of direct democracy.

Background

The holiday region “Bergün”, located in the alpine canton of Graubünden, desperately needs more tourists. The task was to find a low budget solution that would make people aware of the charming mountain village.

Describe the creative idea

For the sake of those unable to be in Bergün themselves, the local municipal assembly issued a law banning photography in the village. No joke. A legally binding move, and one made from the heart.

Describe the strategy

There is a beautiful insight that lead to the idea: it is scientifically proven that when people take a look at holiday photos from others, e.g. on social media, they get unhappier when they can`t be in holidays themselves. So photos from Bergün must make people even unhappier because it is just so beautiful there. The consequence: ban photographs from Bergün.

Describe the execution

The wording of the law was sent to the press, and after just 24 hours, news of the ban had spread all over the world. Bergün used social media to further promote its campaign, and even NASA was requested to refrain from taking pictures. Bergün had been trending for a while. Google Image Search exploded. We banned photography, and now people all over the world searched desperately for photos of Bergün, discovering as they did so how beautiful the place really is. And this was the key – exactly how it was meant to happen.

List the results

After just three days some 1622 articles about the beauty of Bergün had accumulated. This resulted in a reach of 897.2 million contacts. And all with a media budget of zero. But earned media worth 9.1 million Swiss francs. Bookings for Bergün rose by 470%, all in all making the photography ban the most successful and efficient Swiss brand publicity stunt of all time.