Google "Järvfjället" and you’ll get pages of results for IKEA’s gaming chair; "Ektorp" will bring you to IKEA sofas; now try “Bolmen” and you’ll find the retailer’s $.99 toilet bowl brush. Scroll a bit further and you'll realize all of those product names are also actual places in Sweden.
Now, a creative new tourism campaign from Visit Sweden hopes to reclaim some of those somewhat familiar products and connect travelers with those very real namesakes to inspire a trip to explore the Nordic country.
In a new campaign called “Discover the Originals," Visit Sweden profiles 21 actual Swedish lakes, towns and villages from which the IKEA products took their names. The spirit of the campaign is light. Nils Persson, chief marketing officer for Visit Sweden, said Sweden is very proud of how IKEA made the borrowed names world famous.
“Now we want, with warmth and a twinkle in our eye, to show the originals behind the product names and invite the world to discover the whole of Sweden,” Persson said.
To underscore the levity of the campaign, Visit Sweden has already released a quirky video promoting it.
Places in Sweden that became popular IKEA product names
Plotting your visit to some of you recognize might be as challenging as following one of IKEA's instruction manuals since most Google searches will turn up the IKEA product first.
To help discover – and reclaim – these names Visit Sweden has put together a list of 21 of those destinations around Sweden to help you in your trip planning. Here are some of the ones you might have in your own home and the destinations they represent:
- Far from IKEA’s gaming chair, Järvfjället is a town in Lappland that Visit Sweden says doesn’t have a 5G tower insight and is a great destination for hiking and camping.
- Far from the toilet brush, Bolmen is a large freshwater lake with “water so clean you can drink from it” according to Visit Sweden.
- Ektorp might be in your living room, but the town for which the sofa is named is located on the Baltic Sea and boasts a nature reserve.
- You might need a bath towel to travel to Himleån in western Sweden, where you can swim, paddle or birdwatch.
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