Icelandverse, The Gauntlet Is Thrown In The Battle Between Real And Fake
Have you seen the new video from Inspired by Iceland, the official marketing arm of Iceland? It’s one of those creative ideas that is made instantly relevant by poking at an easily pokable, well-known celebrity businessman (in this case, Mark Zuckerberg), but not just random poking, strategic poking that will make even people allergic to ice want to go to Iceland. Let me explain.
First, here is the “Icelandverse” video on the left and what it’s spoofing on the right, “Meta” and “metaverse,” in case you missed them:
The Iceland Strategy: what’s the opposite of virtual?
Iceland is not only a real place, it’s a real beautiful place. If your goal is to attract tourists to real and beautiful Iceland, mocking this fake virtual Zuckerworld, no matter how beautiful his pixelated paradise may be, is a calculated cuff upside the head of our over-digitized culture.
By mocking the Metaverse, as Zuckerman calls it, the entire country of Iceland is, in effect, rolling its eyes at the fakery, the superficiality, the silliness of going to such technological lengths to recreate a world through goggles when there’s a real world, even more beautiful, underneath Icelanders’ feet right now.
The idea to mock the Metaverse takes a significant stand. It makes the viewer feel inadequate and small for being even remotely interested in virtual anything, while at the same time hilariously shoves the viewer’s nose into what the real wonders of Iceland look like. And I gotta say from that Icelandic waterfall imagery to the steaming pools to the mountain ranges it looks pretty incredible.
The execution beautifully combines talent and thick sarcasm to great effect.
Spoofing anything in advertising is very difficult because the audience has a frame of reference (whatever’s getting spoofed). It would be easy to screw up and come off as cheesy, which would make it a communications backfire. But not this Iceland piece, no.
The film does a fantastic job of quickly “syncing” with the original Metaverse video, so we get what they’re doing right off the bat. The actor, Jörundur Ragnarsson, looks a lot like Zuckerberg, wears the same clothes, talks with his hands a lot, and has the same freakishly short Romanesque bangs (are they even bangs when they’re that short?). So, quickly the viewer is in on the joke and ready to be entertained.
Then Jörundur, equipped with brilliant writing, takes it from there. His approach to his performance is “bad-good.” Meaning, he does a good job appearing as though he’s awkward throughout the video, emulating Zuckerberg’s natural awkwardness, and nails it to comedic effect. We can really see the “bad-good” when he reveals “Icelandverse” for the first time with his arms over-emphasizing and his eyes pretending to see the logo that obviously isn’t there. Also, his body language when the door (the “real” door, mind you) won’t open—I mean, watch him struggle to get comfortable with his hands after that, it’s priceless.
Even the end when Jörundur says, “Now please enjoy our logo,” the logo flips around, dances around like the Meta logo in Zuckerberg’s video. Consider yourself spoofed, Zuck.
In fact, this video has the entertainment value of one of those Saturday Night Live spoof videos and the strategic power of standing for something (real vs fake), all while communicating the incredible attractions of Iceland. I was totally sucked in, was entertained, and learned something.
And now I want to go to Iceland.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of Ideasicle X and a Brand Consultant. Follow him on Twitter @WillOBurns
