Those shy and retiring Swiss certainly know how to make some noise when it comes destination marketing on the web – even when it’s a tiny village in the mountains.
Obermutten is situated in the east of the country, miles away from the popular cities of Lausanne, Zurich and Geneva, and the tourists hotspots around the lakes and Alpine skiing regions.
Last year the village (population at the time: 78 residents) decided to raise its profile via Facebook and promised every person who liked its page would have their photograph pinned to its official notice board in the centre of the village.
What happened next took everyone by surprise.
The idea captured the attention of many on Facebook and soon enough the page and thousands of people decided to “like” the page, meaning the village had make good on its promise (it now has close to 18,000).
Soon enough the notice board was full, so the pictures started appearing on the sides of other buildings around the village.
The Obermutten page now has more fans than some of the most popular tourist traps in Europe and the regional Grabunden tourist board site has since its web traffic soar by 250%.
But more importantly, at the height of the “campaign” four out of five fans regularly interacted with page and each other – a figure its creators reckon is higher than pages belonging to Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Coca-Cola.
Once again, a bit of imagination with social media can lead many a destination or service to punch far above its weight.
The downside? With popularity comes visitors. Wonder if the village’s solitary hotel can cope…
Here is a clip:
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You gotta love the initiative and the innovative thinking!! Bravo Obermutten! I’ll add my picture to the mix. Why not!
The article is telling us about a great performance. However, it failed to give us a link to that Facebook page of that village.
In fact, I tried to located the page myself. What I found is a humble page with 166 fans only and almost without any interaction.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Obermutten/295305610492483
@ahmed – you mean this one? http://www.facebook.com/obermutten
have added into story.
Yes, this new link is full of interactions.
Thank you!
Great idea! I believe in Innovative thoughts they are likely to succeed, compliments to Obermutten!
I found this article great, this means that idea, genial idea can give great results, without using any sort of “useless” consultants, I have translated it into italian because I think this has to be an example for several people involded in destination management http://albertocorrera.blogspot.it/2012/05/promozione-turistica-vincente-un.html
Wrong. There were consultants, check my comment.
1. It’s was free gift of an advertising company, a small village could not afford
2. It was mainly a campaign to advertise the agencies services
3. The value of such a campaign can be questioned – are the people going there? Can the village handle this?
4. Despite all, the agency won some awards.
@juerg…
What ad company? Why no mention of it anywhere if the purpose was to advertise the agencies?
And links to shed light on this?
Sorry, I was mobile that’s why there were no links.
I also made a mistake in my first post b<sed on older information. When it became clear that this campaign was started by an agency, rumours started what the purpose is then. First information was the agency did it for free and for their own marketing. I then forgot this whole story.
After seeing this post, I searched again and the picture became clearer, actually it was a campaign – probably paid not free – for the tourism organisation of Canton of Graubünden (that's where the commune of Obermutten is located).
Link to the agency: http://www.jvm.ch/en/arbeiten/kampagne/graubuenden/obermutten/social-media
Link to a video page where it's clearly stated it's done by the agency for Graubünden Tourism http://creativity-online.com/work/graubunden-tourism-obermutten-goes-globalbest-of-2011-ix-5/25156
Hope this helps. If not, please come back with questions.