How do you market a destination? Well, you can do it the traditional way, spending millions of pounds or dollars advertising in magazines, newspapers, on TV and on the net. Or you can, with a bit of imagination, come up with something more effective – and cheaper. But you have to think outside the box. Scandinavians have always been good at this, and the Norwegians proved it again this month by marketing their country in a rather unexpected way.

I’m talking of course about the two online games that have been doing the rounds recently, both of them developed by Innovation Norway, the people behind Visit Norway. The first one, My Northern Lights, is a tool that allows you to create a beautiful on-screen aurora borealis to share with the world (while at the same time learning more about Tromsø and northern Norway). It’s been popping up on many a Norway-related blog and website in the past fortnight, and some 4,200 ’skies’ have already been created.

But the real cracker has been the Holmenkollen Ski Jump 2. The game, which was only launched a few days ago (16 Dec), was played over 500,000 times in the first 24 hours alone. In fact it was so popular that the server called it quit for a while on the first day, as it couldn’t handle the demand. When you think it cost a mere 300,000 kroner to develop, it becomes obvious it was a very smart business decision. It’s also a great way to reach out to a younger audience, and promote Oslo, and Norway, as a holiday destination to millions around the world (the game is available in 9 languages). Impressive stuff.

The first version of the game, which was launched in 2006 and was available in English, German and Norwegian only, has been downloaded 130 million times by some 16 million players worldwide, with 3 million of those then continuing on from the game page to the Visit Oslo page. If the success of the new game is anything to go by, the future looks promising for Visit Oslo, and the Nordic World Ski Championships in 2011.

Try them for yourself:

www.visitnorway.com/holmenkollen/

www.visitnorway.com/mynorthernlights