Ever interested in visiting Sweden? No? Well, here to tickle your interest is an odd marketing effort by the Swedish Tourist Association: Call Sweden. You heard us right. Call Sweden. You know, Sweden as in the country and the folks over at Sweden’s Tourist Association are not just saying it figuratively – they actually have a number for you to call and who will answer your call? Anyone, well, kind of. According to the official campaign website (yes, even an official website!), it states that “everyone who lives in Sweden is able to register as an ambassador” and so when you call, you’d be speaking to a random Swede who is a Swedish Number ambassador. In other words, it is random person from a pool of people and not quite the entire Sweden population.
As for the topic of choice, it is entirely your call. The campaign, dubbed The Swedish Number, is created to honor the 250th anniversary of the country’s censorship abolishment. As it turns out, Sweden is the first country in the world to abolish censorship way back in 1766 (man, those guys were really advanced!). And today, in 2016, it is the first country to has its own number. In case, you want to jump into the Call Sweden movement, here’s the number to dial: +46 771 793 336. But before you do so, you have to know that the number isn’t toll-free, which means the usual phone charges local and/or international will be levied. You have been warned.
So has anybody called? Apparently, boatloads of them already did. Apart from Engadget’s Joseph Volpe, whom we source the story from, some 13,500 calls have been made to Sweden, racking up (to date) a whopping 24 days, 6 hours, 19 minutes and 44 seconds of talk time. At the time of this writing, the last call was from The Netherlands and the top five countries that called Sweden so far are Australia (6%), U.K. (7%), Russia (8%), Turkey (18%), and topping the list, is U.S.A. at 32%. Pretty cool, right? So, will you call Sweden? Or you already did?
via Engadget
