Marketing with ø

In Scandinavia we have som extra characters in the alphabet, namely æ, ø and å. Sø whåt dø thæy håvæ tø dø with mårkæting? Well, on a recent trip to Spain I stumbled upon Nørdic Mist, a Tonic Water from Coca Cola.



It surprised me to see the ø used in a brand name. So is association with Scandinavia a positive thing? As far as I understand, they never tried to launch this product where the ø is used, although we could do with competition in the tonic water segment. I find Schweppes tonic water too expensive (the price drops significantly if I go to Sweden), so I end up using products from my local Roma Mineralvannfabrikk.

But what about marketing on a larger scale. Well, I'm not a marketeer, but I remember back when I worked for the HPC company Scali (before they were acquired by Platform Computing, the fact that we were a Norwegian company was obscured.

The strange thing is that a later startup involving some of the same key people uses extensive imagery from Norway on their web-page. They may not be shy any more, but they haven't gone all thæ wåy in mixing in thæ speciål lætters.