Spies' 'Do It for Denmark' turns low birth rates into a viral city-break campaign

In March 2014 Danish travel company Spies Rejser launched 'Do It for Denmark', a two-minute film in which Emma — conceived in a Paris hotel 30 years earlier — returns to repeat her parents' success. The campaign claimed Denmark's birth rate was at a historic low, that 10% of Danish children were conceived on holiday, and that couples have more sex on city breaks. Spies backed the film with an 'ovulation discount' and a competition: couples who proved they conceived on a Spies trip would win three years of nappies, a pram and a family holiday.

The campaign treated a genuine national concern — too few births to support an ageing population — as entertainment, and the formula worked. Within a week the film had nearly five million YouTube views and was the most shared commercial in the world, drawing coverage from the Guardian, Washington Post, Time, BBC and others, while Spies reported that 8% of viewers shared the film. The company's director said the brand was outpacing global names like Pepsi and Samsung on social channels.

The campaign won two golds and a bronze at the Epica Awards in 2014. Spies said Denmark's birth rate showed 'a little progress' after the effort — though still too low — and in September 2015 re-activated the buzz with a sequel, 'Do it for Mom', which reached a million views in its first 24 hours and lifted sales 21% in its first two weeks.

The story also showed the risk of borrowing a national statistic. DR's fact-check show Detektor found the '10% of children conceived on holiday' claim unsupported — nine percent of parents said at least one child was conceived on holiday, which does not mean ten percent of children — and recalculated the sex statistic as 52% more on city breaks, not the claimed 46%. The debate did not stop the campaign, but made it a reference case for both viral cause-marketing and the hazards of shaky data.