Two years ago, Visit Oslo went viral by asking whether Oslo was even a city worth visiting.
Now its famously unimpressed ambassador is back. And this time, he is trapped in a musical.
“It’s Totally Even a City” brings back Halfdan, played once again by Bendik Aunan, for a winter sequel to Visit Oslo’s brilliant 2024 anti-tourism campaign. Created by NewsLab and directed by August Jorfald, the film uses the same basic joke: Halfdan keeps trying to explain why Oslo is terrible, while everything happening around him makes it look wonderful.
The Grumpiest Tourism Ambassador Is Back
Halfdan complains about bankers commuting to work on skis, children taking over parks with sleds and people happily throwing themselves into icy water before heading to floating saunas.
Unfortunately for him, the entire city keeps interrupting with song.
What begins as a retro Christmas musical gets progressively stranger. Halfdan eventually quits and asks for a taxi to the airport, only to be chased through the forest by a candle-carrying children’s choir before encountering a rabbit threatening to burn him on a bonfire and eat him.
Naturally, he decides Oslo might be tolerable for another week.
A Sequel That Doesn’t Repeat The Original
The first “Is It Even a City?” campaign worked because Visit Oslo did the opposite of traditional tourism advertising. Halfdan complained about the lack of crowds, short distances and proximity to nature, accidentally turning every criticism into a selling point.
Visit Oslo says that film generated more than 25 million organic views and later won a Silver Lion at Cannes.
The obvious sequel would have been the same joke with snow.
Instead, the team kept the character and completely changed the format.
That is what makes this one work. Halfdan is now a recognizable brand asset in his own right, but the campaign does not simply ask him to perform the same routine again. The musical gives the cynicism somewhere new to go while solving a very real tourism challenge: making a cold, dark Nordic winter look desirable.
Most tourism advertising desperately tries to convince you everything is amazing.
Visit Oslo has built a platform around one guy insisting it isn’t.
And somehow, that makes you want to go even more.
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