Your next meeting could probably have been an email.
Visit Iceland thinks it could also have been a sweater.
Its new AI Knittakers service lets people send a real Icelandic knitter to sit through their online meetings for them. The “AI” here stands for Authentic Icelandic, and instead of producing a transcript or AI-generated summary, the Knittaker listens to the conversation and knits its most important takeaway into a single word.
“Pivot.” “Align.” “Reset.”
Apparently, an hour-long meeting really can fit into a few stitches.
Pick A Knitter. Skip The Meeting.
The campaign, created by M+C Saatchi North America with Icelandic agency Peel, is not just a film or a joke.
Visit Iceland built an actual booking platform where users can browse participating knitters, learn where in Iceland they live, see their recommendations and book an available one-hour slot. The calendar invite can then be forwarded directly into the meeting.
Once it is over, the person who booked receives a photograph of the knitted summary. Some participants in the U.S. and Europe can even request the physical piece itself. The service is free, with sessions running across late October and November.
And while your substitute sits through the meeting, Visit Iceland would prefer you did something considerably better.
Ideally in Iceland.
Iceland Keeps Finding Ways To Remove Work From Vacation
That is what makes the campaign particularly good.
The knitters are not anonymous meeting assistants. Their profiles introduce their hometowns, favorite Icelandic experiences and personal travel recommendations. They join from places around the country, quietly turning an ordinary video call into a piece of destination advertising.
It also continues a theme Visit Iceland has used before.
In 2022, OutHorse Your Email let Icelandic horses walk across a giant keyboard to write vacation autoresponders for people struggling to disconnect from work.
The horse answered your email.
Now the knitter takes your meeting.
That consistency is smarter than simply producing another beautiful film full of waterfalls and geothermal pools. Visit Iceland has identified the thing standing between many people and actually enjoying a vacation — work refusing to leave them alone — and turned solving it into its creative platform.
AI promises to make meetings more productive.
Visit Iceland has a better idea.
Skip the meeting entirely.
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