Finnish trains or finishing ‘Worst Ex Ever’: is that even a choice?

There is a moment in every good piece of Nordic noir cinematography when the world-weary detective protagonist, having accosted his suspect in the nearest boggy swamp, gets him by the scruff of the neck and fixes him with a look that is equal parts utter contempt and withering disdain.

Prospective visitors to Scandinavia might find themselves wearing much the same expression this week, after they hear about “Binge Finland”, a piece of marketing flim-flammery that is to its intended target – streaming service addicts – what a plate of poached reindeer is to vegans.

The campaign, by Finnish national railway operator VR-Group, has been designed to encourage people to “replace streaming marathons with real-world experiences”, which presumably includes being granted an audience with whichever Year 8 social studies student dreamed up the slogan “this summer, binge Finland, not TV”.

Since screen addicts – or, as VR-Group would have it, “true binge-watchers” – are probably halfway through an important episode of Worst Ex Ever and cannot be disturbed, here’s the download on Binge Finland.

Participants need to log onto VR-Group’s website this Friday and answer a survey on their bingeing habits. The “winners” – those who complete the questions fastest – will be given an opportunity to purchase a 30-day rail holiday ticket (which normally retails at €369) for the price of a monthly streaming service subscription, €9.90.

So far, so straightforward, no? Drop that passport, Mike Teevee. There are so many disproportionately large buts attached that you’d think the Kardashians were filming in Helsinki.

For starters, the lucky recipients of the cheap tickets should plan to go solo, because any travelling companions will be charged the rack rate. Secondly, the VR-Group competition website is suspiciously oblique about how many discounted fares it will actually make available.

And finally, the need for speed means respondents are unlikely to peruse the fine print before they breathlessly check the box authorising VR-Group to (a) bombard them with marketing material in perpetuity; (b) subscribe them to the Scandinavian Train Fancier’s Digest; or (c) harvest their five-year-old’s kidneys.

All of which brings us to the question of who, other than someone whose planning train travel around Finland anyway, would even bother entering the competition. A true screen addict, even one who has found the pause button long enough to be seduced by the possibility of a detox and lodge a successful entry, will just move his or her base of operations to the train. Lake? Good. Fjord? Nice! Glacier – hang on, there’s a Law & Order: SVU marathon starting.

If VR-Group, meanwhile, was serious about relocating people’s gazes from the small screen to the windowpane, it’d install some sort of Wi-Fi signal-scrambling technology on its carriages. That’d ensure that, short of pulling out the phone to snap the obligatory stupid touristy shot of themselves pretending to urinate a waterfall, the addict-winners were prevented from accessing streaming services onboard.

There’s also the small matter of the VR-Group promotional video spruiking Binge Finland, which has been designed in the style of a big-budget trailer for an upcoming TV series. A cynic might point out that producing content mimicking streaming service material to urge addicts to stop streaming, whilst forcing them back onto a device to vie for an opportunity to not stream anything for a month, is a curious proposition. Luckily, there are no cynics here.

What there is, of course, is a growing need for tourism operators to use whatever it takes – flattery, bribery, a crowbar and a blowtorch – to get people off their devices and in the market for real-world experiences. Figures cited as part of the campaign suggest that globally, internet users spend an average of six hours and 40 minutes glued to their screens each day. That’s a lot of time on the all-stations to Hollywood, while the train to Helsinki goes empty.

As such, VR-Group “wanted to frame travel as something as accessible and habitual as streaming,” according to spokesman Marika Schugk, who has apparently never wrestled an ornery suitcase into an overhead locker whilst simultaneously trying to contain a fleeing three-year-old. She should take it from someone who has: lying in front of the TV is way easier.

Regardless though, the whole Binge Finland promotion smells fishier than a plate of lohikeitto, or Finnish salmon soup. Perhaps your average streaming service addict saw a reference to it once, during that obscure Nordic noir series featuring the jaded-but-gentle detective, who was investigating the strange case of the railway operator that got so desperate to win hearts and minds that it reduced its nation to a competition for a show that needed to be streamed.

Michelle Cazzulino is a freelance writer.

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