Scotland has many fantastic exports. Whisky. Shortbread. Square sausage as a rite of passage. SuBo as a concept. And for the older generation of Caledonian types, Midge Ure shouting “Ah Vienna” like it is 1985 and Sir Bob has just phoned about something.
But now Vienna has finally sent something back.
Not as an ad, but a literal and metaphorical invitation. Wax sealed. Hand delivered. Posted through the doors of a village in Perthshire called Dull, population 84. The one we all know and love from the many brainstorms where briefs call on such things.
Inside was an offer from the tourist board and an all-expenses-paid weekend in Vienna. No strings attached, with the single condition: come and judge whether Vienna is dull, and whether it is dull in January.
Thirty-three residents said “aye” and flew out in the middle of winter, right into the city’s iconic ball season. a time of year when cities really ruddy need people popping over for a visit and when most are staying in, hibernating and not even considering heading to the supermarket, let alone a central European cultural hotspot.
So with a whirlwind red-carpet-laden tour of museums with guides, waltz lessons, Ice skating, and a night at the Vienna Ball of Sciences. Coffee and cake in quantities that suggest concern for neither waistlines nor schedules. These real people from a small village were shown the best of the best times.
On the surface, this is a neat joke. Dull visits Vienna. Headlines write themselves.
But what is rather classy about this one is that it is the month when most destinations either disappear or discount themselves into irrelevance, and, generally, tourist boards that need to answer to endless stakeholders and governmental bodies take a relatively straight approach to things. Vienna did the opposite. Using the stereotypes to its advantage and flipping the table from Tourism marketing that normally begs to “Look at us. Choose us. Please come” to driving authenticity of real people and allowing the whole thing to play out in their reactions, which is just richer and more emotionally rewarding all around.
So the class of this is, of course, in what they did, but also what they didn’t do.
No celebrities. No creators. No “study” about winter travel attitudes. No briefings about hashtags. Just an experience worth having, then the confidence to let it stand on its own.
And for many. Watching the story of the townspeople of Dull’s winter holiday unfold is enough for those, like me, who have never been to genuinely consider giving it a Viennese whirl.
