ICA - Stig "Midsommar school / Midsommar 101" in Arabic (2012) :30 (Sweden)

Happy midsummer everybody! This week Stig has a midsummer school for beginners, where he covers some special aspects of the Swedish midsummer celebration.

Swedes are famous for celebrating midsommar, its our only national holiday not explicitly tied to christianity, so it welcomes everyone, young and old, to just have a great day enjoying everything about our short but glorious summers. Including sudden showers, mosquitos, skinny dipping in the midnight sun and gorging on too much food and beer.

So Stig here explains that no matter what the weather is like, we will eat outdoors. My grandmother told me about her midsummer pick-nicking on Luossavaara mountain when it began snowing one midsummer. Regardless, eat outdoors is the rule! The twist here is that Ica-Stig is actually speaking Arabic. Estimates vary and change over time, but a good guess is that around 4% of the Swedish population speaks Arabic - making this language skyrocket toward the top three spoken language list where Swedish, Finnish, and Sami languages are the leaders of the pack.

While it's pretty funny in Swedish self-deprecating humor way, some people did not think having an ad in Arabic was funny at all. Personally, I'd like Stig to do a little series for everyone abroad who might considering visiting too. Germans already know about midsommar, they mocked us in ads years ago. But let's explain this quirky holiday in French, Gaelic, Flemish, Basque, Dutch, Spanish and why not Italian too, just to share some of our national quirks with the rest of Europe.

Ad agency: KING, Stockholm