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- Convenors:
-
Hanne Pico Larsen
(Tuck School of Business)
Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch (Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)
Marilena Papachristophorou (University of Ioannina)
Szilvia Gyimóthy (Copenhagen Business School)
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Short Abstract
How do notions of nature relate to narrations of identity, heritage, the national and personal, the physical and the spiritual? We zoom in on brand promotional material from fashion and tourism contexts and ponder the allure and marketization of nature in corporate storytelling.
Long Abstract
66°North was founded in 1926 by Hans Kristjánsson with the purpose of making protective clothing for Icelandic fishermen and workers braving the North Atlantic elements.
https://www.66north.com/us/circular/our-heritage
Fashion and tourism brands are particularly drawn to wild nature in their corporate storytelling. Human-non-human entanglements portrayed as “man vs nature” is a favorite trope in Scandinavian and North Atlantic brand identities. We zoom in on brand promotional material from the Icelandic context (and beyond) in which marketers capitalized on images of erupting volcanos, northern lights, puffins, geothermal energy and sheep with a heritage stamp.
In our panel we ponder the growing appeal of nature in contemporary promotion of commodities for urban elites. Portrayed as rugged, primeval and untouched, nature has become a (status) marker for luxurious and authentic lifestyle. Inhospitable nature is framed as corporeally demanding; it must be braved, survived, or overcome. In the era of global environmental crisis and circular economic transitions, however, adversarial binaries between humans and nature are increasingly controversial. Brands in the Anthropocene must tread carefully to conceive a different story about our relations to nature and rekindle the embodied and sensory immersion nature has to offer. In our discussions we will address how corporate storytellers have wondered into conveying the sensory aesthetics of nature. We show that brands use different olfactory, auditive, haptic, and even gustatory modalities to mimic or reimagine nature and at the same time, using these “natural” expressions to position themselves as morally right and pure.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Tuesday 16 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
The Blue Lagoon brands geothermal waters as soothing, pure, iconic. Yet the volcanic forces that give it life also close its gates. This paper explores lagoon branding as a dialogic genre: nature staged in mineral tranquility, and nature speaking back with fire, brimstone, and noxious gases.
Paper long abstract
The Blue Lagoon has become more than a spa: it is one of the most reproduced images of Iceland, a national icon of milky turquoise water, black lava silhouettes, and rising steam. Its marketing promises transformation, healing, and timeless wellness; photographs stage bodies suspended in mineral calm, framed by elemental horizons. With a million visitors annually and revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros, the Lagoon is as central to Iceland’s tourist economy as it is to its image.
Yet the very geology that gives the Lagoon its warmth, mineral richness, and dramatic setting also quakes, erupts, and interrupts: lava, ash, and tremors act as agents in the story. Volcanic eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula since 2021 have forced repeated closures at great cost. Fire interrupts steam, evacuation intrudes upon relaxation. The very geology that produces pleasure and profit also disrupts the story the brand seeks to tell.
Staying with the paradox of nature as both product and threat, stage and actor, the paper raises such questions as: What happens to branding narratives of otherworldliness and purity when nature speaks back and risk comes to the fore? How do tourist emotions of awe, fear, and fascination mediate the relationship between marketed nature and experienced nature? And in what ways do non-human agents—volcanoes, magma, seismicity—disrupt or co-constitute place identity and brand meaning?
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Konin, a Polish post-mining region, turns industrial scars like its "Turquoise Lakes" into tourist assets. This reclamation narrative offers a compelling tourism model for the Anthropocene, moving beyond the classic "man vs. nature" conflict
Paper long abstract
This paper offers a counter-narrative to the "man vs. nature" trope prevalent in luxury and adventure tourism branding. Moving beyond the ideal of a primeval, untouched wilderness that must be "braved" or "overcome," this research examines the tourism strategy of Konin, a post-industrial region in central Poland shaped by decades of lignite mining. Here, the central story is not one of conquering nature, but of its deliberate, anthropogenic reclamation.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of promotional materials, I argue that the region reframes its relationship with the environment by transforming industrial scars into key tourist assets. The iconic "Turquoise Lakes"—pit mines flooded with water of a startling, chemically-induced color—are marketed not as wild, but as post-natural spectacles of recovery and rebirth. This narrative of "repairing" the landscape offers a compelling alternative for tourism in the Anthropocene, one that replaces the adversarial binary with a story of complex co-creation.
The paper will further explore the sensory aesthetics of this manufactured landscape. While the appeal is overwhelmingly visual, rooted in the sublime yet unsettling beauty of the turquoise water, it also offers a unique haptic and auditive experience: the transition from an industrial past to a recreational present. By analyzing how this post-extraction landscape is framed, this paper contributes to the panel’s discussion on how new, more symbiotic stories about human-nature entanglements can be forged and commodified, moving beyond the romanticized wilderness to embrace the aesthetics of the Anthropocene itself.
Paper short abstract
In Valchiusella, holistic practitioners offer “forest bathing” to urban tourists seeking authenticity. But what happens when nature, lived daily by farmers, becomes a luxury experience? An ethnographic study on nature as a sensory and symbolic good.
Paper long abstract
In the alpine context of Valchiusella, a Piedmontese valley traditionally based on family farming, there has been a noticeable influx of new urban residents and tourists attracted by a "natural" and "authentic" lifestyle, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Concurrently, new promotional practices have emerged that contribute to the aestheticization and commodification of nature. Among these, forest bathing — a Japanese-origin practice involving immersive walks in the forest to promote physical and mental wellbeing — is offered by local holistic operators to a wealthy, urban clientele.
This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to explore how nature is reinterpreted and commodified through sensory and therapeutic imaginaries that distinguish between those who “live” nature and those who “consume” it. For local farmers, the relationship with nature is an embodied, everyday reality, while for newcomers, it becomes a purchasable and narratable experience. The study interrogates the boundaries between “authentic” experience and sensory performance, survival and spirituality, rural life and elite tourism. In line with the panel’s themes, it reflects on how the holistic narration of nature contributes to a new aesthetic of ecological luxury and how such narratives are perceived, accepted, or contested by local communities.
Paper short abstract
Building on ethnographic material from Mafia Island (Tanzania) and Bali (Indonesia) we look at travel influencers as contemporary iterations of brands. Focussing on the affective impact of images we address the packaging of the enchantment of nature for the promotion of the travelling self.
Paper long abstract
Recent changes in social media trends and intensified corporate investment have shifted the platform of branding and their communications to be represented by individuals. This paper looks at travel influencers as prolongations and contemporary iterations of brands. Travel influencers utilise nature, and ‘the wild’, as concepts and images to fortify their own personal brands and to attract external investors. Unlike the incommunicability of the enchantment (Gell) and sublimity (Kant) of nature, travel influencers package their experiences exactly to be told, retold, and ultimately sold and reproduced. Building on recent ethnographic material from Mafia Island (Tanzania) and Bali (Indonesia), this paper incorporates previous work conducted by the authors respectively on charter tourism in Scandinavia and Pakistan, and domestic tourism in India. This paper answers how travel influencers stray from, or bolster, hegemonic narratives of people and nature (and people in nature), and how these narratives contribute to neoliberal makings of the self that capitalise also upon the history of mass tourism. This paper offers a methodological perspective that is attentive to not only verbalised narratives, but also to the affective impact of images.
Paper short abstract
This project looks at several ad campaigns that appeal to the by-now axiomatic nature-loving Swede to buy “green.” In the consumption of “green” products, the interests of global capitalism and individual self-expression are not only compatible but are mutually constitutive.
Paper long abstract
At the turn of the 20th century, as Culture Builders were constructing a Swedish national identity as a “nature-loving” folk (Frykman and Löfgren) with a unique biomystical relationship with Nature (Facos), the Swedish state also was embarking on an industrial development/settlement campaign in the boreal north – Sweden’s “Land of the Future,” which would fund Sweden’s Social Democratic experiment. Nature in its most pure, uncontaminated state was idealized by the North, in which outdoor re-creating was as aggressively developed as were extractive industries. This bifurcated North -- the North of the Imagination and the north of plunder -- continues to have utility in the new green capitalism, which reverberates with utopian fantasies in which the interests of global capitalism and individual self-expression are not only compatible but mutually constitutive, grounded in the instrumentalization of the natural landscape.
This project looks at several ad campaigns that appeal to the by now axiomatic nature-loving Swede, and which obscure the industrial processes involved in their production. It examines Svenska Skog’s promotion of biomass pellets as clean and their rebranding of plantations as “forests”; LKAB’s promotional material aimed at recruiting a new generation of settler/workers, which offers a new vision of the future in which re-creating in Nature is compatible with large scale extractive resources; and the marketing of arctic berries as health/super-food while erasing the global chains of worker exploitation, and other examples. The story, in all cases, is that the world is made “green” through consumption, a fairy-tale of modernity.
Paper short abstract
How is wool used to shape imaginaries of Gotland as a tourist destination? This paper examines the portrayal of wool products in tourism and marketing literature, exploring how they are used as symbols of authenticity and nature-bound lifestyles.
Paper long abstract
Wool is a central material and symbol of Gotland’s cultural identity and tourism branding. In promotional narratives, wool products - ranging from handcrafted textiles to contemporary fashion designs - are presented as evidence of the island’s unique natural features, as well as symbols of its cultural heritage.
These narratives convey the textures and sensations of nature through the material, offering buyers a direct tactile experience that connects them with notions of authenticity. By emphasising its characteristics, such as softness, coarseness, scent, and warmth, the material becomes a conduit for an immersive encounter with the island itself.
However, these narratives also highlight tensions between commodification and heritage, rawness and refinement, and lived experience and marketed imagery. Wool stands at the intersection of these contrasts, mediating notions of identity and Gotland’s portrayal as a place of authenticity and uniqueness.
Paper short abstract
In the strategic brand communication of ZSIGMOND luxury fashion brand, we can observe a strong emphasis on the relationship between humans and nature—and through this narrative, the designer builds a bridge between the wildlife of traditional peasant culture, nature, and consumers of luxury fashion
Paper long abstract
The marketing communications of Zsigmond, a luxury fashion brand with Hungarian roots, are based on the following slogan:"Inhale the PAST, exhale the FUTURE." In the strategic brand communication of this luxury fashion brand, we can observe a strong emphasis on the relationship between humans and nature—and through this narrative, the designer builds a bridge between the wildlife of traditional peasant culture, nature, and consumers of luxury fashion. The brand's visual Digital Advertising Materials and unique stories also carry the promise of closeness to nature in an age when the binary relationship between humans and nature is intensifying.SECOND NATURE is a nostalgic collection, inspired by the designer’s rural childhood, sensory memories of nature, and untouched tranquility. The brand's external communication about the collection reads as follows:“Set in the rural landscape of the designer’s childhood, the collection SECOND NATURE is a walk through fragments of memories. Memories of lying beneath a willow tree by the lake, soothed by the rhythmic sound of lapping waves; memories of wind swaying in wild grass, milk thistles and prickly plants; memories of climbing on walnut trees with scratched knees, observing the horizon.SECOND NATURE is the remnant of yet unquestioned, unadulterated tranquillity.” Brand communication focuses on personal memories, childhood landscapes, and the nostalgic feelings associated with them.In my paper,I examine the below-the-line (BTL) advertising materials for the SECOND NATURE collection, which I compare with an interview with the brand's owner, Dóra Zsigmond. I discuss the types of “nature as trope” that appear in the brand's strategic communication
Paper short abstract
Nature in scents is popular within the world of lifestyle and fashion. Desolate or rugged nature signals virtues valued in Scandinavia. Flowers and rosy gardens are also present. We investigate sensory semantics, scent-mediated morality, olfactory design, and home fragrances in Nordic brands.
Paper long abstract
Affluent consumer groups are increasingly adopting virtue-signaling commitments (Currid-Halkett 2017; Bean, Khorramian, and O’Donnell 2018; Harper 2021), which stimulated the market of eco-ethical products and artisanal lifestyle commodities. Over the past two decades, Scandinavian marketers have launched a steady stream of Nordic-labeled brands on global markets for gastronomy, architecture, and fashion, and have come to represent ecological balance and ethical consciousness through a distinctly emerging “regional” aesthetic design. Skandinavisk, a British-Danish B Corp-certified joint venture, produces home and body fragrances for cosmopolitan consumers who aspire to a more balanced and empathetic way of living. In this study, we unpack the narrative and olfactory foraging strategies of Skandinavisk to penetrate an already saturated and morally contested perfume market. Through interviews and netnography, we critically discuss olfactory meaning-making and the sensory semantics of seasonal fragrance series, with keen attention to the strategic connection of the Nordics with emergent olfactory codes for cleanliness/purity and respect. Recent studies revealed distinct strategies of affective and moral governance (Emontspool and Giordi 2017; Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria 2021), along which marketers sensitize consumers to their duty of care for society and planetary resources. Our analysis builds on and extends the literature on affective governance by discussing the embedding of morality into “naturally foraged” olfactory experiences.