Iceland will "OutHorse" your out of office email responses so you can relax on vacation

At least once a year, tourism company Inspired By Iceland manages to come up with some of the world’s only worthwhile advertisements. Late last year, for instance, the company suggested visiting Iceland to enjoy the country’s tangible qualities rather than listen to Mark Zuckerberg and get into the metaverse. In 2020, during the first summer of the pandemic, we were told that the nation would help the rest of the world out by giving us an avenue to vent our screams of sadness and frustration.

And now, topping both of these pitches, it’s enticing tourists by promising to have their vacation’s out of office emails handled by several committed horses and a giant keyboard.

The “OutHorse Your Email” campaign is designed to help travelers properly enjoy their holidays, safe in the knowledge that any incoming message will be handled by Icelandic horses walking along a set of enormous keys. A commercial shows off this “revolutionary system,” which sees a bunch of helpful horses just tapping along a horse-sized keyboard in front of beautiful Icelandic landscapes.

“They are trained in corporate buzzwords,” we’re assured by a narrator who sounds like he’s probably The Tourist and Lady Dynamite’s Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. “Your boss will never know the difference.”

A lesser ad campaign would create prop horse keyboards that don’t actually do anything, but Inspired By Iceland is dead serious about its willingness to put its equine population to work as real administrative assistants. A behind the scenes video shows people building a giant keyboard capable of withstanding heavy hooves before training a few horses to reply to unnecessary emails about upcoming meetings with appropriate responses like: “wFwhxsqjnz gmsrqaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

Those interested in the service can even select which horse best meets their professional needs over on the campaign’s website. There’s Litla Stjarna from (or frá) Hvítarholti, who the site says “types fast, but might take a nap.” There’s also Hrímnir of Hvammi (“Assertive. Efficient. Shiny Hair.”) and, last but not least, Hekla from Þorkellshóli, pictured with their tongue hanging out and described as “friendly” and ready to deploy some of the “corporate buzzwords” that the commercial promised.

And, if these typing horses somehow aren’t enough of a draw on their own, you might as well just go to Iceland anyway to check out its historic Big Mac, enjoy some anti-capitalist industrial music, or, we don’t know, strip down for a sword fight to the death amidst the burning core of one of its volcanoes.

[via Digg]

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