Denmark Used These Ads To Encourage More Sex. Oh Boy, Did They Work
"Screw for Denmark!" -The actual Danish government
DO IT FOR MOM!
Have you ever thought it would be a problem that people aren't having enough sex? Denmark has. More specifically, Denmark's problem was that people weren't having enough babies. But how did they get people to have more babies? By encouraging them to bang more, of course!
Both the government and private companies participated in campaigns to encourage danes to roll around in the hay more frequently. Seems like a radical solution, but it's a creative one, and I most certainly approve. GO SEX!
Between the years of 2000 and 2014, the total number of births dropped from about 67,000 to 57,000.
That was a nearly 15% decrease in babies born over a 14-year period, creating a low birthrate problem that was "approaching epidemic" status in Denmark.
The government was panicking. People were waiting longer to have kids and more than 20% of couples ended up childless. The dwindling youth population spelled bad news for the welfare and elder care systems. They had to find a solution. They needed more baby Danes!
The problem was all a bit strange to begin with—for 2016, Denmark was ranked the World's Happiest Country.
According to CNN and the UN's World Happiness Report, Denmark takes the number one spot, with Switzerland and Iceland ranked numbers two and three, respectively. So why did the country have a sex—or more specifically lack of sex—problem if they're so damn happy?
Well, more realistically, there's no empirical evidence to claim people in Denmark are having less sex than people in any other nation. But logic and probability dictate more sex equals a higher likelihood of conception, so you might say the practical approach to the problem was to encourage people to bang in the name of patriotism.
To combat the problem, a Danish travel company released a campaign titled "Do it for Denmark!"
According to the Washington Post, the campaign asserted "Danes have 46 percent more sex on [vacation], and because more sex increases the chances for more children, we [call] for a romantic break to save the future of Denmark." Basically, the company provided perks to couples taking warm-weather (aka sexy) vacations.
But that wasn't the only campaign the Danes rallied behind. The Independent reports that the City of Copenhagen encouraged people to check their fertility, and Denmark's national broadcaster "aired a programme titled 'Knald for Danmark' or 'Screw for Denmark.'" A country that actually encourages you to breed like rabbits. I've never wished I were Danish more in my life.
Perhaps surprisingly, the campaigns worked, and they worked well.
Following these aggressively sex-positive campaigns, Denmark's The Local reports the "summer of 2016 will bring around 1,200 more Danish babies than last year." That's a pretty major baby boom for such a small country.
The baby boom expected this summer is coincidentally occuring nine months (give or take a bit) after Spies' latest pro-sex campaign, "Do it for mom" went viral on YouTube.
While Copenhagen's deputy mayor for health Ninna Thomsen says, "You probably can't ascribe the increase in births to our campaign," the timing of the baby boom seems to suggest otherwise. Thomsen does concede, however, that all the campaigns "certainly resulted in people getting plenty of fertility advice." So perhaps the campaigns didn't make people bang more—it just helped them to improve fertility. But I'd prefer to think otherwise.
So the next time you're wondering if it's okay to have sex, remember:
Denmark wants you to!