On 14 September, SoolNua released the 2015 city and country rankings in the inaugural SoolNua World ICECREAM Index. Top of the list was Slovenia, followed by England with Iceland in third place. The initiative was launched in May 2015 at IMEX Frankurt and nominations for locations all over the world serving the best ice cream were accepted by SoolNua until 17 July.
From then until 1 September (00.00 GMT) voting lines were open and nominees engaged proactively with their communities and fans seeking votes on the dedicated website. Voting closed on 1 September and then the international judging panel evaluated the entries with specific focus on the campaigns they conducted.
“ICECREAM is a universal treat yet each destination around the world has its own unique recipes and flavours. The SoolNua World ICECREAM Index is really telling two stories – one story is about great ICECREAM and where you can find it, the other is about pride of place and community engagement and how destinations can build profile and presence in unique and unusual ways” said Patrick Delaney, joint managing Partner at SoolNua.
“We were overwhelmed by the reaction to the initiative with nominations coming from all over the world. The last two weeks of voting were like an exciting end-to-end football match with constant changes on the leaderboard as nominees tried new ways to increase votes. The overall winner, Slovenia, impressed the judges with their impressive tally of votes (almost 10,000) but also with the systematic ways they worked together around vote management, creative initiatives to increase votes and sheer, unbridled commitment to winning!” added Pádraic Gilligan, joint Managing Partner at SoolNua.
Dada Jerovšek, Director at Kaval Group, about what it means to Lolita to be ranked no.1 on the SoolNua World ICE-CREAM Index: “It means a looooot, to be honest. We probably even don’t know it yet, understand what happened. We just feel it, sense how great, huge this ranking “to be no.1 on the SoolNua World ICE-CREAM Index” is. But of course, what we know and are most proud of is the fact that our beautiful capital city of Ljubljana and our country Slovenia is now also through this placed on the world map. And this means a lot to all of us…to Ljubljana and to Slovenia.”
We know you are all wondering which flavour represent Slovenia the best. Dada shared: “Lolita’s Ice-cream is homemade, from natural Slovene ingredients with no chemical preservatives. We use just what is fresh, natural. When prepared one has to eat it in four days, which has never been a problem. My favourite are fruity tastes because it is like the taste of the fruit itself just in a cold version. Most precious for me is the blueberry ice cream prepared from the blueberries which were growing in our beautiful green Slovene forest, were picked in the early morning and in the afternoon they already spoil and seduce you in the best Lolita’s ice cream. Delicious. There is just one problem…. your teeth are going to be blue afterwards. But it’s worth it!”
Full rankings for individual stores, cities and countries, click here.
