Category: case

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case just a reflection work

Ber du om case så plocka isär dem

Jag lyssnade nyligen (som vanligt) till filosofiska rummet och avsnittet om Aristoteles ”Fysik”. Inte bara är verket i sig uppenbarligen en obduktion av fysiken och naturen och hur den (verkar) funka, utan även avsnittet är ett metaforiskt intelligent böljande samtalshav, mellan tydliga exempel och analys av mekaniken och förhållandena bakom den. Ett bra case.

Detta är något jag saknar så otroligt mycket i många föreläsningssituationer. Case efterfrågas, gärna best practice, men de får gärna avverkas tillsynes utan djupare reflektion. Av många. Inte alla, så klart. Workshops är annorlunda. De kretsar inte kring case utan lek och utforskning av just mekaniken. Om den designats väl vill säga.

Min uppmaningar är att lyssna efter vad som ligger bakom exemplet. Välj aktivt att inte bemöta eller fråga om exemplet i fråga, utan principerna. Förstå mekaniken. Dyker då inte frågorna upp, ja då har du alltid en väldigt enkel. Att du hör vad personen säger och beskriver, men att du bättre vill förstå grundprinciperna. Kan personen i fråga inte obducera detta case på ett sätt som är upplysande bakom det uppenbara, då ska du istället befinna dig i en workshop.

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brand business case marketing video clip

Patagonia, are you asking us not to buy?

I recently bought a Patagonia jacket. Which made me think of this. Worn Wear. Not just the fact that they do in fact become stories and memories, but the reaction from a lot of people when Patagonia explicitly encourages people not to buy their clothes.

I can hear proponents of the concept of brand loyalists scream. Of sales people squirming in their chairs. But it all aligns beautifully with how brands grow, and how brands can resonate, if we think about it.

Aware Patagonia loyalists, because it’s quite likely one of the fairly few brands who actually have real loyalists. Those who go quite far to stick to Patagonia. But those people are few, and they’re most likely very environmentally conscious already.

Another thing is about the message here. It’s not so much about the message, even though it’s very clear, true, and firmly positions the brand as a true “do good brand” with a purpose beyond making quick bucks. But it’s also about how they make this public. It’s so real. There’s not an ounce of fake in here even coming from a brand. I wrote/commented a few lines on how brands publicise themselves creatively here.

And with this in mind, lets just remind ourselves that there’s always people out there, however environmentally conscious or unconscious they might be, in the market for a new jacket and pants. And those people can buy from a number of brands (except for the exceptionally small group of die hard loyalists), all of which would suit their needs. The question is about who do they come to think of first? Who resonates more?

A few of those people might take you up, reconsider, and get used clothes or maybe even repair what they have. That’s a win for Patagonia. But enough people will get something new.

So, as Byron Sharp and other myth-busting researchers have pointed out to us – go for penetration, because the potential buyers are everywhere. They’re not loyal, they’re just likely buyers, to a varying degree.

What Patagonia does isn’t risky, it’s doubly good (and they’re f***ing awesome).

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business business transformation case

the ecosystem businesses are a part of

Restaurant accepts trash as payment

Examples like these might seem tiny, insignificant and maybe even fruitless. But I disagree. To every product there is a backside to the production, usage and remains. To all of this there is a business oportunity somewhere. And as businesses are pressed to rethink the entirety of their operations I think we’ll see more examples of significant size where reframing markets as an end-to-end eco system makes perfect sense. And if Unilever can view its Sustainable Living Plan as the business strategy there’s hope.

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advertising case ideas planning video clip work

Make your bedroom happy with Viking Beds

Viking Beds of Sweden from funny you should ask on Vimeo.

Viking Beds of Sweden, ett litet familjeägt företag ifrån djupa Småland, är ett trevligt varumärke jag fått stifta bekantskap med. Workshop, besök fabriken i Landsbro (som om allt går vägen är dubbelt så stor), sängprovande och slutligen köp av egen Viking Bed (jag skriver under på hur jädrans sköna dom är).

Efter intervjuer, observationsstudier, siffergenomgång och det sunda förnuftet hos de affärssmarta grundarna kommer man fram till att…dra mig vilken makt återförsäljarna har. Vi valsar in med ett par 3 varumärken i skallen (vilka vi också testar). Kanske en favorit, inte helt osannolikt genom rekommendationer från bekanta. Sedan står vi där med (felaktiga) uppfattningar om hårdheten, naturmaterial och individuella behov, men börjar mer och mer dumpa ansvaret på sovspecialisten (läs: säljaren). Hen ställer frågor av ergonomisk natur som vi lite ovant svarar på. Jo, jag har ju breda höfter. Nja, jag ligger nog mer på sidan. Det hela avslutas med den frustrerande och avgörande frågan, genom vilken ansvaret kraschlandar hos oss igen, “men i slutändan ska det kännas bra för er, vilken tycker ni själva bäst om?”. Tack för den. 30 lax, och den som känns skönast för mig gäller.

Vad gör man med högst begränsad budget (till skillnad från Hästens sängar när det begav sig), otroligt ambitiösa tillväxtmål och en stor geografisk marknad? Tro det eller ej, men TV-reklam flyter upp som det mest potenta första draget.

Make your bedroom happy kommer från observationen att sovrummet kan anses vara det mest mobbade, exkluderade och illa behandlade rum vi har. Speciellt när folk kommer på besök. Släng in den där grejen så länge, ställ in ostruken tvätt bakom sängen, ja men den kan stå där tills helgen, göm den här inne. Sängen är en sak, den ska (och kommer att) vara mycket skön. Allt talar för det, oavsett varumärke. Men stackars rummet då? Vi menar att sängar inte är så mycket annorlunda än bilar och kläder; vi vill känna att vi väljer, vi har ju stil, smak och tycke utöver en sned rygg. Sen väljer vi gärna det andra väljer ändå (hur många tror att den blommiga modellen säljer speciellt mycket, hur cool den än är?).

Viking Beds of Sweden skapas helt i Sverige. Teknik, material och tillverkning konkurrerar fint med de andra. Men bättre är att lyfta något annat. Valmöjligheterna och det faktum att som central möbel kan den göra under för ditt misshandlade sovrum. En misshandel du ofta erkänner dig skyldig till efter utfrågning.

Men så bred kommunikation trots återförsäljare? Jo, det är extra skönt och tryggt att välja något som inte är helt okänt. Speciellt efter ett ursprungligen rationellt förfarande, men i slutändan (och med säljarens hjälp) väldigt öppet och godtyckligt val. Då vill du gärna ha något du känner till, och vet att andra känner till.

Sen kan jag personligen tycka att något sängvarumärke borde åka runt med en buss, tuta som hemglass, och få alla stackars ryggar i kvarteren att komma in och provligga deras sängar. Det, om något, kommer du ihåg. (bumper sticker suggestion: “vill du sova skönt? Ta rygg på oss”. Ha!)

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advertising brand case ideas planning strategy work

ta turen till dig på vinnarum casino

Ta Turen Till Dig

Det är inte första gången jag jobbar med poker och casino, dvs spänning, underhållning och den ständigt hägrande chansen att vinna stålar. Vilken är den största drivkraften om man nu ska välja mellan de tre? Ingen – det är en onödig diskussion, även om alla spelbolagsrepresentanter säger sig ha en klart bild på hur landet ligger. En som gör dem unika och tydligt annorlunda gentemot konkurrenterna. Jag håller ju aldrig riktigt med, men vi släpper det.

Vinnarum är ett svenskt Casino (ja, det kan faktiskt spela en viss roll att det är svenskt) uppbackat av Bonnier Gaming (ja, ännu viktigare garant) där strategiarbetet satte fingret på ett ganska intressant fenomen tycker jag. Inom casino och poker representeras ju i kommunikation nästan alltid någon aspekt av skicklighet, tur eller underhållning. När det gäller just tur har vi en tendens att tala i termer av antingen/eller. Inte bara “antingen har du det eller så har du det inte”, utan även som i “antingen så har man tur, eller så är man skicklig”. För de som känner sig skickliga kan detta med att ha tur vara direkt avtändande.

Men faktum är att det finns en hel del forskning kring tur, och det faktum att det inte är helt upp till antingen fru fortuna eller din exceptionellt begåvade hjärna. Nej, de två sitter ihop. Det tyckte vi var en jäkligt intressant och sporrande tanke som resulterade i uppmaningen att “Ta turen till dig. Aktivt alltså; se till att få tur.

Läs mer om tur, skicklighet och hur de samspelar i Richard Wiseman’s bok “The Luck Factor”

Vinnarum “Turmetoder” from Tre Kronor Media & Create on Vimeo.

ta turen till dig - vinnarum

Vad tänker du själv när okänt nummer ringer?

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advertising brand case work

Aqvia advertising running in Sweden

Aqvia – Churchhill from Gyro Scandinavia on Vimeo.

The commercials for Aqvia is running in Sweden at the time of writing. I’m part of the team behind it so I’m biased, but I love the feeling in all of them. And the voice belongs to Harry Potter’s hat…

The objective is to sell more gas and the machines is essentially a means to do that in a consumer market. But that doesn’t means it’s a case of quick and dirty manufacturing. Quite the opposite, as AGA has great heritage in stoves (now owned by another legal entity in Great Britain) and more importantly Scandinavian design.

I’ve had the chance of digging into the home appliances category/ies and in this case Sodastream is the main competitor. This Israeli company were pushing the last wave of bubble makers, around when I was 7 and everybody wanted to make their own coca-cola. They now have such a majority stake of the market you wouldn’t believe it. Touch competition.

The positon we found, although it’s fairly clear given the quality and aesthetics of the product, is about a well designed home, conscious decisions about interior design and objects. The kitchen is a good place to look when figuring out what kind of design sense the person living there has. Sodastream machines are for families where the kids make coca-cola, finger paint the walls and spray ketchup in the roof just before football practice, stressing mom out.

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advertising brand case ideas planning presentation strategy video clip work

we won gold, by opening a bordello

OK, some self promotion. Sorry. We just won gold in the Swedish Effectiveness Awards (100wattarn), in the public awareness category, for opening a bordello. 1 in 13 Swedish men buy sex. Scary right? We live in liberal times and that goes for attitudes to prostitution as well. It’s a touch discussion to take and it’s not at all clear cut. I don’t want the state to tell me what I can and cannot do, but the problem is that when you look into it, see the statistics, talk to the people within the police and other institutions such as anti-trafficking units etc, you start to see some really disturbing “back sides”.

What happens is that organized crime gets involved. The demand for women is high so trafficking is the only way to secure distribution. Trafficking is the 2nd largest income for organized crime, right after drugs. You want prostitution? You will have to accept trafficking. That’s how it works.

With very limited funds we needed to get people to react, reflect and hopefully change their attitudes. There’s one arena where you can do that if you hit home, or completely disappear if you miss. In Almedalen – a place where all the politicians, PR people and organizations with a civic agenda meet for one week. An opportunity, and a great risk. Here’s the story:

Bordellen i Almedalen from Gyro Scandinavia on Vimeo.

Swedish only, sorry.

Did we manage to make something out of the opportunity? Yep, we were awarded “media factor of the week” making the greatest impact, got a 7 minute section on national news, live news coverage called “the duel of the bordello” and so on. People reacted and attitudes shifted. Only problem is; you need to keep going at it because the liberals still don’t get the trafficking connection it seems, and attitudes are fragile.

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brand case digital social media strategy ways of use work

connecting [fashion] people to [fashion] brand

I came across “Who you are and what you do is your brand“, over at Seth Hosko’s blog, about how Gap does things the wrong way, and that they should learn from H&M and Uniqlo. He’s not alone. If the crowd sourced logo re-design was a hurried and panicked decision or a plan, I don’t know, but what they’re doing doesn’t strike me as strategically sound (and it’s a badly executed one too, but that’s more subjective). The statement is definitely right in the H&M case; that who you are and what you do is your brand, as they’re about affordable fashion for everybody and they really connect with everybody. Affordable fashion yes, but still they have a key to the finer fashion world through collaborations with well known fashion designers. They’re quite remarkable in vision, strategic decisions and in how that is carried out.

Here’s a project we did for our client H&M (full disclosure; I work for Gyro and H&M is a client), and pretty much all about connecting people to brands. The Lanvin for H&M launch, for the first time via digital/social media only and not as they usually do; with big outdoor campaigns, TV and that package.

So really simplified; how do we launch the designer collaboration through social media only, and sustain interest, and engagement, over a significant period of time?

H&M launched lots of cryptic films, if you will, about design and what it is, where it comes from and its importance to many. Framed in a way that it generated heaps of commenting and guesses.

Films kept coming, and so did comments and guesses.

Fast forward. The designer is out; it’s Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. Fashion world exclaim woohoooo!! Trending topics on twitter and all that. The films have talked about his view on design, influences and inspiration and consequently his way of transferring this to fashion. Successful fashion to boot. Fashion that is loved.

At the same time, 4m+ H&M fans on facebook, many of which are fashion interested bloggers, are spending time and energy on expressing what they like and perhaps even live for. It’s about their inspiration, their taste and their influences. They too transfer this into something appreciated by others and hopefully even commercially successful.

We facilitated a collaboration with these people, in order to spread the word about Lanvin even further, while giving them something back; traffic and attention. Hard currency in a blogger’s world. A widget helped gauge the love for their blog, and give them a chance to win the exclusive trailer to the big Lanvin for H&M show. Only to feature on the winning blog, with H&M directing traffic their way. So people joined, got the widget and gauged their blog love.

Competing blog

Zet Fashion - the winner of the competition

This little widget had value for fashion bloggers, and relevance in where and who it came from. The strategy was to connect. And the small execution was the connection, reaching millions of people, engaging tens of thousands and finally promoting only one. It generated heaps of traffic and attention to the winning blog (strangely enough, the clip wasn’t ripped as we had thought, given we didn’t have an embed code. After all, views should happen on the winning blog). One lucky winner enjoyed a wave of interested fashion peeps. Here’s the case film.

Untitled from Gyro Scandinavia on Vimeo.

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brand case digital internet planning social media work

H&M – also for people who love horse riding

Facebook has provided a great new way for brands to connect with people. But why you should connect, with what goal in mind and how to do it can be tricky and the answers are different for for every brand.

When we got a brief from H&M, more specifically the sponsor part of H&M, we were asked to conceptualize, start and help get off the ground, a blog featuring two long time H&M sponsored riders; Malin Baryard and Peder Fredricson. A good brief with a sound thought behind it given the massive interest in horses and horse riding amongst, primarily, young girls and teenagers. Exactly where H&M start selling their clothes. Clothes these young women can afford. Now they wanted to connect with them better, not just around the events but all through the year.

To make a long story short, after a period of netnography (on some of the very few active and interesting communities that existed – the latter opinion later confirmed in interviews), observational studies during a long weekend at the Göteborg Horse Show coupled with a number of visits to horse riding schools, stables and plentiful interviews – it was pretty clear to me. People who love (think The-Beatles-crazy-fan-screaming type of love) the two riders are closer to 7 than 15, meaning blogs haven’t really entered their world yet. The 15+ year old horse riding fans on the other hand, aren’t that crazy about these two riders. Why? Because their interest covers so much more; the whole horse riding circus. When our riders aren’t doing very well, or when they’re not participating in a certain event, the horse riding circus doesn’t stop. So looking at this from a larger context and bigger meaning perspective, what we had to do was capture the interest of the older group interested in horse riding rather than two riders, but at the same time give them a prominent and important role. Grab a bigger piece quite simply.

Where we would do this was obvious, and it’s not a blog. We created the very descriptive facebook page We Love Horses, brought to fans by H&M and (at least for the time being) headed up by our two riders and their bigger team.

The trick is to start small but have an idea and a plan for how it can develop. But never as fixed as to not be able to deviate or change the plan based on community input. It’s about high and low. Simple everyday activities that asks for participation and comments, updates from the life of a professional rider, quizes, educational articles on horse riding techniques, injuries and nutrition etc. Stuff that provides real value to these people. In our case coming from some of the top experts in the industry working with our professional riders, including the much looked up to stable girls who handle the day-to-day caring for the horses. The girl everyone wants to be, in case they don’t make it onto the horse riding circus themselves. Those are the lows, meaning everyday things.

The highs require some more exiting ideas such as competitions, participatory content generation, live streaming from events where no media go, behind the scenes photos and live-tweeting from the riders and interactive games even.


A web show hosted by our sponsored riders covering the whole industry.


A flash based horse riding game created for the We Love Horses fans to compete against each other.

Brands on Facebook is not a campaign

Brands setting up a Facebook presence sounds really simple, it’s just a Facebook page and a bunch of stuff. That’s exactly the important point to be made; setting these things up from a technical perspective is easy. But when it comes to launching a social media initiative the harder part is the organizational implications. In this case, get our riders up to speed with twitter, posting pics, mobile camera interviews behind the scenes. And that goes for the whole team. Will they be up for it? Do they understand the long-term engagement? Social media, unless it’s a short lived campaign (which often is not a good idea), is about managing a program. It’s about having long-term content strategies and never ending ideas and activities. It’s not a campaign, it’s a program.

Update 2011 – An example of how We Love Horses is used as the primary platform for behind the scene material, live streaming from events often not covered by media, as well as the place for the most up-to-date news from major horse riding venues. Something that got some coverage in 2011 when H&M sponsored the Stockholm International Horse Show.

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advertising brand case creativity ideas planning video clip

leveraging the norms and curiosity of the poker world

Everest Poker – the bathroom from funny you should ask on Vimeo.

Everest Poker – The Club from funny you should ask on Vimeo.

Everest Poker was a bit late into the Swedish market, considering the boom in 2005 and 2006. But then again the category as such seem to never get tired of playing and definitely not growing tired of sign-up bonuses. Talking to, and practically living with, poker fanatics from all buy-in levels of the game tells you many things and one of them is the fact that it’s a high interest category but with very low interest in the product brands in every aspect other than the functional benefits which is about functionality on the site (smart settings, auto fold, proximity of buttons and the order thereof etc), number of active players (need to be lots of tables across all buy-in levels), whether or not you can be lucky enough to play with real pros and of course the sign-up bonus (which you don’t want to make your only reason for acquisition as repeat playing gets tricky), most of which are experienced by trial.

Obviously brand communications play a role, first of all by getting people there (and then conversion is up to the site) and also by reminding players that it’s time to try something new (considering the fact that they are often registered on 5-8 sites and often active on 3+ at the time). How you do this, however, doesn’t necessarily have to be so functionally focused and not even bonus focused given the category norm which says; poker players try everything.

We devised a creative strategy playing on high quality feature film style, while communicating the most core brand value of Everest Poker; not making it about bling bling, not about taking the last dime off your opponents – but for the love of the game. A place less macho, and a tad bit more friendly without coming across as completely alien for that matter. That, we figured, is to be shown before experienced, but probably not told. For the player tuned to details, you’d see that the 4 films in total were actually connected in 2 stories. After all, it was all built on evoking curiosity as opposed to being stupidly redundant.