Innovate

This post, written in Swedish tells the tale about my 2011 start in Gotland Grand National.

För 32 år sedan gick jag i skolan med Marie Hessel. Sedan dess har vi setts någon gång då och då i samband med någon klassåterträff eller i liknande sammanhang. Sen plötsligt står hon där och hänger i baren på Scandic Anglais Hotel i Stockholm. Lika sprudlande glas som vanligt berättar hon glatt att om 14 dagar ska hon åka till Gotland och köra Grand National på sin endurohoj. Ju mer hon berättar desto mer minns jag de klassiska bilderna från 1989 när Grand National var lerigare än någonsin. Inuti min hjärna är det någon som utbrister “Jag vill också åka” och ur munnen kommer samma ord. Marie ler stort och frågar “Åker du också motorcykel?” Jag svarar snabbt “nej, men hur svårt kan det vara?”

Marie Hessel på motorcykel genom öknen. 1999 startade Marie som en av världens första kvinnor på motorcykel i det ökända rallyt Paris Dakar.

Någon timme senare är vadet klart och bevittnat av våra vänner i baren. Om Marie fixar båge, klubbmedlemskap, licens och nummerlapp så lovar jag att lära mig att köra och fullfölja loppet om två veckor. Framåt natten när jag ska lägga mig för att sova mig minns jag att jag med skräckblandat förtjusning hoppas att Marie faktiskt fixar allt det där hon lovat och att det blir en tur till Gotland för min del. Redan nästa morgon börjar SMS droppa [click to continue…]

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Inspired by Swedish blogger Fredrik Wass who stated that he will blog for a 100 days in a row I felt I had to get my blog going again. So here we go!

Photographed by Paulina while forecasting trends at the Creative Summit together with among others Brian Solis and Alf Rehn.

In 2011 I was honored to be selected as the keynote speaker for events all over Europe. I delivered more than 80 keynotes on entrepreneurship, creative ideas, future branding, communication and business development, some of them shared here on Slideshare. In more than 90% of the occasions I was given the highest ranking of all the speakers by the audience. Hell, I even spoke for 24 hours in a row without any sleep. In other words – I’m confident I have some thoughts to share on how to deliver a great keynote presentation.

Here are 15 keys to deliver a fantastic keynote presentation.

1. Before even getting on stage – make sure you’ve got your logos, pathos and ethos wired.

What you speak about is 50% of your keynote, but the way you look and sound giving that keynote is the other 50%. The worlds first branding expert Aristotles knew how to make people buy what he sold. He divided the means of persuasion, appeals, into three categories; Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

- Ethos: the source’s credibility, the speaker’s/author’s authority

My credibility when I’m speaking is of course a mix of how I look, my credentials and the way I bring my message forward on stage. A common mistake I see over and over again is when speakers enter the stage and then go; “Before I speak, let me tell you about who I am and the company I’m representing.” This is more or less totally unnecessary since you’re there for a reason. If you do your thing right people will understand [click to continue…]

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Sometime last year I was approached by Vasakronan, Swedens largest property brand with a property portfolio valued at SEK 80.3 billion. Being a market leader the felt their digital presence had to reflect that position. Their question: What do we do? As always I teamed up with Caroline Karlström and accepted the challenge to answer that question. In this project I took on the role as both head of strategy and concept as well as actually delivering the top level designs of the new Vasakronan that Britny later implemented and refined.

This is what we did. Parts of the new Vasakronan digital brand presence

The new Vasakronan.se runs WordPress!

Me and Caroline started the project with an analysis phase and analysed their existing presence, the traffic to their site, the content, the design and the site structure. We interviewed representatives from Vasakronan as well as their clients and potential prospects. We also performed an extensive technical analysis [click to continue…]

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(This is a Swedish post covering the 24 Hours Live event in May earlier this year)

Tidigare i år, närmare bestämt i början av Maj, genomförde jag tillsammans med Göran Adlén årets kanske mest korkade eller geniala idé. Ett enkelt koncept. Vi skulle spendera 24 timmar non-stop i hotelbaren, något slags världsrekord?, på ett av sveriges coolaste hotel, Clarion Sign Hotel, och föreläsa om framtidens kommunikations och affärslandskap samt hur det kommer påverka vårt samhälle och oss människor. Vi kallade konceptet för 24 Hours Live.

Therese Reuterswärd fångar oss med sin’telefon’ någonstans från baren.

Som om det inte var nog övertalade vi vår gode vän och ‘thincasting’ expert Robin Danehav att sända hela eventet live över nätet vilket skulle ge oss möjlighet att interagera inte bara med publiken på plats utan också de som följde oss via nätet. Sagt och gjort. Robin riggade tillsammans med Petter Karlsson och satte sig bakom kamerorna.

Klockan 12:00 den 6:e maj slog vi på (live) strömmen för att sedan hålla låda 24 timmar i sträck. Utan att Sova. Utan att ta pauser. Bara tala oavbrutet.

När klockan ett helt dygn senare åter slog 12:00 kunde vi blicka tillbaka på 24 fantastiska timmar där mer än 3000 personer på olika sätt följt livesändningen som inte marknadsförts mer än via några blogginlägg samt någon enstaka Tweet dagarna innan. Vi var helt enkelt osäkra [click to continue…]

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Me and partner in crime Göran Adlén, one of Swedens most hired and admired speakers on future trends, had a nice lunch a couple of weeks ago. Half way into a wonderful Pizza at Vapiano we suddenly cracked, what probably is our most stupid or…genius idea so far:

“Why don’t we lock our selves up somewhere and chat away about trends, communication, design, technology, the environment, the world and much more for 24 hours without any sleep or pause. NO SLEEP – NO PAUSE! and broadcast it – Live!?”

Seconds later I was off the phone with Robin Danehav, thincasting mastermind, who answered in seconds “I’m in!”.

Göran Adlén & Johan Ronnestam 24 Hours Live at Clarion Sign Hotel! Thincasted by Robin Danehav.

The event will be broadcasted live, both here on my blog and on the campaign website 24 Hours.se, as well as performed on stage at Clarion Sign Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. So, mark the 6th and 7th of May 2011 in your calendars. Ah, almost forgot. If you’re on Twitter. Use the #24live if you wanna tag along.

Oh, and of course it’s all free. If you wanna pay something – pay me a Tweet or a Facebook link.

See you at lunchtime on the 6th of may!

ps. For you english speaking readers – the event will be held in Swedish but followed with 24 videos summarising the event – these will be text translated.

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Året är 2011 och jag sitter här tryggt och säkert i lilla Sverige och läser i tidningarna om hur vi skall förbättra våra skolor och säkerställa Svea rikes framtid. Jag funderar en stund på det hela och tänker vidare.

Världen krymper fortare än vi tror

Tänk om?

Tänk om det blir så att jag om sådär fyra eller fem år inte handlar min bil ifrån en svensk återförsäljare därför att det helt enkelt [click to continue…]

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Some of you might have followed my blog since way back while others followed me only a couple of days. So I decided it was time to dig into Google Analytics and gather my top 100 blog posts, based on traffic, (I have written 596 to this date) between the years 2005 and 2011 for you to read.

I did actually start my first blog back in 2002 but quickly stopped blogging. It was more of an installation experiment. Then in 2005 I slowly started posting again. Up until now I’ve had over a half a million pageviews and 367374 unique visitors dropping in.

Oh, by the way. If there’s anything you like – please Tweet it or put it on your FB page. It would make me happy.

So here we [click to continue…]

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I am at Bromma airport in Sweden on my way to speak in Gothenburg tomorrow. As I’m sitting in the lounge surfing the web I suddenly found myself reading the copy of what in my opinion is one of the most inspiring texts in the world. The think different campaign by Apple in 1997.

To some people it’s an ad. To me – it’s the stuff changes are made of.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

They invent.    They imagine.    They heal.
They explore.    They create.    They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

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Baidu Maps Makes Me Smile

January 21, 2011

If you have people smiling after they’ve interacted with your brand I’d say half of the game is won. Just seconds ago I browsed through Visualjournalism where I read a post about Googles Chinese competitor Baidu and their newly launched equivalence to Google Map. Baidu has launched a SimCity styled map engine. It made my day. [...]

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AIDA Transformed By Digital Media. What Does It Mean To Your Brand Communication?

January 20, 2011

The other day I wrote quite a long post on the future of integrated communication from a digital perspective. I stressed the fact that in order for your brand to create and maintain strongs brand  in the future you’ve gotta provide people with true values not just fun stuff that entertains. On top of that [...]

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Future Integrated Communication From A Digital Perspective

January 13, 2011

Leading a brand? Thinking about how to create a long term integrated communication platform? Think no more cause I’ll share the model I’ve been using for the last three years when leading brands into the future of advertising, communication and advertising. Normally I’d work a company or brand through a series of workshops. We would [...]

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So What About Volvo? Does Your Site Suck Too?

December 22, 2010

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about SAAB. It obviously created some sort of attention since I almost had a new unique visitor record. Among the commenters were official SAAB representatives, positive even though I had quite a strong tone in my post. Another commenter, a bit surprising, was David Holecek, Interactive Marketing Manager at Volvo [...]

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