Simplicity

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…]

{ 18 comments }

If you’re my brand: Never let me down. Keep on making me smile. Stay cool. Always surprise me. Change when you need to, but stay true to your heritage. Dress nice. Make sure I don’t have to hide our love. If you do something bad – stay honest and tell the truth cause I will forgive you. And finally! Never ever take me for granted.

Tokyo in sunrise – A Brand that didn’t let me down. Taken from my Instagram feed.

If you’ll stick to these simple guidelines – I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life with you and give you my all my love. If not – get lost!

{ 9 comments }

There are tons of consultants (including myself) selling branding services around the world. Most tend to say (not including myself) that branding is complexed. A quick search on Google image search reveals tons of models. What if we look beyond those models and all those advices that often lead to heavy brand manuals that no one wants?

What is the core of great branding? Here’s my five cents:

1. Clarity

What are you about? Make sure that is clear to your audience either straight up or over time.

Carl Lagerfeldt and Lady Gaga knows great branding!

Clarity is about teaching your potential fans about what you are [click to continue…]

{ 16 comments }

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 then slowly start to follow this model over time. Changing how you, your brand and marketing organisation work with advertising and communication is not something you do over night. I would recommend brands to keep on doing what they do best – shoot fireworks -while slowly start to change their way of communicating their products and services from ground up.

Moving your communication into the future is also tough on your organisation as your moving from campaign based communication activities to instead building long term equity that will generate results over time. Send your entire marketing organization as well as your IT department and management team on several digital communication crash courses cause your CEO better understand what you talk about when you’re talking conversion, SEM, SEO, AdWords, H1, Keywords, Stats and shit.

Have a read. If you like what you read – get going. Change!

Here we go – The Key To Future Integrated Communication by Johan Ronnestam

The basis of your online communication platform

The first thing we’ve gotta agree upon before moving further into the model is the following: Your brand consist out of two things. The product/services you offer and [click to continue…]

{ 24 comments }

I’m currently working on my 2011 brand and communication prediction. While I’m working on that I drew up one of the best models I know when it comes to predicting future trends. Enjoy!

How To Identify Trends

{ 10 comments }

It is hilarious. For as long as I’ve lived map-makers of the world has tried about a trillion different ways to fold a map so that it doesn’t crumple. Then suddenly someone, in this case a young designer named Emanuele Pizzolorusso from Milan, decides to look at the problem from a new perspective. What if that crumpling problem of the map makers was turned into an advantage. And bam, suddenly you’ve got a rockin’ product that is better, more usable, long lasting and on top of all cool looking.

Crumpled Maps New York

Emanuele Pizzolorusso created soft, yet hard-wearing, waterproof maps that are meant to be creased and crumpled

What Emanuele did with maps you should do with your products and services. Maybe your next winning product or service is hidden somewhere in the context of your biggest problem. Flip it around, turn it inside out, break it, shake it and most importantly don’t fall in love with your history – embrace your future!

{ 7 comments }

What do you do when someone asks you to sign a non disclosure agreement and then asks you to spend the coming year planning, creating, implementing and launching a new Swedish bank?

Say yes of course!

This is where the story of the freshly launched brand Marginalen Bank starts. Together with recidivist Caroline Karlström I found myself 50% giggling like a child about the fact that we had secured the coolest and most complex project I’ve ever worked with while feeling 50% scared to death about the fact that this was that big ass project where you either succeed or you end up in a grave. Well, we [click to continue…]

{ 43 comments }

We are born. Even before we’re born our life is being shaped day by day. Every day, every hour and every second life passes by.

Sometimes tons of things happens at once and suddenly we notice a shape, we call these shapes memories. But most of the time life is made up by small things that never form shapes. The truth however is that these small things is what life is all about. The more of em’ you notice, the more you’ll notice life. And the more you notice life, the more you’ll enjoy it!

This all came to me when I looked at this video below found over at Mario Vellandi’s Melodies in Marketing, which by the way is a great blog on Ethical communication.

Thanks Mario, but above all, thanks Everynone for putting images to life!

{ 9 comments }

Common Sense Communication

September 4, 2010

In the offline world, if your customers didn’t find what they were looking for inside your store and left without shopping. Would you: a) Rethink the layout of your store today b) Rethink the layout of your store next year c) Rethink the layout of your store within the next three years I think the [...]

Read the full article →

Think People Will Read About Your Service? Think Again!

August 31, 2010

Time is precious. Don’t you agree? For example if I spend to much time here going on about this and that you’re gonna start to think ‘what the heck, get to the point you #%*#’er. So, I’m not gonna spend to much of your time. Instead. Have a look at these 5 demo videos and [...]

Read the full article →

When You Want To Communicate Something. Change Perspective!

June 12, 2010

Have a look at the video below and tell me if you’re not amazed. Turning things up side down. Black becomes white. Faster when you’re used to going slow. Smile when people expect you to be sad. Something big when people expected something small. Diving when people expected skydiving. Whatever you do, don’t do what [...]

Read the full article →

The 10 Commandments Of Future Brands

May 3, 2010

There’s a couple of things I demand from brands that make it all the way into my life. It’s really not that hard. It’s just about being prepared to sacrifice your life for what you believe in! A Tweaked Moses with the Ten Commandments by Philippe de Champaigne 1648 from Freechristimages Here are the 10 [...]

Read the full article →