If you’ve followed this blog and me for a while you know I’ve been heading the work of making one of Sweden’s newest brands come to life – The Marginalen Bank.
It’s a fantastic assignment where I’ve together with Caroline Karlström have been given the honor of both creating the actual brand as well as establish it and building it on the Swedish market. Read more about that here and here.
Today another chapter in the Marginalen Bank branding story was written.
This morning our latest move to continue differentiating the bank from it’s competitors went live. And I’m damn proud of the results. The challenge was to create a concept that continues to build the Marginalen Bank brand in a positive way and emotional way. We felt we needed to innovate the creative concept we had previously worked with and move beyond illustrations but still stay within the areas of art and creativity. With this in mind we created a new communication platform that truly emotionalizes the brand, creates awareness and hopefully creates positive results.
The idea: Have creative people within the cultural industry interpret different key aspects of Marginalen Bank’s business areas.
We teamed up with the fantastic dancer, and great personality Fredrik ‘Benke’ Rydman, more known to some of you for being one of the founders and creative leaders behind the dance group Bounce. (If you don’t know of Bounce chances are that you probably know about the Flashmob tribute Bounce performed when Michael Jackson died.) Today [click to continue…]
As of monday this week you can spot the latest TVC created for Marginalen Bank.
This sweet little flick is the latest short film (I see it more as a short film than a TVC) in a series of three (1 & 2) created by me for Marginalen Bank, the brand I took part in developing and launching last fall. This time I’ve written and Art Directed it. As usual I’ve partnered with Caroline Karlström to make sure the project was delivered on time and quality. This time we contracted Mr Potemkin, aka Magnus Östergren to make sure the dream came alive.
Malin Erkonnen made us all smile with her fantastic illustrations and finally as always we had Erik Heusler produce the music.
This is of course just one of many activities going on right now but I wanted to share this little beauty with you.
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…]
Yesterday I had a very nice evening. First a visit to Berghslive. Lot’s of student. Lot’s of great work. I actually ended up buying one of the students pieces. I’ll show you what that was in a couple of days.
After that followed a date with Mr Aviation, Ms Gin Fizz, a dame called Strawberry Blizz, and someone called Bronx Cocktail. We all had a blast.
Those were things I enjoyed yesterday. Today when I’m up and awake I like this new commercial for Orangina:
…and this new flick for H&M Matthew Williamson…
..and this corny thing for Oasis softdrinks.
Ultimately. They all got me interested. They all made me look. They all entertained me.
I have a Samsung TV at home. I’ve been thinking of selling it. After seeing this viral that I picked up over at AdAge that’s not possible.
While we’re at it.
Yesterday I spent the morning at an MSN Innovate seminar arranged by Microsoft Advertising in Sweden. There I had the pleasure of listening to Naoki Ito, awarded creative director from GT Tokyo. A great presentation where he talked more about cultural differences and what made creative people creative rather than showing to many cases. However, one of the things he did show us was this TVC, a part of a concept called Love Distance.
Beautiful and probably one of the better ideas I’ve seen in a long time!
Freakcasting, a trend that was very common in Swedish advertising a couple of years back is something I personally dislike. Having people in a TVC just based on the fact that you think people will laugh at their real personality is the closest thing to bullying there is. We have a responsibility to be more intelligent than that.
But when these guys, the original employees and not any hired freak, perform a old school rap song I’m sold. It feels so honest and real so I can’t resist thinking this place is the shit!
Found it on Changethought, one of my new favorites when looking for visual inspiration.
It appears that Microsoft has finally gotten tired of Apple’s Mac & PC TVC cause this little piece must have cost a fortune.
Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld seems like the perfect match to actually give Apple a good fight. However, I’m sorry to say this new TVC doesn’t deliver. It even makes Microsoft appear more boring than they already appear.
When you hire someone like Jerry Seinfeld to star in your commercial you either end up getting the best advertising in the world or, like in this case, the worst. To feature such a famous star raises the expectations to a level that is hard to match. We all remember how loved Seinfeld was when the TV show was still running. I wonder if the guys that came up with this idea realized that the TVC has to top that, otherwise we all get disappointed, and that disappointment will in the end infect the brand.
This blog is written by Johan Ronnestam. He's widely regarded as one of Sweden’s leading speakers and authorities in the field of modern creative and conceptual thinking and skill of innovating brands and their communication. The readers of Microsoft Indikat has named Johan Swedens most influential authority within digital communication
