Waarom we naar Scandinavië moeten kijken voor inspiratie en niet naar de VS

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” is a famous quote from business consultant Peter Drucker. Wise words, but I would claim that culture is even more powerful than Drucker ever realised - I think that culture eats what most people think is the number one motivator - incentives - for snack already before going to bed. And while many people think about corporate culture, there’s something that is even more powerful. National and regional culture.

During my all too long and oddly still ongoing career in advertising, I’ve worked in agencies in Finland, Sweden and USA. The business is the same, advertising, and in some cases even the agencies have belonged to the same owner and even been part of the same network, with rather strong beliefs and corporate culture fulfilling the same corporate strategy. And yet the modus operandi in an agency in US and an agency with the same name in the Nordics couldn’t be further apart.

You give a group of people a task in the US agency and their first thought is in the lines of: “Hmmmm, since we might fail in this task, I better cover my dear ass, so it won’t get fired when that happens.” Then, as a rather close second, comes the thought that if, against all expectations, we succeed in the task, how do I collect most of the praise and take a big step towards a raise and a promotion to vice presidency ? Somewhere very far behind as a distant number three comes the solving of the actual task - how do we get this done? This order of priorities leads to rather frustrating bureaucracy, everything being written down as a lengthy memo, that being sent to legal department for approval and finally being distributed to relevant people plus cc’d to approximately 30 people up and down the organisation with just two purposes: 1.) Look, I took everything into concern, it was not my fault that it failed. And 2.) Look, it was I who wrote the memo in the first place, it was I who made this a success. Since everybody already knows this is how the systems works, nobody except legal department really takes the trouble of reading the lengthy mails, but it anyhow adds to headcount and consumes vast amounts of everybody’s time. The only reason this can go on, is that US is such a huge market and the cost are swallowed by the big budgets.

In the Nordics the culture is totally different. You give a group of agency people a task and everybody immediately starts thinking on how to solve it. It never comes to anybody’s mind that the group could fail and even if that sometimes happens, nobody really starts looking for people to blame, even less to fire. And somewhere, so far away that people hardly ever stop to think about it, is the shared understanding that if time after time, task after task and year after year we succeed, somebody will someday notice and give us raise. Maybe even a promotion. All this simplicity and straightforwardness leads to short meetings and one sentence memos, that the recipients read, understand and act accordingly. No cc’s needed and no bcc’s either, God forbid. That would be an immense evidence of total mistrust.

All this leads to extreme efficiency, a vital condition in the rather small Nordic markets, 5-8 million people per country. And accordingly modest budgets. It is kind of like somebody starting an ad agency with the sole purpose of targeting the population of Eastern London.

And yet the Nordic agencies have been extremely successful in stretching those modest budgets to fantastic result by finding creative solutions to everything from content to strategy to channels. That success hasn’t gone unnoticed by world’s best and biggest agencies in the US and in the last ten years there's been a steady flow of young Nordic creatives to Wiedens, Goodbys and Crispins, where these young creatives have helped win numerous awards for those agencies. Very well done.

But as life goes, even those young creatives grow older, start questioning the hierarchical systems of huge US agencies, miss the simple efficiency and flat organisations and start returning home. Not even six to seven digit salaries can hold them, especially when their own kids start approaching the age when they have to choose between a very expensive US university and a free Nordic one. After all, what good is a high income if your costs are even higher?

You add to that the modern communications world where agencies are no longer tied to the geographical market and, voila, you can finally combine what previously was un-combinable. You can have an efficient organisation, some of world’s best creatives, low hierarchies and fast communication at the use of marketers.

That is what we are trying to achieve with the new trend of Nordic agency groups and alliances. The acquisition of Amsterdam’s Perfect Fools and the very recent opening up of a new hasan & partners shop in Stockholm, fits in here perfectly.  

Having recently spent 12 years at the receiving end of a huge and clumsy worldwide holding company and network system, we think we have figured a fail proof way of running our agency group. We will do everything exactly the opposite to what they did. That should prove efficient enough.

If the Dutch Digital Design alliance is looking for a model to emulate, they could do no better than casting an eye across the border to see how it's done by us Nordics. We wish it every success and hope to meet our Dutch counterparts in all future big budget pitches and will naturally do our utmost to whip their butts. May the most efficient culture win.

Over Ami Hasan:

Ami Hasan is an agency veteran who during his entrepreneurial career has sold three agencies, sat twice in Cannes jury, twice in Clio jury, twice in The Cup jury, D&AD jury and chaired the juries in Moscow International, Golden Drum and Golden Hammer. hasan & partners bought themselves back from IPG three years ago, have since grown to be one of the biggest in Nordics, been elected best agency in Finland three years in a row and been elected as most creative. Few months back they acquired majority of digital agency Perfect Fools with offices in Stockholm and Amsterdam and even more recently a hasan & partners agency was opened in Stockholm with staff who have experience from Wieden+Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein and Partners, Farfar and so on.