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Will Legislation Keep Up With Innovation in The Battle of Uber?

By On · 21 Comments · In Entrepreneurship, Politics and Change

Uber_Bokning

Sweden. Birthplace of Spotify, Skype, iZettle, Minecraft/Mojang, Dice, Tictail and many others; an amazing fountainhead of innovation in relation to its size. You would think that a company like Uber, after having launched successfully in 30 or so countries would be extremely well received in a country like this one. And it was. Uber grew faster in Sweden than in any other market to date. But then suddenly the police began stopping Ubers in the street and two of Uber’s applications for exemptions from the meter-legislation were denied. 

What Uber Brings To Sweden

I believe that Uber is indeed a superior service. Here are my reasons why:

Security

Uber raises the level of security for both passenger and driver. For the passenger, you know in advance exactly who is going to pick you up. Your ride is tracked via the app and after the ride you receive a map of your ride on your electronic receipt. Expensive detours are hereby made difficult thank you very much. On the more serious scale of things this would make an Uber-car a really bad choice for the would be rapist/robber-driver. On the smaller side of things a lost wallet would be an easy thing to trace.

When it comes to driver-security, the driver also knows in advance who he/she is going to pick up. The passenger is identified via a credit card and a mobile phone which also makes an Uber-driver a poor choice as a potential rape/robbery-victim.

Quality

With Uber you get a clean and orderly quality car. On a good day this car could be a Mercedes S-class or Audi A8. On a bad day it’s a Mercedes E-class. So what do I do on a bad day? I report the succer! Instantly after my Uber-ride I’m asked in the app to rate my ride. If my rating drops to 3 stars (often the case when I get a “disappointing” E-class) I report “car quality” (one of 5 or so options given) as the reason for my “disappointment”. (I use quotes here because the cars are still 5-star compared to any other taxi experience I’ve had in Sweden, or any other country for that matter). If I’m disappointed after riding with another company I’m left with the choice to blog/tweet about it or call the company. This almost never happens because it’s not worth the hassle. Does this low threshold for feedback help raise the quality of the Uber service? I think so.

Also, the drivers are properly dressed in black suites, very polite and treat me like royalty. Most of the time they truly deliver on their promise of being “Everyone’s private driver”. The complimentary water bottles in the backseat armrest is a nice touch.

Price

I’ve not noticed Uber being more expensive than the other company I usually ride with, except for the flat rate to Arlanda which is considerably more expensive.

Ease of Use and Control

Ordering an Uber via the app is simple. You also have much better control over where your Uber is through the map. The entire confusion of who ordered what car and people “stealing” your pre-ordered car is gone.

The payment is taken care of through a pre-registered credit card so you don’t have to bother with payments at all. It’s completely automatic which makes it secure (skimming cases have been reported in regular cabs in the media lately) and it saves you time and hassle. You can even register two cards, one for your private trips and one for your company trips which is a feature I use all the time.

“Big Accountable Brand”

Sure, Uber may not be a big brand in Sweden, but it’s big enough and has enough money invested in it worldwide to be valuable. This means that they are sensitive to brand criticism. Which means that they have to treat customers honestly and fairly in order not to commit brand suicide – or death by twitter to be precise. This is one of the key differences in customer security and trust compared to independent taxi in Stockholm (which has a bad and sometimes well deserved bad rep).

Cons

Uber has four drawbacks. First, you can’t pre-order an Uber for a specific time. Second, you can’t order more than one Uber at a time from a single app. Third, you don’t get a real proper meter in the car – wait a minute – wouldn’t that take away some of the private driver feel? Perhaps they should instead have live meter tracking in the app. Yeah, that’s it. Please add that feature. Fourth they don’t have a price sticker in the car. Again, I would much rather have that in the app.

All in all the sum of these things make Uber the number one “taxi service” (they are actually a pre-order limousine service for the masses) in Sweden in my opinion.

How Uber Clashes With Swedish Legislation

A taxi car in Sweden is required by law to be equipped with a meter according to certain specifications. You can apply for an exemption from this rule if you meet certain requirements. These requirements come in two levels of severity, the milder “särskilda skäl” and the more strict “synnerliga skäl”. The requirements were raised in 1997 from “särskilda” to “synnerliga”.

The Choice We Have To Make

Now – nor am I a lawyer nor a politician, perhaps this is why I don’t understand how the discussion about the discussion became more important than the discussion, but when innovation comes along that raises the bar for an industry in all the ways listed above, a bar that the entire industry needs to measure themselves by or perish, this should be considered “synnerliga skäl” if anything in my mind. Ultimately, it comes down to how we value innovation in our country. We could also ask ourselves how smart it was to move from “särskilda” to “synnerliga” in our legislation in 1997. But unless we are smart and practical about this now in 2013, customers will have to settle for a lesser quality service, the industry will see its evolution being hampered and Sweden will see its brand as an innovation leader being soiled. Keep in mind that 30 other countries, including Germany, Singapore and the United States allow Uber.

When I look at the petition that Uber communicated in Sweden yesterday I agree that it was overly aggressive, perhaps even bordering on juvenile. It put some people off that I think actually like Uber and might have defended the service were it not for the aggressive tone. Then again, perhaps I would have been equally aggressive if my existence in Sweden was at stake. Keep in mind that these people are also entrepreneurs rather than politicians and that they LOVE the company they’ve built, cared for and poured their hearts into. But when looking past this issue of wording, tonality, passion and temperament the core issue remains – should we kill off a superior service by interpreting our legislation in this way, or should we make an effort to let evolution run its course and let the best cab win?

Instagram Could Instakill Vine

By On · 1 Comment · In Futurespotting, Software and Services, Trendspotting

photo

There is something about Twitter’s new video sharing app Vine that appeals to me. With Vine you share 6-second video clips that loop; perfect for cute baby videos, stumbling puppies and other world changing events that feed the re-tweet beast. I think it might take off.

The only thing that bothers me is that there is one super dangerous competitor lurking in the shadows. I’m talking of course about Facebook-backed Instagram. Because what will happen if (when?) Instagram adds looping video functionality to their service?

People are already manically checking their Instagram-feeds and there is a big hurdle to get people to habitually check yet another service. Don’t be surprised if this happens in an upcoming update, not least because Facebook are obviously stalling Vine by blocking their ability to make Facebook requests. Look at this:

Facebook blocking Vine from making requests.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Instagram already have a working version of this up their sleeve. We’ll see.

 

Uber is Stockholm’s Best Taxi Service Before It’s Even Launched

By On · 1 Comment · In Entrepreneurship, Hotels and Travel, Reviews

UberStockholm

The first time I heard of Uber I was overjoyed. I’ve felt for a while that the taxi system is long overdue for an upgrade and that the tools are certainly here to make it happen. I’ve even had a few taxi-related ideas penned down in my idea-notebook that I could now retire thanks to Uber. But at the same time I was not sure how well the service would stack up to all the hype and I wanted to try it out for myself before writing anything about it. I also “knew” that this might take some time as it would take close to forever for Uber to ever reach Sweden. Why would they? It’s a tiny market where at least a few competitors work reasonably well.

But now they’re here! They’re only in “soft beta”, but I have completed half a dozen or so Uber-trips in Stockholm and let me tell you – I’m not going back to Taxi Stockholm after this.

Not that there is anything wrong with Taxi Stockholm. In fact, they have up until now been the far superior brand of taxi in this city. I never ride anything else and my company has a non-exclusive contract with them that might as well have been exclusive. We never ride anything else. Until now.

Uber’s cars are far superior with their Mercedes S-Class cars topping the list. The drivers deliver a completely different level of service – you can think of the difference as the difference between a good fast food experience and a good restaurant experience. (There is nothing wrong with fast food… but it’s fast food). Not to mention the nice feel of never handling money or credit cards in the car.

The Uber app is also superior to the Taxi Stockholm app with real time maps showing the whereabouts of the cars, pics and ratings of the driver, make & color of the car picking you up, maps of your route (something that those afraid of going by taxi late at night for example will love) and just an overall more attractive experience.

Taxi Stockholm still has two or possibly three advantages:

1. You can pre-order Taxi Stockholm. Not so with Uber. Yet.

2. There are more Taxi Stockholm cars out there. This hasn’t been a problem for me now that we’ve been so few customers in the Uber beta phase, but could possibly become a problem if the service doesn’t scale fast enough.

3. Uber and Taxi Stockholm prices are still similar. I’m not sure if this will change after launch, but if it does it will keep Taxi Stockholm in the game.

But overall – I’m sold. Good bye Taxi Stockholm, hello Uber.

Times of Crisis Are Times of Opportunity for The Well Prepared

By On · 3 Comments · In Thoughts on Marketing, Trendspotting
Why the sad face?

Why the sad face?

This morning I poured a cup of coffee and opened up Dagens Industri. “Tough year awaits advertising agencies” it said in bold letters across the front page. And I’m sure that’s true. But why have this “glass half empty”-attitude on such a beautiful morning. Why not write “Big opportunities in store for alert advertising agencies” instead? Because I think that is also true. Here’s why:

It took a decade or so for the advertising industry to start embracing the internet, and when it did so it didn’t immediately go through the painful process of redrawing the entire organizational structure of the industry to fit this era. This will take another decade, and we’re somewhere around midterm exams for that process right now, exams meaning economic slow-down.

The most profound change that the internet has on our business is that it makes everything move faster. And when everything moves faster, companies and their consultants need to be more agile. So let’s look at the organizational structure of our industry to date: We have strategic brand agencies, design agencies, advertising agencies, digital agencies, pr-agencies, several types of production companies and one or two media agencies per client. Just setting a meeting with all these involved will take you weeks. Once you manage to get everybody into a meeting they all need to align their different interests and egos in a single direction. Then we need to produce. Then deploy. Now, how agile can we be in this organizational environment?

At Honesty we’ve put massive effort into integrating disciplines. The purpose is to optimize for focus and speed. For our clients we take care of strategy, design, advertising, PR and production. (I don’t mention digital here as we don’t view that as something separate at Honesty). Cost for production equipment has basically followed Moore’s law, which means we can now have full film and post production capabilities in-house. We produce music, radio, film and some types of digital solutions at Honesty today and we expand our capabilities continuously. This integration makes us fast, focused and keeps production close to the creatives and their vision. This is good for the client, but it also makes us efficient which makes it good for business on our end. When we only need one account director and one account manager/producer and not one per agency, we don’t waste money on double, triple of quadruple overheads. The client gets better prices and we get better margins (overall profit margin on turn-over 2010/11 for Honesty was 36%).

All these things combined cushion the economic slow-down for us, but more importantly, it opens up opportunity to gain market share when clients at less modern agencies start shopping around for a more efficient solution to their communications needs. (Honesty grew 35% 2011-2012).

Times of crisis are times of opportunity for the well prepared. So why the sad face?

 

 

Honesty 2.0: Removing All Digital Roles From The Agency

By On · Add Comment · In The Honesty Story

Today we’re upgrading Honesty 1.0 to version 2.0, and in doing so we remove all digital roles from the agency. It just doesn’t make sense anymore to have separate staff to handle a separate area which is inherently impossible to separate from anything else. Instead, all roles at the agency will approach their work from a digital and mobile perspective.

Honesty 1.0 was all about combining technology and traditional advertising experience, and while that was unique and fresh at the time, it’s really what everybody should be doing these days. Honesty 2.0 will instead handle the effects that the internet has had on communications by adopting a new way of working.

The most profound difference that the internet has had on the world of marketing is that it has made it much faster, and thus speed and agility will be the main focus of Honesty 2.0. To achieve speed we attack organizational overhead and inertia by putting all our efforts into integrating strategy, storytelling, design, advertising, PR and production under one roof, one strategic account director and one creative team. Our vision is to become Sweden’s fastest and best integrated agency. To our clients this will mean better results in shorter time and at better prices. To Honesty it will mean a lot of new learning, more creative control, better output and further improved profitability.

I’ve been working on this for a while now and I’m really excited to finally put this plan into action!

Read more about Honesty 2.0:

Resumé writes about Honesty 2.0 (in Swedish).

AdAge writes about Honesty 2.0 (in English).

Digiday writes about Honesty 2.0 (in English)

 

Honesty Now Selling Advertising and Coffee

By On · Add Comment · In Design, The Honesty Story

Last week we received our first batch of Honesty Roast coffee, the first in our series of Honesty-products. We felt that the pod-coffee that we had before, while practical and ok-tasting, was soulless and dull and that we needed to do something about it.

We set out in search for the best brewing equipment on the market, and once that was installed we tried to find beans to match. The whole enterprise ended up with us going out to Johan & Nyström’s roasting house in Tullinge to find the perfect bean.

We finally ended up with an ecological and fairly traded coffee from the Yirgacheffe-region in Ethiopia with hints of blueberry in it’s taste. We loved it. But also, Honesty and Honesty Roast is all about constant change and movement and this first 72 kg batch of  Yirgacheffe Honesty Roast will be a limited edition soon to be replaced by Honesty Roast Batch 2 which will also be limited to 72 kg and is likely to be from a completely different region and country.

Stop by and try a cup or pick up a limited edition bag of beans (ground or whole) in a store near you.

Driving The Hell out of The Audi S7 and S8 in Berlin. Pictures and Video.

By On · 1 Comment · In Cars, Hotels and Travel

Game day. After a good breakfast at the Hyatt Grand we head down to a garage that is just jam-packed with premium Audis, most by my estimate setting you back upwards of €100000 if you’d be interested in one. For this mornings drive out the the race track we are given the keys to brand new Audi S7-cars. These feature a 4-liter bi-turbo V8 engines producing 420 hp and 550 Nm of torque. Trust me – they’re fast. The route we are taking to the race track will take a couple of hours, so we’ll definitely get to try these cars out. Can you tell I’m excited?

After leaving the city we hit Autobahn for a while. Turns out these cars are not limited to 250 km/h as the production models are, and the car hits 284 km/h without flinching. It probably would’ve kept going for a bit above that as well, but that would require better traffic conditions. Since driving at these speeds is a bit demanding we don’t have photos or video of us hitting our top speed, but here’s a pic a and video so you can get some feel for the power of this car.


Just to make sure nobody was fooling us with the specs we also completed a few not-so-scientific-0-100-tests. We could actually confirm the 4.9 second claim, even if our clock stopped on 4.7 seconds in this video:

We finally reached the race track which was actually an ex-Soviet airbase. Formerly the largest airbase in Europe, it was now undergoing conversion to becoming a solar energy plant. But today it was a race track. In the pic below you can also see the cool and very useful heads up display (HUD) projecting the speed and speed limit (and whatever else you might prefer) in the wind screen ahead of you. You can also see one of the speakers from the über-premium Bang & Olufsen sound system.

After having lunch we headed out to the race track where they had lined up S7s and S8s for us to try out. The instructors rode ahead of the group in V10 R8s. Not that they needed to have faster cars than we had to stay ahead of us, but they sure were nice to look at.

I didn’t get any film of me driving on the race track but I filmed my driving colleague of the day Fredrik in first the S8 and then the S7. The rain had now hit us with full force which slowed us down considerably on the race track, but such is life somtimes, you can’t control the weather. First the S8:

Then the S7. If you know Swedish by the way, note the instructor on the radio urging us to go faster. Funny as hell.

We then did a bunch of other stuff like trying out the S6, S7 and S8 on a slalom course. They also threw in a BMW 550 X-Drive for comparison. And I understand why. The Audis were all a marvel of agility and balance in comparison to the spongy BMW.

We also got to try out technology for automatic emergency breaking and adaptive cruise control which was nice and all, but I think we will all have stronger memories of precision handling and g-force from this day than anything else.

For the ride home the provided us with the mighty Audi S8. Weighing in not much heavier than the S7, this monster also sports a 4-liter bi-turbo V8 engine, but with a whopping 520 hp and a ridiculous 650 Nm of torque. We reach 0-100 km/h in 4.2 seconds in this super luxurious limousine, which is a joke really considering that this is faster than the standard R8 and many Porsche 911s. All this while having air-vented super-plush seats with built in massage. This car is a monster. Funny to see how they lined up these €140000-cars like play cars in a toy store.

 

The Final Verdict: Which Car To Take Home?

So which car did I like most and why? Well – I really have two answers to that question. Without a doubt the mightiest driving experience came from the S8. With all that power sending off this huge car like a bullet from a slingshot, it was one of those experiences that stays with you. Our colleague brought it up to 290 km/h on Autobahn the way home. Crazy. The car is also comfortable beyond your wildest dreams with seats that more resemble business class airliner seats than car seats. Plus the massage and vents of course.

On the downside, the car was not as fast and agile on the race track as the S7. This is not to say that it wasn’t amazingly good compared to most other cars, but the S7 felt quicker and more stable. More surprisingly I also felt that the S7 was more stable in high speeds on Autobahn than the S8. I didn’t manage to reach the same speeds with the S8, but this might just well have been because of winds and rain that hit us on the afternoon.

The car that I would bring with me home is a car that I haven’t talked much about here – the S6 Avant. Call me boring as it’s the exact same car I’m driving back home, only I’m driving a 245 hp diesel V6 instead of this 420 hp gasoline V8, but in my mind the S6 Avant was the fastest and best handling car through the slalom course. It’s comfortable and quick and being a station wagon I can pack it full of sports equipment, strollers or whatever else I might need. It’s just the perfect mix of sports car and practical every day vehicle. If you ask me again in 10 years or so, I might answer the S8. It’s more of an adult persons car and the brutal power makes it a driving experience beyond most that you can find anywhere. The S7 fell in between these two use cases for me. It’s very similar to the S6 in handling but without the practical format so that’s not the car for me. S6 Avant is.

Let’s Do it Again Sometime

All in all this whole event was amazing. Great ordnung, great people and great great great driving. Thanks Audi. Let’s do it again sometime.

Dinner and a Walkthrough of The Cars We’re Driving Tomorrow

By On · Add Comment · In Gear and Gadgets

I have a feeling the S8 will become a favorite. We’re talking about a car the size of a limousine that will leave a Porsche behind when the lights turn green. 0-100 in 4.1 seconds here:

On My Way To Berlin To Drive Super Fast Audis

By On · Add Comment · In Gear and Gadgets, Hotels and Travel

Ok. So I just boarded the plane to Berlin. I’m on my way down for the premiere of the new super fast S6, S7 and S8 models, and we are not going down just to look. Or even to test drive on the streets. We are going down to Berlin to drive these monsters on a proper race track. This, ladies and gentlemen is going to be FUN!

Stay tuned for more updates, pics and videos. Wish me luck!

Happy Anniversary Guys!

By On · Add Comment · In Entrepreneurship, Heroes and Cool People

Emil, Petrus and Martin joins Honesty in the fall of 2009.

Yesterday, October 1 2012, was a big day. It was the 3-year anniversary of my first partners Martin & Petrus joining Honesty (Emil, who is also in the picture above joined a soon afterwards after working at Tele 2  for a while after leaving McCann).

Up until this point, the Honesty brand had gathered a fair amount of momentum as the underdog agency barking at the big agencies. Now, with two of the top creatives in the industry joining Honesty along with the Chief Growth Officer from McCann, the agency took a leap from being a loud rebel start up to being more of a credible alternative to invite to pitches.

We soon brought in a few tiny jobs and made just enough money to hire an art director (Anna Lindelöw, who is now our design director). When we landed Stena Metall as a client we could afford an account manager (Marie Pohl who is also still at Honesty today).

It’s pretty amazing to think of everything that has happened since then.

So anyway, happy anniversary guys! For all the tough times, fun times and just plain crazy times we’ve had, I guess we can now say that we were a pretty darn good team after all.

How Responsive Design Saved My Credit Card

By On · 1 Comment · In Design, Thoughts on Marketing

I left my credit card behind in the machine when parking my car this morning. I didn’t get further than a hundred or so meters before my iPhone started ringing. There was a kind man on the other end telling me that I had left my card in the machine. I turned around and got the card back, but when I walked away I started thinking – how did this guy reach me so quickly?

Turns out he googled me on his smartphone, clicked the first link which leads to this blog, clicked the big green button that says ‘contact’ and then the next big blue button that says ‘call’, all within a few seconds. I guess the conversion funnel on my new responsive design works. :)

Relax. The New Lightning Connector Won’t Be a Big Hassle.

By On · Add Comment · In Gear and Gadgets

Sure, I chuckled a bit when I saw that Apple had given a name to their hugely annoying new charger format for the MacBook-line of computers. Only Apple can turn the realization that they made the previous MagSafe charger too big into a new-and-improved MagSafe 2. Now they are repeating that move with the new iPhone charger that goes under the name “Lightning”. Only in Cupertino.

But to Apple’s credit, I think it’s unfair to write it up as a way for Apple to make a bunch of cash off of people having to buy a whole new setup of accessories like some sites do. They do have a cheap convertor from MagSafe 1 to MagSafe 2 and they are doing precisely the same thing for “Lightning”. Instead I believe the explanation that they need to do this to save space. Or, in plain English, they simply made it too large to begin with. The hassle with moving from MagSafe 1 to MagSafe 2 was minimal in my case and I expect the move to “Lightning” to be equally smooth. The only exception are the peripherals where you actually dock the entire phone into a slot, like several speaker systems for example. But really, isn’t that a big hassle anyway? Isn’t it about time you made the switch to Airplay and let physical connections do what physical connections do best – charge the darn thing.

What’s The Future of Television? Ask The Slacker.

By On · Add Comment · In Futurespotting

I read in Dagens Industri this morning about where television is headed. It certainly is an interesting situation right now where traditional television is making more money than ever while everybody knows that things are changing rapidly. But what exactly is changing, and why exactly are the big traditional television companies making more money than ever?

The obvious answer to the first question is that distribution is no longer bound by the traditional limits of frequency allocation and satellite bandwidth. This shifts the power balance and leads to the “content is king”-conclusion where the rights-owners will be the winners. While there is some truth to this we also know that, like with kings, great content alone needs enthusiastic followers. And here, the big well known distribution brands are still way ahead of the long tail in terms of brand preference which explains the second question because mass audiences like the ones gathering around these brands spontaneously are an increasingly scarce commodity in a more fragmented television market. Other well known rights-owning brands like HBO are better positioned here but still have a ways to go to build new viewing habits.

But in today’s article I think the author missed one crucial perspective: convenience. Look at what happened in the music industry. Piracy didn’t only win over paid CDs because of the “free” price point, but also because of convenience. The downloaded MP3 was by far more convenient than physical plastic circles. Heck, the downloaded MP3 was even more convenient than the iTunes-downloaded DRM-crippled file. Spotify brought the industry back into the game by being MUCH more convenient than any previous format, both in terms of consumption, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of communication of music.

The same thing is happening in television, and even though we don’t know yet which player will dominate this game, Magine certainly looks like a strong player. I’ve not yet received an invite, so I can’t share any personal hands on experiences, but just from what I can see in Joakim Jardenberg’s video below, this looks really convenient.

Never underestimate the power of the slacker.

Big Screen TV Just Took on a New Meaning

By On · Add Comment · In The Honesty Story

I have this space in the office where I thought it would be great with a big projector screen. I figured we might as well get a really big one so that we’d have a really nice backdrop for presentations, lectures, cinema nights and, of course, XBOX-sessions!

Since we have a beautiful piece of graffiti on that wall today an electric roll-up screen would be perfect so that we could use the screen for projections and then just roll it up so that it doesn’t cover our art. Great idea.

Until we got this behemoth delivered.

The tube you see down there contains our new projector screen. It’s 6.5 meters wide. It weighs 180 kg. And it’s downstairs. Houston, we have a problem.

The State of Honesty

By On · 3 Comments · In The Honesty Story

It’s been a while since I gave you an update about the progress of Honesty. In fact I haven’t written much over the course of the past year at all. But it’s been one crazy year. First, and most importantly, I’ve become a father of a little boy called Marc. That, of course, changed everything and I could write an entire blog just about that.

But this post is about Honesty, and I’ll try to give you a brief tour of the state of the company:

The Economics of Honesty

When we closed last year’s books for fiscal 10/11 we did so with great pride. We had reached a turnover of 25,5 MSEK with a 35,7% profit margin (all such numbers are public information in Sweden btw if anyone thinks I’m being too transparent with our info). We’re working on the numbers for fiscal 11/12 as we speak, and the preliminary results indicate close to 30% growth for this year. Not bad considering that this has been a year where we have not focused on growth, but rather on building a stable platform for fiscal 12/13 where we plan for an aggressive growth rate of around 75%.

The Clients of Honesty

Halebop, Scandic Hotels, Fabegé, AxFood, H&M and Fisherman’s Friend have all been great clients throughout the year where we’ve made a lot of progress in different areas. Kicking off the new fiscal year 12/13 we welcome Riksgälden (The Swedish National Debt Office) and Beijer Bygg (building materials) as new clients.

The People of Honesty

A growing client base means a growing Honesty family. We are around 30 employees now, including those who will start work within a couple of months. We are also looking for one really great senior account manager and one amazing art director. If you or anyone you know fit either description drop us an email.

The Home of Honesty

We moved to our new offices almost a year ago and we LOVE the place. It’s this old factory building on the east side of Södermalm with huge windows and mega-high ceilings. It’s a 420 kvm space and we’re currently looking at expanding to 590 kvm.

Besides being a great place to work it’s also a perfect spot for seminars (we’re hosting TEDx in a couple of months), basketball tournaments (we have a court smack in the middle of the office) or parties. Check out this film for example from Honesty’s 3-year anniversary:

The Website of Honesty

We launched a new Honesty website a few months ago that we really like. It started out being a website with a mobile version, but when we started prioritizing information for the mobile version we realized that everybody deserves prioritized information and made the entire site into one mobile site. See what you think. We love it. Not least, having the site’s father Robin Frank around is always a blast.

The Future of Honesty

I updated my LinkedIn-profile the other day and tried to put into words what my goals were. I put down “Aiming to lead Sweden’s top agency and take on the world”, which is of course not very humble. But nevertheless, that is how I feel and that is what I think I have to feel to do a good job of leading Honesty. Whether or not we succeed, truly believing that it is within our reach is the only way to get there.

How a German Mail Order Company Designs It’s Way To Fame

By On · Add Comment · In Design

Great design has little to do with ornamentation and everything to do with staying true to the nature and purpose of the product designed. We have all been talking (and blogging) ourselves senseless about Apple’s dominance in  this field, so I would like to take the opportunity to display another great example of where design is a strong communicative tool while not compromising performance. Quite the opposite in fact. This is what communicative truth is all about.

Competitive bicycle racing is probably one of the areas in the world where performance is at the highest levels of priority and where tolerances for things like weight, stiffness and air drag are extreme. Nonetheless Canyon Bicycles from Germany has produced a competitive speed trial concept bike called  Speedmax CF that reeled in the Red Dot Product Design Award “Best of The Best” 2012 and looks like… well… see for yourself.

Now, you may or may not have hear of Canyon before. Personally I recently began riding race- and mountain bikes a little more seriously. When I researched my mountainbike purchase I realized that I could get an amazing bike for much less cash if I bought it straight from the factory in Germany from this e-commerce-only bike manufacturer called Canyon. I was sceptical at first about the performance and quality of the bikes, but after reading test reports I realized that this company means business, bringing home awards like “Trailbike of The Year” in What Mountainbike 2011 and finishing second in 2012.

For these guys to win the Red Dot award for one of it’s design concepts washes away any doubts in my mind of them being a shabby German mail order company. I don’t think they could ever have made any advertising campaign to come across as clearly as they do with this concept bike. It’s a true communicative truth, and a good non-Apple example of how to bake your communication into your product.

Online Vacation

By On · 1 Comment · In Off duty

Ok, my photographer father in law threw in a couple of extra iPads for effect, but this is actually pretty close to the truth of what the house looked like the day Snow Lion was relesased. Upgrade mania. :)