About Walter
I try to avoid saying that I "am" things. That's for others to decide – I've written about why in the post on Deep Branding on this site. What I can tell you is what I've done, what I do, and what I plan on doing next.
Even though I started out as an engineer, I've spent most of my career developing brands and businesses.
In 2009, I founded the branding agency Honesty, where I still serve as CEO. Honesty has gone through three different stages. From 2009-2018, we leaned heavily on humor to win people's hearts. From 2018-2022, we shifted up the funnel to distinct design and recognizability. Since 2022, I explore the philosophy of branding, which has almost come full circle back to what honesty, the word honesty, really means. Honesty and the philosophy of branding has profound implications for corporations, but even more so for each of us as individuals and how we come together as a species.
At the end of the day, I work with ideas, frameworks of thought, and patterns of information. My mind seems to enjoy it. I think of it as philosophy. I know it sounds presumptuous to call yourself a philosopher, perhaps because we think of the famous ones when using that term, but I make no claim to being a successful philosopher or even a good one – certainly not a famous one – but nonetheless, I'm interested in the nature of information, the known and the unknown, reality, and our relationship to all these concepts, and love to dig around in it.
In my mind, branding is a branch of philosophy. One of the more unacademic definitions of philosophy from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group", is not a bad definition of a brand. Another definition from the same dictionary is "The pursuit of wisdom", and in my private life, that is certainly something I aspire to – shouldn't we all?
Even though academic achievement may be a weak proxy for wisdom, it can imply some level of work ethic. I studied engineering at Linköping Institute of Technology, where I got my Master of Science degree, business at Lund University, philosophy at Stockholm University, and communication at Berghs SoC in Stockholm.
If all else fails, I plan to captain a garbage collection boat in the Stockholm archipelago. To that end, I got my Deck Officer Class VIII certificate a few years back. Between runs, I can keep writing, and the distraction-wielding power of garbage is limited. It will be great.
