Honesty

Honesty has helped companies build brand value since 2009. One of the keys to Honesty's success was to always evolve with technology and behavior. Another was to incorporate engineering methodology early on.

The transformation of Halebop from a niche low-price brand in 2010 to arguably becoming the brand of Swedish youth culture in 2016 put Honesty on the map and earned us awards for long-term brand building, effectiveness, and film. One of the keys to success was our shift of focus up the funnel—from audience liking as the primary focus to prioritizing sender recall. This shift was motivated by the increased competition for attention. We found that people like what they recognize, so the net result was much higher overall brand liking and, more importantly, higher purchase intent and actual sales.

In another example of this approach, for LYKO ('Your Beauty Playground'), we saw radical improvements across these metrics. Compared to the old concept and the industry average, the new campaigns broke records in observation, sender recall, message recall, and liking and ended up with purchase intent six times that of the previous humor-driven campaigns. I write more about this transition in a case study in the member section of the Honesty website.

One of my core principles is that a brand is not what you say it is but what others say and feel it is. This means that your communication is only one part of how you build your brand. For people to take your brand to heart, they must pick up a consistent signal in everything you do. The most effective way to achieve this is to formulate a clear philosophy and act it out everywhere in everything you do. Today, Honesty helps companies do exactly this: to shape their philosophy and integrate it into their culture and management practices, as well as in their product and communication.

Honesty was founded in 2009 and grew from a small startup into one of Sweden's most successful and profitable agencies within the first two years. The agency operations were acquired by LYKO in 2022, after which I focused on special projects for brands like Make Up Store, Grazette, Elements, as well as advising a number of startups. 

What's Next?

While creating breakthrough brands for larger corporations remains rewarding, I'm also working on a way to help smaller companies in an accessible and affordable way. The key to achieving this is to educate, train, and coach smaller businesses to become better brand builders themselves rather than do it for them. This approach empowers smaller companies to grow sustainably and effectively, arming them with the tools that typically require large enterprise budgets and enabling them to challenge bigger competitors on a more equal playing field.