Creative Summit – Day 1
Day one of the 2010 Creative Summit in Skellefteå, Sweden, started off with moderator Alf Rehn and David Eriksson, CEO and Creative Director of North Kingdom, welcoming the attendees to the Nordanå theatre. Creative Summit is an event that is tailor-made for creative and talented people in the region of Västerbotten. The goal is to encourage and inspire the local talent by having succesful people sharing their knowledge and expertise with them. It’s a way to make the world come to them, instead of the other way around. And the first day of the summit really proved that point, with approximately 400 attendees and speakers from all over the world.
Social media guru Brian Solis was first on the list of speakers. The acknowlegded author (of books such as Now is Gone: A primer on new media for executives and entrepreneurs) and Silicon Valley resident stressed the importance of companies and brands playing an active and educated part in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. By mapping, reaching and embracing the most influential people (the ”influencers” as Solis calls them) within the field of each brand, companies can create a stronger brand image. Getting a million hits doesn’t mean anything, according to Solis, unless you know what to do with it.
Mathias Fjellström from Direktörn & Fabrikörn
Mattias Fjellström, producer at the Academy award nominees and Cannes award winners Direktörn & Fabrikörn, delivered a short but greatly appreciated speech about the works of movie maker Patrik Eklund. Fjellström told the short but rousing story of his production company and how they after an economically poor made it all the way to the red carpets of Hollywood, sometimes interrupting himself by showing small snippets of their award winning short films. For Direktörn & Fabrikörn, Skellefteå and the Västerbotten region is the perfect place to be running a business.
- We are a little by the side of everything, Mattias said. But the great thing for us, being up here in Skellefteå, is that we can focus completely on what we want to do.
Peter Espersen from LEGO
The LEGO group’s online community lead, Peter Espersen, told the audience about his company’s incredible social media presence. The LEGO group have tried not to meddle with how the brand is perceived in the social networks. They try to listen, observe and ask the community rather than trying to pursue their own goals. One could argue that the LEGO fans themselves are building the brand image, while the LEGO group supply the fans with the tools – and the building bricks – for doing so. The result of a creative community, with everything from massively popular Youtube-videos to huge fan events, is nothing short of astonishing.
Adidas’ Clemens Dopjans, working with digital brand marketing, and David Eriksson of North Kingdom closed the first day of the Creative Summit by talking about their joint efforts on the Adidas Teamgeist multimedia advertising campaign. Clemens first learned about North Kingdom after seeing some work they had done for Vodafone. When starting off the work on the 2010 World Cup campaign, later called the Teamgeist campaign, he turned to Skellefteå for realising Adidas’ vision. The Teamgeist project was not only huge in scope, it was also a huge success. The website (which contained a turn-based football/strategy game: the heart of the campaign) had more than 3,6 millions views in just about two months time, with Twitter users all over the world (almost) wishing they were German.
The Teamgeist project is, funnily enough, an excellent example of the team spirit that has made Skellefteå such a great place for digital and creative businesses. North Kingdom brought several Skellefteå based companies (Direktörn & Fabrikörn and Dreamfield among others) along for the Teamgeist project. In doing so, they helped the local entrepreneurs find a global market – while at the same time adding knowledge and finish to the final product.
- We would never be doing this good without the good network partners we have around us here in Skellefteå, and in Stockholm, David argued. A big thanks to them for helping us deliver this great product!
It was a fitting end to a nice and truly aspiring day!