Anders Wahlquist — Founder & CEO, B-Reel
Anders talks to TheNextGag about why Swedishness mashes well with LA, helping clients driving business and creating new products and building the agency of the future.
Anders Wahlquist is the Founder & CEO of B-Reel, a global creative agency, in Sweden.
Anders is the founding partner of B-Reel Creative and B-Reel Films.
B-Reel Creative is a team of Storytellers and Technologists, creating new ways to connect Brands and Audiences.
B-Reel Films is a production company for TV-Commercials, Feature Films, Branded Storytelling, Documentaries and Episodicals.
THENEXGAG: HOW MANY OFFICES DOES B-REEL HAVE AT THE MOMENT ?
ANDERS WAHLQUIST: We have five: LA, New York, London, Stockholm and Barcelona.
TNG: STOCKHOLM WAS THE FIRST, RIGHT ?
AW: We started at Stockholm.
TNG: AND THEN YOU WENT WORLDWIDE ?
AW: No, Western. We went international. We don’t have anything in Asia. But we should probably.
TNG: HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN ?
AW: Twenty years next year.
TNG: I ALWAYS SAW B-REEL AS THE EXPERIENCED SHOP IN DIGITAL CRAFT.
AW: Back then we were a production company and we worked like that for fifteen years or something. Then we realized that we had potential to be much more than just a production company in the digital era. So, we evolved and started to work directly with clients as well. Now we do everything. We are a global creative agency that is fully integrated.
TNG: DO YOU DO YOUR OWN PRODUCTION ?
AW: Yes. That is what we do really well because it’s what we’ve always known from our production roots — we know how to make stuff. We added strategy and client services to do more groundbreaking creative that wasn’t specifically focused on digital. We made the change four years ago and have found great success ever since.
TNG: DO YOU HAVE THE SAME MODEL FOR ALL YOUR DIFFERENT OFFICES ?
AW: Stockholm, New York and London are full service creative agencies. They work on all communications. Barcelona is a tech hub, and LA works on products and services because they are more specialized towards the tech and product scene. We are sometimes given a product to work on, which we have access to tools within other offices to then market it. Our model always consists of some combination of storytelling and technology.
TNG: IS GOOGLE ONE OF YOUR CLIENTS ?
AW: Yes. Google is one of our clients. We work with them a lot. Our biggest clients are probably Google, LVMH, Here, and Storytel — which is an audio book company span from Sweden going global and is a possible competitor with Audible.
TNG: DO YOU FIND IT IMPORTANT TO MAINTAIN THE SWEDISH VIBE IN YOUR LOCATIONS OR IS THAT LOST AFTER 20 YEARS ?
AW: B-Reel’s culture is a mix between Swedish and the local culture in which each office is based. It is super important however to keep our Swedish roots because that is where we come from. I think it also affects the way we work — people collaborate and work together. There are no hierarchies. We focus on creating concrete results quickly without creating politics. It works really well with the way that we work with innovation and creating fast results. Structures and hierarchies hold you back and slow things down.
TNG: ARE THE VALUES OF SWEDISH PEOPLE WELL-SUITED TO WORK INTERNATIONALLY ?
AW: It’s easy for us Swedes to work in America, as Swedish culture is directed toward America.
But also, Sweden is a very small country. So you are always looking at doing things outside Sweden because otherwise you will be stuck with a market of eight million people, which is the same as a city like London. It is not enough for excitement or for a financial footprint.
TNG: NORTH KINGDOM ALSO EXPAND OUTSIDE OF SWEDEN AND ARE ALSO BASED IN LA WITH THEIR SWEDISH MANAGEMENT. JUST LIKE YOU. I WOULD THOUGHT THAT IT WOULD HAVE MADE MORE SENSE TO HIRE LOCALLY ?
AW: Oh but we’ve had. I don’t know how North Kingdom works but we’ve always had the idea to have a little mix between local and Swedishness. And again, I think Swedishness works well with innovation because you work without borders in a small team. People know what their peers are doing and they have overlapping competencies. They help each other. Instead of having 50 specialists that each know their verticals, you have three or four people that work with the client and they know everything from creating campaigns to developing products. Then you have to understand the American market, so you have to hire locally. Most people working in our offices are from somewhere else than Sweden. It is a very international set. We have about twenty-four different nationalities among one hundred and fifty people.
TNG: I AM SURE B-REEL WORKS WITH A LOT OF DIFFERENT EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS AR AND VR. BUT WHAT ARE CLIENTS ASKING FOR ?
AW: When we were a production company, clients would say “Hey, can we do something with VR because as we understand it’s cool right now.” It’s a less interesting question than “Can we work together to launch a new album?” or “Can you create a smart piece of technology for our fashion brand?” Today as a creative agency, we are pushing more for the latter questions. It’s exciting for us to then be able to find the right solution for the right project and find new ways to solve a business problems — from development to production.
TNG: IS THERE ONE TECHNOLOGY THAT EXCITES YOU PARTICULARLY ?
AW: Yes, creating user interfaces to be as non-intrusive and as natural as possible. It’s like seeing them in your life and prolonging whatever you are doing. That is great design.
But then you can take innovation one step further by adding something — an experience or an added delight for the user. By doing so, you are adding a point of view to the design. You create something that is a story but in combination with technology. That’s a different approach to design.
TNG: ANY UPCOMING PROJECTS FOR YOU ?
AW: We are working on a couple of new apps and a huge new product launch but they are severely NDA’d. On the BRF side, we are doing two documentaries about Zlatan.
TNG: AND ZLATAN IS IN LA NOW !
AW: We will probably never meet him. It is easier to meet the King of Sweden than Zlatan!
When everybody is talking about the same thing then it’s not as not interesting anymore.
TNG: IT SEEMS LIKE THERE IS A TREND ABOUT LESS POLISHED DESIGN, WITH GIFS, GLITCH AND LO-FI TECH. DO YOU FEEL THAT CLIENTS ARE ASKING FOR SOMETHING MORE RAW AND AUTHENTIC ?
AW: I think it depends on what you want to achieve. Look at Minecraft for example. It’s clunky and an 8-bit design straight through but it is designed to be that way. It works perfectly for the purpose of what it was meant for: modular, building stories, etc. Then there might be a different project that will require super high quality definition in order to serve a different purpose. It really depends on what the idea is.
You can feed into trends but that is boring. Two years ago, everybody was talking about AR and VR. Now it’s the year of blockchain and everybody is talking about how it will revolutionize the world. When everybody is talking about the same thing then it’s not as not interesting anymore. But then there is always someone who will break through the noise and use a trend in an interesting and new way, and suddenly it will look natural to us. The most beautiful design has purpose.
TNG: I LIKE WHEN BRANDS DON’T TAKE THEMSELVES TOO SERIOUSLY LIKE THE DEISEL CAMPAIGN OR GUCCI.
AW: Gucci? They are super cool and they are just doing their thing.
TNG: IT IS FUNNY TO SEE COMING FROM A LUXURY BRAND.
AW: I think it is super cool. And the DEISEL knock off store is just a great idea. It’s very tongue-in-cheek. It could have been bad for the brand but I’m a believer in taking risks — do it, try it out and what is the worst thing that can happen?
I think it is good to have a consultancy and a product studio work together.
TNG: DOES B-REEL NEED CLIENTS OR COULD YOU BECOME YOUR OWN CLIENT ?
AW: Both. We are a consultancy. People come to us and ask for advice and then we give the advice. If there is a creation behind it, then we create something and hope that they are happy and we get paid for it. That is basically work for hire.
We also see that we could do much more with the technology and often experiment with it ourselves, in which case we become our own client. We’ve developed The Claw, which was used as a B-Reel recruiting tool, and most recently we hacked a home bot by giving it the personality of a Swedish grandmother for our LA office. One of the products that we developed is actually now being taken over by another company. Hopefully, they will launch it soon.
When you work with so many tech-savvy and forward-looking clients, you learn about new technologies all the time, and a big part of what we do is focused around products. It’s not just about the communication. We learn about new products by doing work, experimenting, and by consulting with brands about how they should be using that product or technology.
I think it is good to have a consultancy and a product studio work together because you’re able to communicate as much through the trades of the product as with the communication itself. They coexist and it is an ecosystem. And if you work with only one, you are missing out. At B-Reel, we work with both.
TNG: WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE PRODUCT ? CAN YOU SHARE IT ?
AW: No, I can’t. Because it is NDA’d until it is launched.
Separately though, we do have an app that is coming from a team of high-level academics in the tech sphere and extreme sports athletes. It is about your well-being and includes special assets to help create a stronger you. We’re excited about it.
TNG: DO YOU STILL OWN BRF (B-REEL FILMS) ? OR IS IT A STANDALONE COMPANY ?
AW: We own it but it is a standalone company. We operate as two separate entities. One side is the agency, and the other one is the production company. The production company creates commercials, feature films, documentaries, TV series, among other entertainment projects.
BRF will have 5 theatrical premieres in 2018, one of which is Euphoria starring Alicia Vikander, Eva Green, and Charlotte Rampling. The second season of Before We Die is currently in production (which happens to be Ricky Gervais’ favorite Nordic Noir show), and principal photography on the company’s first Hollywood production is beginning in August.
Anders Wahlquist
Founder & CEO
