5 Minutes with… Jerker Fagerström

Jerker Fagerström has lived his life with an acute sense of precision, discipline and extreme rigour in his ambitions and convictions. He’s trained for it, and he’s been groomed for leadership by what’s considered an ideal environment for churning out outstanding leaders – the Swedish Army. Jerker is an army officer turned ad man. As a conscripted officer, he spent about six years in military service until his discharge at 25 years old.

One could say it was Jerker’s first calling to be an army officer as he comes from a long family line of officers. Honing his skills in people management and planning prepared him well for his eventual career in advertising as a planner. He had always known he wanted to be in a field related to advertising and marketing, and it was exactly what he jumped into when he left home for university studies in London. 

“In my third year at university, I had to work on a thesis that involved a couple of in-depth interviews with senior advertising folks, and one of them was Nick Kendall from BBH at that time. We just hit it off. He was the chief strategy officer then, and I realised I want to be a planner. Once I graduated, I went back to Sweden, applied for a job as a planner and that was the start,” shares Jerker.

It was a path that opened up many opportunities for Jerker to work at leading agencies. An early career break came knocking on his door when he was asked to start Saatchi & Saatchi in Sweden with three other guys. Jerker attributes it to luck, but then again, luck comes to those who manifest the path to success. 

Jerker says, “I was two years into my career when we started Saatchi & Saatchi in Sweden, so I guess I do have a sense of omnipotence in that anything can be accomplished if you put your mind to it. I joined as a founding partner and during my five years there, we grew from four founding partners to an agency of about 50-60 people. We firmly established ourselves as one of the top 10 creative agencies in Sweden.” The agency counted international brands such as Procter and Gamble and Toyota, and local power players such as Swedbank and Three, a top Europe mobile operator, among its key clientele. 

With that outstanding achievement under his belt, Jerker moved on to DDB Stockholm for eight years where he started as head of planning. After a couple of years, he became a business director and eventually the agency’s ECD, before moving to Sydney. In Australia, he first worked at DT, which later became AKQA, and then he moved to McCann Sydney as ECD for a few years. Once back in Europe in 2019, he took on the role of CCO at Publicis Nordic, and after a couple of years, the Le Pont by Publicis Groupe was added to his responsibilities. 

He finds much commonality between his two careers, with creativity and teamwork as being at the core of it.  “In advertising, we use creativity to solve business problems. Similarly, we are training our leaders in the military to solve problems using creativity with the tools they have at their disposal. But by far the biggest similarity is that both require teamwork. It’s a team sport. You have to rely on a lot of people to come together as a team in order to create extraordinary results. And that's what advertising is all about.”

Jerker recently relocated to Sydney to join Thinkerbell in the newly created role of managing partner, officially starting in January this year. 

LBB> What intrigues you about the creative business of advertising?

Jerker> I think what we do is a gift because we get paid to use our imagination to solve problems and to tell stories. The word ‘creative’ is not a noun; it’s a measure of how exciting and innovative we do our work.

And when we get it right, we can make it rain on any business. How amazing is that? And how can you not look forward to doing that every single day? In all honesty, I do believe that creativity is the last legal unfair advantage in business. If that’s not fun and inspiring, I don’t know what is.

LBB> How do you inspire yourself in a role that requires you to be both creative and strategic?

Jerker> It’s mostly about being around the right people every day – my wife Sarah, and our kids, for instance, and the immensely talented people at Thinkerbell. If we could only learn from each other for, let’s say, the next five to 10 years, we would be unstoppable. That’s how much untapped talent there is around us if we choose to listen to it.

LBB> As someone who comes from a different culture working across international borders, how has that shaped your perspectives on creativity?

Jerker> When two ecosystems meet, something biologists refer to as the ‘edge effect’ happens. Right where the rainforest meets the ocean…that’s where nature gets creative and sprouts the unusual and different. Similarly, when two or more cultures collide, it sparks a different kind of ‘edge effect’ in viewpoints and behaviour, which I think is very beneficial to the work we do.

I’ve worked in many parts of the world, and when I'm in a room and I’m the one with a different cultural background, I try to bring a little bit of an ‘outside’ perspective, by asking lots of stupid questions. And asking stupid questions is usually very good for coming up with some interesting creative work.

LBB> Similar to multicultural perspectives that provide the context for ideas to thrive, what are your thoughts on the varied media platforms that allow creative works to shine?

Jerker> With the explosion in digital platforms over the past decade, the time we spend on these platforms consuming the media that’s being served has increased tremendously. So, getting work in front of people is easier than it’s ever been. But to be honest, I feel we have completely drowned those media platforms with really, really bad work. That's the biggest problem we are facing in advertising. Either it’s bad because it’s been produced by teams driven by fear of failure, and/or it’s bad because the work doesn’t fit the audience on Snap because it was originally produced for Facebook. Our job is to guide clients and help them choose the right work and to be discerning as to which platform they should be on.

LBB> What campaigns that you have worked on come to mind when you think of innovation and impactful creativity?

Jerker> I've been in agencies where some absolutely outstanding work has been created for McDonald's, Volkswagen, MasterCard, Procter and Gamble, to name a few. And I’ve been lucky enough to have worked on some of those projects, but one piece of work that felt hugely meaningful and with potential to have a massive impact was a piece of work that never got made. And every single one that works in the creative industry has at least one (if not a few) in the bin that ‘got away’. And this one is mine. It was for Coca-Cola in Australia, and the brief was to tackle the issue of sugar. We had an idea that felt really scary and at the same time, true. But in the end, it was perhaps asking a bit too much of them as a business and it was killed.

LBB> When you decided to uproot your family to return to Sydney again, what were the compelling factors that drew you to Thinkerbell?

Jerker> I love the model at Thinkerbell, which comprises a thinker and a tinker who focus on growing our clients’ brands and businesses. The beauty of this model is that the thinker and the tinker are the ones in charge. And to help them, they have the combined skills and experience of the rest of the agency to tap into.

Putting the people responsible for doing the work at the core of the relationship with our clients makes so much sense. To empower them to do what they believe is best for their client. There are no layers; no passing of the baton. We go from thinking to doing right away. I think speed is becoming more important these days, because if you want to influence culture, you're going to have to be able to create at the speed of culture from time to time. And our way of working makes that possible in a way that I have never experienced before.

But having said that, speed alone isn't enough. The work needs to be amazing. Otherwise, we're just setting fire to money. To be fast and wrong is terrible. The work has to make people laugh, think or cry because that’s what gets people talking about it and sharing it with their friends.

From the vibe and energy, the ambition, the model, the speed, and the relentless pursuit of doing outstanding work, it’s infectious the way Thinkerbell always tries to outdo themselves. So, it’s really exciting to see how I can jump in and try to help doing even more great work.

LBB> Going into 2023, how will you be navigating a year of challenges? What opportunities do you see on your horizon?

Jerker> The focus is going to be a lot on converting demand, whilst at the same time, we all know that those brands that invest in demand creation are going to be winning big when the economy is picking up speed and confidence again. In terms of opportunities, the biggest one is right here at Thinkerbell, which has a hugely talented group of people and hugely ambitious clients with some iconic Australian brands.