High Five: Sweden
Linda Elers, creative director and partner at M&C Saatchi Stockholm, has been at her current agency since 2013, and for the past four years, she’s been a creative director, co-lead and partner there, with a firm hand on the creative tiller. Involved in campaigns spanning from Reebok's rentable shoe service to a campaign for the Jewish Museum, Linda has plenty of experience in the world of advertising. Here, she shares her five most memorable creative works from the past few months, seemingly all with a little twist...
The Swedish Cancer Society
Agency: King
You could argue that this idea isn’t the most creative one, or that it’s 'easy' creating something emotional for a good cause. (It’s not – it’s easy doing something cheesy, though.) But this film for the Swedish Cancer Society is so well made, it just blows me away. The relationship between the father and the son, the authentic feeling…it’s such a beautiful piece, made by my old friends at King. The film's music was created by Swedish artist, Thomas Stenström, with all the royalties going to the Swedish Cancer Society.
Västtrafik - 'No Douche Bag'
Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors
Maybe what I love most about this is the name – brilliant! But it’s a nice and simple way of making Västtrafik (public transport in western Sweden) feel just a little bit friendlier.
Talita - 'Call Girls'
Agency: Åkestam Holst
This is a clever campaign by Åkestam Holst for Talita – a non-profit organisation that helps women out of prostitution, pornography and human trafficking. They launched a 'call girl-service' where the caller gets to listen to real stories from women who’ve been exploited within the sex trade – while being charged €1 every minute. All funds gathered from the calls go to Talita, to help women out of prostitution and into a new life.
KLM
Agency: M&C Saatchi Stockholm
This is our latest campaign for KLM, where we’ve basically just reversed a traditional travelling campaign in order to highlight KLM’s generous cancellation policy. I’m a sucker for simple ideas, and I like the fact that we are inspiring people to travel by encouraging them to do the opposite.
Zikaron - 'Förintelängesen'
Agency: Acne
This probably isn’t the best piece to show here since the whole idea is based on the Swedish language. But it is such an elegant and brilliant ad so I felt I had to include it. The word in Swedish for the Holocaust (Förintelsen), and the sentence 'Not that long ago' ('För inte länge sedan') is as you can see, very similar. In this ad, they’ve written the sentence as one word and made the few letters that differ from the word for the Holocaust a bit transparent, and it’s such a beautiful way to remind us all that the Holocaust actually wasn’t that long ago. The work was made by Acne for a non-profit organisation called Zikaron, and was published on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
