Brand Sweden: What Makes Swedish Brands So Successful Globally?

What char­ac­ter­is­tics do you think help make brands suc­cess­ful glob­al­ly?

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

The recent acqui­si­tion of King, the devel­op­ers behind Can­dy Crush Saga, by Activi­sion Bliz­zard for $5.9 bil­lion was the lat­est in a long line of high pro­file acqui­si­tions of star­tups found­ed in Swe­den. Swedish tech start­up com­pa­nies such as Skype, Spo­ti­fy, and Mojang, seem to have an abil­i­ty to achieve glob­al suc­cess. What qual­i­ties allow them to do this and how does it tie into Swedish cul­ture?


Lon­don isn’t the tech-cap­i­tal of Europe. Sur­prised? Accord­ing to Atom­i­co, a VC firm which invests in tech­nol­o­gy star­tups all over the world, “on a per capi­ta basis, Stock­holm is the sec­ond most pro­lif­ic tech hub glob­al­ly, with 6.3 bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­nies per mil­lion peo­ple (com­pared to [Sil­i­con] Val­ley with 6.9).”

Despite hav­ing a thriv­ing East Lon­don dig­i­tal start­up com­mu­ni­ty, Lon­don has just three dig­i­tal com­pa­nies in the plus $1 bil­lion cat­e­go­ry.

The recent acqui­si­tion of King Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment, the mak­ers of Can­dy Crush Saga, by Activi­sion Bliz­zard for $5.9 bil­lion was anoth­er in a long line of high pro­file acqui­si­tions of star­tups found­ed in Swe­den.

Swe­den was home to the likes of Skype (bought by Microsoft for $8.5 bil­lion in their largest ever acqui­si­tion), Spo­ti­fy (who ear­li­er this year received a mon­ster $526 mil­lion fund­ing round), and Minecraft cre­ators Mojang (also sub­ject to a major $2.5 bil­lion Microsoft acqui­si­tion ear­li­er this year), all of whom exist with King in a group of elite Swedish tech com­pa­nies that have man­aged to achieve glob­al suc­cess.

All of these brands share one incred­i­ble trait: the abil­i­ty to appeal to glob­al audi­ences, expand rapid­ly across ter­ri­to­ries, and reach new mar­kets all across the world.

Arguably, it’s a trait that Swedish busi­ness­es have always pos­sessed; brands such as Ikea and Vol­vo have man­aged to glob­al­ize while main­tain­ing a unique, decid­ed­ly Swedish brand iden­ti­ty.

swedish-meatballs

IKEA cel­e­brate a dis­tinct Swedish iden­ti­ty through­out their stores around the world.

Ikea’s unique blend of min­i­mal­ist func­tion­al­i­ty, inno­va­tion, and sim­plic­i­ty of design have been large­ly admired yet lit­tle emu­lat­ed, and Vol­vo have nur­tured a rep­u­ta­tion for safe­ty and stead­fast­ness, which has made them a pop­u­lar brand in emerg­ing mar­kets such as the bur­geon­ing mid­dle-class in Chi­na (the auto man­u­fac­tur­er was brought under Chi­nese own­er­ship in 2010).

For a sin­gle coun­try in Europe to pro­duce dig­i­tal prop­er­ties that rival the giants of Sil­i­con Val­ley is remark­able. So what is it about Swe­den that gives these brands such a glob­al edge?

Just The Right Amount’

It’s worth draw­ing a com­par­i­son here, between Swedish tech com­pa­nies, and a long suc­ces­sion of pop­u­lar Swedish pop groups, start­ing with ABBA, who have also man­aged to export their brand well beyond Swedish bor­ders. Swe­den is in fact, the third largest exporter of pop music after the UK and U.S.

In an inter­view with the Nation­al in 2011 Ulf Ekberg of Ace of Base gave his thoughts on what makes Swedish music so uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble:

For Swe­den [melody is] num­ber one and has always been. While the Amer­i­cans, it’s the lyrics first, pro­duc­tion sec­ond and melody last. I am not say­ing the lyrics are not impor­tant, but for us Swedes, for whom Eng­lish is our sec­ond lan­guage, we just try to make it under­stood by a world audi­ence. Because of this focus on lyrics, some of the Amer­i­can songs are com­pli­cat­ed and can some­times be not much fun. While for us, we always try to reach to as many peo­ple as we can, so we have feel-good melodies and sim­ple lyrics so every­one can have fun.”

At least in Ekberg’s view, the dis­tinct dif­fer­ence between the Swedish and Amer­i­can approach here is in the com­mit­ment, right from the out­set, to cre­ate some­thing that is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to all.

It is an approach borne per­haps from the Law of Jante, an influ­en­tial set of prin­ci­ples that espous­es col­lec­tive men­tal­i­ty and suc­cess above indi­vid­ual suc­cess­es. Here are the first four of the 10 rules of Jante:

  1. You’re not to think you are any­thing spe­cial.
  2. You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
  3. You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
  4. You’re not to con­vince your­self that you are bet­ter than we are.

The Swedes even have a unique word lagom, which is often trans­lat­ed as “just the right amount,” or some­times “per­fect-sim­ple.” Fol­low­ing this prin­ci­ple in the con­text of tech or busi­ness could eas­i­ly trans­late into an under­stat­ed sense of humil­i­ty, one that cre­ates the inclu­sive men­tal­i­ty that Swedish prod­ucts or brands have become known for.

Glob­al com­pa­nies based in Swe­den tend to be paint­ed in 50 shades of Jante,” wrote Christo­pher Har­ress in the Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times, “For exam­ples, Ikea and H&M respec­tive­ly offer sim­ple fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing for ‘the peo­ple’ at cheap prices that remain in line with the ethos of attrac­tive ordi­nar­i­ness.”

Simplicity & Design

Apple’s endur­ing suc­cess has been due, at least in part, to their abil­i­ty to cap­ture the con­cept of sim­plic­i­ty.

I love it when you can bring real­ly great design and sim­ple capa­bil­i­ty to some­thing that doesn’t cost much,” the late Steve Jobs once said. “It was the orig­i­nal vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”

If you look at Swedish brands, every­one from long­stand­ing Swedish stal­warts (Ikea and Vol­vo) to the new gen­er­a­tion of tech com­pa­nies (Skype, Spo­ti­fy, Mojang, and King), it’s pos­si­ble to draw a par­al­lel with those same qual­i­ties.

Great design. Sim­ple capa­bil­i­ty. And rea­son­able pric­ing.

It does­n’t take the great­est stretch of the imag­i­na­tion to see how the Swedish cul­tur­al con­cept of lagom encour­ages these qual­i­ties. After all, a key com­po­nent of great design is uni­ver­sal func­tion­al­i­ty (some­thing any­one can use), and sim­plic­i­ty (res­onat­ing with the idea of “just enough” and not over­com­pli­cat­ing a brand’s val­ue), which is as an impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of brands today.

How Can Brands Emulate Swedish Success?

Swe­den has long been viewed as a par­a­digm of social democ­ra­cy. Run­ning through the coun­try’s nation­al con­scious­ness is a col­lec­tive men­tal­i­ty that con­tin­u­ous­ly plays up the virtues of the group.

It’s no coin­ci­dence that many suc­cess­ful Swedish tech exports have been social tools, such as Skype and Spo­ti­fy, and social games such Minecraft and Can­dy Crush Saga.

For brands today the social ele­ment, or a sense of col­lec­tive pur­pose, has become a cru­cial ele­ment of that suc­cess. Of course, there are oth­er impor­tant fac­tors that con­tribute (design, sim­plic­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty), but the com­mit­ment to these virtues stems essen­tial­ly from the endem­ic col­lec­tive con­scious­ness that runs through Swedish cul­ture.

At the risk of gen­er­al­iza­tion, the rela­tion­ship between brands and con­sumers is becom­ing more social – and with social net­work­ing plat­forms and user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, so are the inter­ac­tions between con­sumers them­selves.

The suc­cess of Swedish brands glob­al­ly has been due to the fact that their cul­tur­al mind­set aligns to a great extent with the dig­i­tal mind­set, the we rather than the you, and per­haps… if brands want to emu­late that suc­cess, they too need to instill that “we-ness”, a col­lec­tive mind­set that always puts the group before the indi­vid­ual into their orga­ni­za­tions.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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