I love the fact that when I meet potential clients I have the opportunity to tell them our story. And be 100% honest when recommending them to start a relationship with us.
In an ideal world you get to sell something that is unique and that you believe in. For real. But how many people get the chance to do this for a living? I guess not many.
Well, I do. Every day. And I absolutely love it. And sometimes I wonder when I will wake up…
We believe that in order to find that very point of difference for our clients – we need to be unique ourselves. Well, we don’t need to – but the result will be much better and different. And that is why our business exists – to help find that very point of difference and to communicate that in a unique way.
So, how do we do this? We don’t believe in the ordinary, or the easy way out. We find a unique blend of individuals working for the client within our great pool of talents around the world. We are small but big, 600 people is small enough to be fast moving and cost effective. But big enough to handle some of the largest brands in the world. We know each other by first name. We come from 11 different countries and speak 15 different languages. At the same time we are one nation. GyroHSR – where no borders exist for our clients.
Just take our Stockholm office as one great example of what I mean – we blend people from 10 different cultures under the same roof. We put together a team of say one English Account Director, an Indian Account Manager, a Swedish Art Director, a Malaysian copywriter with a South African 3D Artist. What do you think will happen when all these people from these very different backgrounds look at the same brief? Well the only thing I can guarantee you is that something different will happen. And that is the very essence of branding. We were lucky to win a public tender a while ago regarding branding for the city of Stockholm. Of all 70 agencies that participated – we were the only one that presented a team that did not have one single person from Stockholm. Since the target audience for the city is everyone but Stockholmers – the team working on that brand needed to reflect the reality and not what appears to be the standard.
The result is something we all can see: Stockholm- the Capital of Scandinavia. On top of this we make sure to have a healthy balance between male and female, people from the client side with true agency people. We make sure we have a good balance between suits and the fashionistas, strategic and tactical, generalists and specialists, youth and experience, business insights with consumer insights, people from the traditional media landscape with people brought up in the new digital era. And I can go on and on….but this is something that I know our clients value about GyroHSR ahead of other agency groups. Have to go to a new biz meeting now – and tell this story to start another potential new relationship. You see – this is why I get up in the morning.
Claës af Burén
Chief Executive
GyroHSR Scandinavia