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There are two mandatory qualities for a successful branding specialist: a compulsive obsession for details and a vast curiosity. Ştefan and Adriana possess them both and raise these antes with astrong dose of passion. And patience, because in this field success is “a game of patience: a question of who stays and who goes. If you get tired and want to make a lot of money, go into oil prospection or sell gas. The branding specialist must have patience and every guy who works into this field must really enjoy his job,” Ştefan explains. This dedication was what drove Ştefan to quit his job as strategist and senior partner in Grapefruit, a well-established branding and digital agency, after 13 years of working there.
While the company was expanding its services into new directions such as digital solutions, Ştefan and Adriana, his wife and strategist colleague, decided to stick to what they love best: creating and developing brands. The separation was civil and consensual, but is there a market suitable for their ambitions? “The number of people who have the know-how and can do a good job does not increase. By contrast the need, at least formally expressed, and demand of branding services, and I refer in particular to SMEs, did increase. The branding market is somehow different from the advertising market. In advertising, you see the presence of multinational agencies, while on the branding market that does not apply in Romania. Our local market is too small for them. The only interesting markets for global giant branding agencies, in this area, are in Russia and Ukraine,” Adriana elaborates.
The proof of market
In fact, in Romania there are only about ten dedicated branding agencies. The growing demand for their services is, strangely enough, brought by the crisis. “People are now trying to seize any advantage they can reach. There was a mental barrier, the misconception that branding services are expensive and inaccessible. Not anymore: we have examples of really small companies that made these investments in branding; even if some of the investments were not large amounts, they proved to be important in turning the respective brands into successful ones.” As a proof of their good results, they were shortlisted for the prestigious Transform Awards 2013 with a content project developed for an independent education institution – Shakespeare School – a venture that fits the SME profile.
Choosing a branding agency is a tricky business; collaboration decisions are usually based on personal recommendations and slowly built reputation. In other words, as a branding agency, you don’t chase your clients, you select them. “We never go knock on doors and ask if anyone needs rebranding, this need is quite rare in the life of a company,” Adriana explains. “But here is something nice to remember,” she adds, “the first email that we received was on a Wednesday; we started on Monday July 2, and the mail came on July 4. The email sender later became our first client.”
Their portfolio currently includes 17 clients for whom they have been working since July 2012. Currently, ten of them are active, among them multinational companies, but also small and medium Romanian ventures. Their services vary from internal communication campaigns translated into animated movies to the expected visual identity building. “We don’t work with all the people that sent us emails, but those who get to be our clients eventually, certainly manage to understand the value of strategy,” Ştefan explains. “If we’re talking about speculative pitches alone, where no pitch fee is provided to cover the workload, we do not enter the pitch. Here are several reasons: some clients unfortunately do not understand what is really necessary for branding and they ask first for the visual, the logo. You can’t make a logo without going through other stages of audit and strategy. I mean you have to do things correctly”.
Heaven is in the details
A significant part of the three-hour chat with Adriana and Ştefan was dedicated to the exposure of misconceptions: the high price of branding services, the definition of their job, the importance of the visual elements in branding. Because, when you say branding, you say logo, right? Storience says otherwise: when you say branding, you say story, the logo is just one of the details that make the story consistent and coherent. How far are they willing to go in order to achieve this consistency? As far as possible, exploring apparently insignificant details as the color of the manager’s tie or the buttons of his shirt, if needed.
“We always explain to our client to watch over all the details – like answering the phone, your message on the answering machine – all of this must be part of the story,” Ştefan says. “We come up with detailed recommendations but the client must be open and willing to make the effort to do so, because eventually, we can’t control what happens in the organisation. We can only come up with recommendations, suggestions and ideas.”
But how exactly does the branding process work? “Usually we start with a brand audit, if it’s not a new brand. This means that we talk with representatives of all target audiences for that brand, be it employees, the clients, suppliers, partners, the media if they pay attention to that action field. Based on this report, which finally has our recommendations, we work in brainstorming sessions to define the brand, or to redefine it,” Stefan explains.
“The next step is to make a brand management plan that is similar to a marketing plan. This plan sets the goals based on the audit conducted in the first phase, and the strategies necessary for achieving those goals. We collaborate with PR agencies for our clients, because branding is very closely related to this field, and we believe in the concept of integrating the related services in branding. We coordinate this effort in communication, it’s very important to fit these details under the same communication umbrella when you start the branding process,” they summarise. “We are not the kind of agency that won’t share its “toys” with others, and we believe that the more the customer knows, the more he is likely to understand what we do and how we add value. It is very important to transfer value. The brand must not be dependent on the agency in other ways than voluntarily seeking advice,” Ştefan concludes.
Family business
Adriana and Ştefan are a dynamic duo, they share their profession and their private life, they finish each other’s sentences and, most of all, they both have a vast curiosity. Out of all the interviews I ever conducted, they were the only subjects who knew about me as much as I knew about them. The urge to document and crosscheck everything, including the journalist you’ll meet, seems to be an occupational hazard. Ștefan agrees: “If you aren’t a curious person, you might as well quit. You must be curious from the morning until the night falls. I am a news freak myself, I read many Romanian and foreign news sources. I need my constant contact with the media, and it happens in short sessions during the entire day”.
His thirst for information does not only apply to the news – Ștefan studied to become a doctor, and found his academic formation extremely useful as a PR & Communication graduate and, later on, as branding professor for a master class hosted by the University of Bucharest. Adriana, a journalist by formation, and an HR specialist by experience, describes him as a gifted storyteller. She is also devoted to unlimited and unbiased curiosity. “It’s mandatory”, she says, “because we have to find insights, to manage to tell the client something new and essential about his business. We collected so far, during previous projects, detailed information ranging from the beer markets to building materials, pharmaceuticals, health care or food markets”.
Doing business within the family might not seem like a good idea for everybody, but the Storience founders agree to disagree. “We love our job and we don’t need a switch between our professional and private life. You cannot stop thinking about a project just because your office hours are over. It does not work this way. Not for us!”
Meet Niko Alm, the man with Austria’s most famous driver’s license. Mostly known for his political activism, we find that the talents of the advertiser and publisher go beyond generating publicity around his own persona.
Niko Alm welcomes us at the Super-Fi headquarters in Vienna’s fourth district with plastic wrap covering his right lower arm. This is the man who made international headlines from the BBC to Spiegel last year after he won the right to use a photo showing him with a pasta colander on his head in his driver’s license – for religious reasons. But we didn’t come to talk about Niko’s political activism as an advocate for the separation of church and state. We want to get to know the entrepreneur beneath the noodle strainer.
We are led into a glass encased meeting room whose only flaw seems to be what Austrians – in a not politically correct manner – like to refer to as a “Russian chandelier”: a naked light bulb in a socket. The sleek office, which the creative agency Super-Fi moved into earlier this year is a far cry from its original home base. Located just around the corner, the cluttered co-working space houses several media related companies of the Super-Fi Mikromischkonzern – literally the Super-Fi Micro Conglomerate – staffed with mostly twentysomethings behind Macs – cliché much?
They All Look The Same
A Casual Royal Wedding Friday at the Super-Fi Mikromischkonzern (note King Niko) © Super-Fi“We basically all look the same in our office”, jokes the 37 year old, who has donned his best Helmet t-shirt for the occasion. “After all, I can choose who I work with”, he proclaims not entirely tongue-in-cheek. Niko, who founded Super-Fi as a self-financed creative agency with three friends – Iris Kern, Christof Hofer and Manuel Fronhofer – in 2001 makes no effort to hide the fact that he enjoys his role of CEO holding 45 percent of the company’s shares. In 2011, Super-Fi was Austria’s third biggest digital media agency with a turnover of about 6 million euros and currently has 75 employees. So, how does one succeed on the cluttered media market?
“Back when we started Super-Fi, we were all in our mid-twenties and actually believed that we were doing something completely radical, which – of course – we weren’t. We didn’t even consciously look for a niche, which might actually have been a mistake. We simply took all of the orders that we could complete and did it our way.”
That still doesn’t quite explain how the agency could grow into a company group encompassing twelve independent businesses in the fields of media production, advertising and web development within ten years. Interestingly, some of the companies were started by former employees with entrepreneurial ambitions, which Niko supports – in return for company shares.
The ink is still drying: A tattoo of his company’s logo shows that Niko takes pride in what he does – and that he’s serious about branding.
Sorting Peas And A Subconscious Strategy
As for the origins of the adman’s personal entrepreneurial drive, it almost seems like there was no other choice. Growing up the son of a self-employed father, Niko tells us that to him there simply was no plausible alternative employment model to starting his own business. As he shares recollections of his previous work experience – sorting peas at a frozen food factory (for about two days), working as a journalist, graphic and web designer – he emphasises the freedoms he enjoys as CEO: “I like doing whatever I want to do. Of course, I work for our clients but I can choose what I work on, who I work for, when I work and who I work with.”
Getting back to Super-Fi’s evolution, Niko points out, that if they had been following a strategy at all, it was a subconscious one – “if that isn’t a contradiction in itself”, he adds. “We have a completely opportunistic and generalist approach which has worked out for us. The only thing we do have is a good intuition for a certain lifestyle or target group, which is reflected in our media products. I think we’re pretty good at getting that across.”
Much in the same vein, he identifies the fact that he is a decent all-rounder as his biggest talent: “I’m not particularly good at anything but I’m second or third best at a lot of things.” Accordingly, he dismisses the concept of a USP, “During our startup phase, I was constantly being tortured with questions on what our idea and our USP was. To this day, I couldn’t really say because it’s a stupid question. When I open up a hair salon, the core service is going to be exactly the same as with thousands of other hair salons. Of course, I can pick a clever name and decorate the place in neon colours – then the USP might be about my external communication. But that’s not a real USP in my book. Creative agencies like Super-Fi are ten a penny.” Niko goes on to emphasise that Super-Fi may not even excel at its generalist approach, while cockily adding, “we’re definitely better than average, though, and that’s already enough.”
Pride and Prejudice
While displaying a reflected and almost humble attitude on the matter, Niko does take pride in his business. And he’s serious about branding. The mysterious plastic wrap on his arm, it turns out, serves the purpose of protecting a freshly touched-up tattoo showing the Super-Fi logo. “I have another one”, he adds as he pulls up his t-shirt sleeve to reveal the emblem of his first business attempt, Voortekk, which went through a reverse evolution process: first there was the tattoo, then the company. He had set up the marketing agency in 2000 with a friend after they had been approached by a group of investors planning to start an incubator focused on the media and creative sector. “A good concept if a little too late”, he sums up referring to the golden days of new economy, which had just been numbered at the time.
It becomes clear that the outspoken atheist has no problem with coming across as a polarising personality. He is also very much aware of the controversies he provokes. One of them is the prejudice that political actions like the driver’s license stunt or his attempt totake the Atheist Bus Campaign to Austria are part of a scheme intending to generate publicity for his business activities. This, according to Niko would, however, be thinking him more strategic than he actually is. “My political activism has nothing to do with Super-Fi. I do it anyway, no matter whether it damages or benefits the company. In fact, it does harm to us because it deters a lot of potential clients.” Nevertheless, it also seems to help customer loyalty: “Our clients definitely support what I do. I get a lot of backslapping for my activism.”
Austria’s most famous driver’s license made international headlines last year © Niko AlmUnspoken Rules and Casual Aerobic Fridays
Does one have to be a control freak in order to do a good job in his position? “I always thought I was one. But I’m actually not. Well, not in comparison to others, anyway.” Of course, as CEO holding 45 percent of shares and supervising 75 employees, having control is crucial. As with everything, it’s about the right balance, as Niko emphasises. To facilitate that, he tries to recruit people capable of taking responsibility, which he believes is much more important to small owned and operated businesses like Super-Fi than to big enterprises.
There also seems to be a sort of company credo: “You could say that we have a set of core values or unspoken rules that have evolved over time and that we – mostly – follow.” When approached about what exactly these are, he thinks for a while to then jokingly reply, “Well, that’s why they are unspoken!”.
We find clues in the company’s informal and slightly unusual corporate culture, as exemplified by an extra holiday for people without religious affiliation or Super-Fi’s take on the Casual Friday concept: At irregular intervals, the team voluntarily dress up according to a common theme, ranging from eighties aerobic wear to the 2011 royal wedding. Niko is quick to point out, that this institution evolved spontaneously and is unplanned. “Authenticity has always been important to us.” He continues, “I can’t sell lies as an ad agency. This doesn’t mean that we don’t exaggerate but I would have difficulty working for certain brands and products. These situations don’t really arise in the first place, though.”
Never Mind the Business Plan
As we continue to discuss a number of themes ranging from the high-brow to the banal, we find out that the entrepreneur prefers cats over dogs, vanilla over chocolate, Star Wars over Star Trek and Adidas over Nike – although, he’s not sure what wearing sneakers in the ad business implies about his persona. And what about his favourite fruit? Quince. The puzzle is coming together…
Any final words of wisdom that he’d like to give to young entrepreneurs? “Don’t listen to what people say as far as business plans are concerned. From the beginning, plan steps that you can take without existential risk. Only plan, what is possible to plan at the time and then take it from there. It may sound terrible, but that’s the only way to do it – at least in the media sector.” With this in hand, we leave the Super-Fi headquarters, slightly proud that we managed not to crack yet another bad pasta colander joke that Niko has heard so many of since last year.
