B-Reel is a modern creative partner that believes in balancing creativity, innovation, and business understanding. Since their inception in 1999 they have shared a singular vision - to offer fully integrated solutions to the smartest and most demanding clients in the world.
Today, B-Reel commands a global presence, with offices in Stockholm, New York, London, Los Angeles, Berlin and Barcelona. Their staff is made up of award-winning creatives, technologists, designers, writers, strategists, product developers, artists, directors and producers, which add up to a multidisciplinary team of 170 employees of 19 different nationalities.
So, we are truly blessed today to sit down with one of the head honchos, co-founder Anders Wahlquist, and truly get under the skin of what makes B-Reel one of the creative world’s most exciting and defiantly collaborative agencies.
How was your company born and where are you based?
It was born in 1999 in the infancy of WWW when what you saw in browsers was very dull. We wanted to change that by bringing in our tv-production chops and mix it with the internet.
It was hard in the beginning, but soon started to make sense. We grew with every web technology that evolved and now we are a full-service creative partner to some very techy brands, and some not so techy too.
Personally, I am based in our B-Reel office in Downtown Los Angeles.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
The biggest challenge was to keep the spirit of a startup, of wanting to change the established ways, and of being super hungry, when growing up. I would say we still have a lot of it, but you must watch it.
Most people want some kind of consistency, and to use what they learned, to say "in reality, this is how it works" etc., while in reality, everything changes all the time, big and small, so you really have to be quick as boxers feet to constantly find the right angles.
Not a pugilist per se, but while we are there, here’s to Iron Mike "everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth." Apple killing Flash, the recession, the pandemic, CSS, BLM and AI changed our business radically.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
The first internationally notable was the “IF bad luck ‘o meter“ that we made with Forsman & Bodenfors. The first was the successful redesign of some Swedish TV channels on-air identities.
The biggest so far was probably “The Wilderness Downtown” around the launch of the Google browser, which was dubbed the website of the decade by the FWA and won all the shiny metal that was out there to be won.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
We are working closer and closer between our four studios, combining deep product dev and design with very forward motion creative concepting, campaigns and brand work, getting out what we call “walk and talk“ branding.
The combination feels more powerful than ever, in the age of multiplatform products, where the user experience is directly connected to the brand experience, and where the synchronicity between product and comms creates the strongest brand.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
We are flat and fast, meaning small units, small, empowered teams working forward tightly connected with our clients, and where our different disciplines are manifested by few people who work very tightly and aptly together.
In a world where a three-person crew can blow away a 100-year-old corporate behemoth, lean and agile works well. I don’t know if its unique, many companies claim to work that way, combining things seamlessly, but we really do it.
We have since we started. And, our roots in production make us keep our eyes on the price. We don’t deliver fancy decks with solutions that are hard to make, we already know the feasibility when we ideate.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
We believe interested people deliver interesting results, and that is the difference between table stakes and really coming through, tickling the fantasy of the audience. So, we try to always look for the new, the untouched, the difficult maybe, and make positively unexpected things happen.
We share a lot internally, sharing our interests, sharing our research with each other. And even though we work in hybrid work situations with some people in office, some not, we meet at least 4 times a year, and work together for a week in person, to inspire and get inspired by each other.
There are also different development programs we work on, for improvement of big and small, and we urge people to go Nomad, work from another office for a while to see some new people and ways of being.
Then, it’s in our nature to rotate team members around a lot in and out of different challenges, so no one is really stuck with one client for very long. That probably also helps for inspiration.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
It was a tough time, and in a way, still is, as it's not over, and we had to fight hard to keep the spirits up, to keep going forward with our clients, to keep the teams unharmed.
The good things coming out during the pandemic has been more work-life flexibility that we now know we can have, and at the same time deliver really well, which we did not know before.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
When it comes to agencies, those who are true to their brand and soul. Wieden + Kennedy, Mischief, Mother for example, and when it comes to people it is of course easy to get inspired by the wildest at heart, the bigger than life figures like Joe Pytka.
But I personally like the nerds, the deep-thinking strategists that read, and watch, and walk and come back with something out of this world in terms of thinking, or the designer who reads philosophy and only listen to street sounds in their headphones, or the MD who puts his work shoes, post its and pens in perfect order before walking out the same time every day.
I like the ones who are different and who might not act “alfa” but who will deliver in surprising ways every time. We are all needed and in the best of days an agency is such a beautiful biotope of very smart people working together to break the barriers between art and commerce. A true happiness factory.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
To know who you are and to hold on to that although you are growing and getting new opportunities, and although you hear all kinds of truths from different people who "know how it's being done."
That does not mean you should not change, or grow, or take the chances coming your way, but I think there is a unique soul to every org that starts to succeed, and if you are true to that when you are growing, I think you will be very fine.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
We are actually really bad at new business. We work closely with our clients and most of the business is word of mouth and has been for 23 years.
Someone worked with us before and brought us to a new company, or they tell their friends, or they come back for more. We work with good people, and many become friends for life.
We reach out, they reach out and then something happens. It worked out alright so far, but I guess we should work harder and maybe print some new business cards….
Our heritage is in production, and we were never used to have retainers, all our work was project based and 3 months down the road we knew nothing about what we would be doing then.
Now we have some retainers, and we do plan ahead together with some of our closest clients, but others, we just feel we are close to, and they keep coming back, as long as we are good I guess.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
That we can use all our cleverness and insights to change bad habits. We work with some green tech companies now, and it's very satisfying to know you work for something positive as the end result.
But I also hope that agencies thrive in the future, as we can change culture in ways that few can, when we are at our best. And with all the tech opportunities at our hands, well used, we got even more power to do so. It's a fun business, never gets old, and we can do lots of good and fun stuff.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
Websites. I like a classic: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/ where the poet and gentleman Nick Cave answers any questions.
I also love highly functional websites that help my everyday life, like Google search and Google maps. It’a unbelievable how much better life is with them and a piece of wearable tech.
Books: Putins People by Catherine Belton. Eye opening on the long game to keep extorting the riches from the Russian people into the pockets of very few. An explanation of Putin's rise and character and a fascinating story altogether.
Hollywoods Eve by Lili Anolik. Hollywood is the center of modern culture, but also more classic culture has a history in L.A.
Eve Babitz is the girl playing chess nude on an immortal photo with Marcel Duchamps in Pasadena Art Museum and who is tightly connected to the vibrant contemporary art scene that grew in Hollywood in the 60s. Dennis Hopper was for example the first buyer of some of Andy Warhol's art, and at the same time the Music world exploded on Sunset and in Laurel Canyon.
At the same time, you had European intellectuals who’d fled the war who called LA home and in Eve Babitz these all worlds morph together in a mesmerizing story. Her godfather was Igor Stravinsky, she dated top shelf rock stars, and she was a clever enabler of lots of things in Hollywood for a couple of decades, all on her terms. Queen !
Film. Just saw “Hiroshima mon amour” yesterday for the first time, and it knocked me flat. Immensely poetic and freely formatted.
