Etablissemanget, a new Swedish advertising agency, is set to revolutionise the branch by intentionally avoiding “intersectionality, feminism, post-Marxism and norm criticism” and other “destructive ideologies”.
The company was founded by creative director Jonas WE Andersson, a former lecturer in graphic design at the Stockholm University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and Magnus Fermin, a producer and award-winning composer.
The agency's values are described as “conservative and humanistic” with “great love for Sweden and Swedish culture”.
According to Andersson, the world they both love, the cultural world, is completely closed to them and their likes. He described the entire industry as “ideologically poisoned”, admitting that his company is unlikely to get a single assignment within the culture sector.
Instead, Etablissemanget is aimed at medium-sized or larger companies that are “brave enough to stand for what they believe in”. Many are tired of being “scolded by a bunch of 25-30-year-olds” during meetings with advertising agencies, Andersson stressed in an interview with journalist trade newspaper Resumé.
According to Andersson, the political ambitions of the left-leaning bureaus often disrupt or even destroy the creative process. Furthermore, this often leads to restrictions or pure failure, such as department store chain Åhlens and carmaker Audi hiring self-admitted radical feminist Kakan Hermansson, who has expressed hateful comments about police and men in general on Twitter. The idea of hiring an overweight feminist to somehow “dispel the myth” that Audi's cars are aimed at men backfired and Hermansson was forced to resign amid protests. Another vivid example is Gillette, a razor company founded over a century ago, that recorded an over $5 billion net loss after a controversial ad addressing “toxic masculinity”.
“I believe many companies are misinformed. When they talk about things like diversity and norm criticism and the like, they don't really know what they are talking about, other than that you have understood that this is in the vogue right now. If a marketing manager and an agency, both drilled in norm criticism, concoct something for a brand, there is a great risk that it goes against the primary target group. You can even humiliate and mock your primary target audience. There we can come in and explain that it is not a particularly good way of doing business,” Andersson said.
Just a few years ago, it would have been impossible to launch such an agency, Andersson admitted. Today, however, there is a feeling that the mainstream firms are about to derail completely.
While Jonas WE Andersson was behind the right-wing Sweden Democrats' general election campaign last year, his company is politically independent.
“I have worked with SD for a long time. But we emphasise that we are politically unbound. We are not SD, but we are on the right,” Andersson said, describing himself as a believer in the ideals of the Enlightenment.
Apart from the Sweden Democrats, Etablissemanget's portfolio includes the Army Museum, the Prostate Cancer Association and the popular YouTube project SwebbTV.