Pressbyrån - "Mellanmålsbyrån" / The "Snack-agency" wins Golden Egg award - Case Study (2011)

Since the case study is in Swedish, I'll explain what's going on. "Mellanmål" is a swedish word that literally means "between-meals" and is translated simply as 'snack'. The case study film opens on a radio show conversation where one woman explains that danishes are nice and all, but they are not mellanmål (snack), they are "fikabröd" (bread-to-have-with-afternoon-coffee). The lady continues to explain that "Chocolate bars are not mellanmål". This pretty much sums up the prevailing Swedish attitude that a mellanmål isn't a bag of chips or other junk, it's a healthy snack, just like the fruit you're served between meals in school.

The brief is that Pressbyrån (literally "press-agency"), wants to own the word mellanmål. With me so far? Pressbyrån, thanks to the name, is thought of as a place where you get newspapers, magazines and so on but they are stocked with food as well fresh coffee. The solution to the brief is as simple as it is obvious, change the name. Overnight, Pressbyrån shops all over the county were turned into "banana-agency", "ice-cream-agency", "hot-dog-agency", "cappuccino-agency", "cheese-sandwich-agency" and of course "Snack-agency". These shops are everywhere, and it didn't take long before people noticed.

Now the case study film gets funny, they're quoting people who are chatting about spotting these namechanges, and all the quotes pertain to stem from Flashback forum (it seems more likely to have been in the IRC chat). Flashback forum is an ancient Swedish forum with over 500,000 members and countless topics that is generally depicted as the seedy underbelly of teh intarwebs, nobody admits it but everyone reads it. The forum was nominated for a journalistic award recently, "Guldspaden", given for investigative journalism, but did not win. If flashback was discussing this, it basically means that most of Sweden noticed the signs. Take that, twitter-n00b and other newfangled social media channels. :)

The Golden Egg jury were impressed by the idea, it is after all the holy grail to change the clients name. And so simple. So this "snack agency" wins a Golden Egg award in the category media, 2011. Congratulations!

"Everyone has really helped and pulled their weight in this process. The client Pressbyrån has been an extremely responsive customer who listened to our ideas and they have been involved throughout" said Oscar Gardo, Åkestam Holst.

Ad agency: Åkestam Holst
​Art Director: Fredrik Josefsson
Copywriter: Adam Reuterskiöld
Creative Director: Andreas Ullenius
Planner: Lars Friberg