Why does Sweden keep creating globally recognised consumer brands while Finland keeps creating great products?
hasan & partners CEO Riku Vassinen joined Yle Aamu to discuss Finland’s branding problem together with Jenni Brisk, Lecturer in Marketing at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.
The discussion asked a deceptively simple question:
Does Finland know how to brand its products?
Riku’s argument is that Finland’s problem has never been a lack of good products, engineering or innovation. If anything, we might be a little too good at the rational part.
We believe that if the product is objectively better, people will eventually notice.
Unfortunately, brands don’t work like that.
Great brands are built not only from functionality, but from stories, emotions, distinctive identities and sometimes wonderfully irrational things that cannot be put into an Excel sheet.
Our Swedish neighbours have historically been rather good at this. From fashion and furniture to vodka and candy, they have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to turn products into culture, desire and international businesses.
Finland has all the ingredients to do the same. But it requires us to stop treating branding as decoration around the business and start seeing it as a fundamental part of creating value.
Because the world rarely pays a premium for the amount of raw material in a product. It pays for what the product evokes in the person
Watch the full 13-minute discussion on Yle Areena.
