This year at the Kuldmuna (Golden Egg) Festival of Creativity, Sweep, celebrating its fifth anniversary, was awarded the title of Design Agency of the Year. In this category, they won one gold, three silvers and four bronzes. Sweep’s partner Siim Nikopensius and COO Sandra Ollik talk about how they find clients abroad and what changes lie ahead in marketing.

I have thought of Sweep as an advertising agency, but now you received the title of Design Agency of the Year. How do you identify yourselves?

Siim: The boundaries that determine the exact field we work in are getting more and more blurred. In order to create good design, you really need to be strategic – our agency has all the components to ensure that.

If someone asks what Sweep is, I always say it is an advertising agency, because that is easiest for people to understand. One part of creating good advertising is also great design. We create strong brands with clear design systems that make it easier for brands to build their creative campaigns on.

The business challenges we as an agency and our clients face on a daily basis have changed immensely. Markets are more volatile and there’s a lot of confusion regarding what an agency should be able to deliver. We need to be experts in many fields instead of just one, because the problems of our clients are more complex compared to what they used to be.

Sandra: I use the word creative agency, because design, advertising and marketing are closely interconnected. One cannot exist without the other. The fact that we’re able to offer everything together as one service is an ideal scenario. Design is one of our three pillars alongside digital and creative.

In a traditional design agency, art directors often deal only with branding or high-level creative concepts, but at Sweep they have the possibility to work on branding, packaging as well as campaigns simultaneously. They have said that this approach brings along a much-needed variety and helps them stay fresh.

Siim: It is important that the whole team knows who we are and why we do something. This also extends to the client relationship. We do not pitch multiple concepts. In over 90 percent of cases we only present one concept. But for us to be able to do that successfully, we need to do a lot of preliminary work. At Sweep we use a customizable workshop system where we guide the client through different parts of the design process. We look separately at typography, colours and graphic elements. Together with the client we make it completely clear to ourselves why it is smart to go in a certain direction.

In our industry there’s talk about creating an illusion of choice. That if the client has the illusion of choice, they will choose their favourite option and you can move forward. We do not think this is an honest way to solve a brand’s challenges, because in many cases it does not actually start producing results, since it is based on someone’s taste and not on concrete reasoning why the approach was chosen. The client loses trust in you, because what has been created does not work. If we can solve design in a way that the client understands every part and the whole picture, it ensures that the system we created is actually implemented and starts delivering results. At the same time, the client does not feel like a hostage when three solutions are presented and something has to be chosen. This is the foundation of our thinking and I see that it works because the results prove it. When clients start working with us, they do not leave easily.

The last two Design Agencies of the Year have closed down. Hopefully that is not a bad sign.

Sandra: Fortunately we do not call ourselves only a design agency.

Siim: Sandra was sitting in front of me at the Golden Egg awards ceremony and when we received the award, she turned around and asked if we are going bankrupt now. (laughs) This award is a good example that Sweep has had to significantly adapt its services over our four years of existence. That is a very short time and during that period we have changed enormously. Agencies that focus very narrowly on one area of expertise are more vulnerable, especially if they operate in one market. If your home market is Estonia, a too narrow specialisation can affect the business quite badly.

Sandra: Four years have passed with change and at a fast pace, and in the next four years you have to be ready for double the speed, otherwise you will not survive.

Siim: This is also the daily reality for our clients. There are very few fields where you can sit back and relax.

Sandra: Last year came with a lot of turbulence, but also success. We had very clear goals that were fulfilled. It is not very popular right now to say that things are going well. I am not afraid to say it, we can be satisfied with last year.

Siim: Our strength is that we do not just talk about what could be done, but we write things down and execute.

You hear less about your activities compared to other agencies. Do you deliberately keep a more modest profile?

Siim: Yes. We have focused a lot on substance and maybe promoted ourselves less. Although in the last year we have also paid more attention to that. Our goal has been to become stronger internally, not so much to focus on how we appear to others. We do not participate in Kuldmuna to gain a attention, but to evaluate what our best works are. The ones we feel are strong enough, we submit to the competition.

Sandra: Over the years we have built a solid network of contacts in Estonia and we market ourselves more abroad. Right now we are also getting inquiries from Estonian brands saying that you are the Design Agency of the Year, let’s collaborate.

What is your ratio between Estonian and foreign projects?

Sandra: Last year it was fifty fifty. Right now it is difficult to assess what exciting things this year may bring.

Siim: At the moment it might be a bit smaller, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, but we feel that we need to keep the ratio around fifty to ensure stability and maintain a better outlook for the future.

That is quite impressive for an Estonian agency.

Siim: Quite good indeed.

Does this mean you have a strong network abroad or is finding each client quite a struggle?

Sandra: It is not easy at all. Estonia has the reputation of a digital country, but creativity is harder to sell.

Siim: Winning a foreign client is completely different from meeting an Estonian client. Our strength lies elsewhere.

How do you win them?

Siim: In Estonia we can essentially present ourselves to the whole country. It is possible to reach the right people through a couple of phone calls. Abroad we focus on certain sectors and people through whom we can move forward. If in Estonia we create high level brand strategies and manage the whole client relationship, then elsewhere we cover more isolated parts.

Is this due to circumstances, that you have to build yourself up and start with smaller parts before you can move on to larger brand changes?

Siim: I would not call them smaller parts.

Sandra: Neither would I.

Well, smaller than a large brand campaign.

Sandra: Those smaller parts often form a larger whole than a brand campaign. The “always on” and content worlds are more extensive than the brand creation process itself, which you might do once and then develop it slightly as the brand grows. On the other hand, content is something that needs to be updated constantly.

Siim: I think the Estonian market has bigger changes ahead in this regard. In the upcoming years more money will most likely move into content creation. At the moment this is where the biggest gap lies in Estonian marketing – in my opinion there’s huge untapped potential for brands.

At the same time everyone is creating content, influencers are used, podcasts are made and so on. What should we do better?

Siim: First, it should be approached more professionally. A large part of marketing managers are used to an era when such marketing did not exist. Many social media managers or specialists do currently junior level work and this is also reflected in marketing budgets.

The share of social media and digital channels in marketing budgets could be increased significantly. Since there are many sectors in Estonia where companies have small digital budgets, there’s a lot to gain from investing more.

Sandra: Content does not only mean influencers. You cannot draw a direct equal sign between the two. I believe that creating more organic, authentic and well thought out content will become increasingly important. An influencer is not trusted if they are not authentic.

Siim: Many companies do not have a proper social media content strategy. It is all done very randomly. Being entertaining is good, but often it is clear that there is no bigger plan.

What kind of content do you produce? Are these podcasts or something else?

Siim: One thing we do is the eResidency podcast Winning Friends. We have gotten very strong guest speakers and we break that content into smaller pieces so that we can share as much of it as possible on social media.

Such a content driven and at the same time entertaining format is in the long run a more effective marketing channel than simply producing banners.

So you hope that people say many funny short sentences that can be shared on the internet.

Siim: Not exactly, because an enormous amount of work goes into preparing each episode. People probably do not realise how much needs to be thought through to produce such content. We discovered that the effort that goes into it is not smaller at all than in desirable brand campaigns that you see at all the creativity festivals.

Siim, in the Emor podcast you said that you sent your CV to thirteen agencies when looking for advertising work. In Division you ended up working for six months. Does the industry find talented people?

Siim: This is a very good topic. I can immediately say a controversial sentence. I remember that when I was fired from Division, one of the first things said to me was that I am slightly too intelligent for the industry. I thought that was an interesting way to fire someone, saying that they are too smart and then letting them go.

But I did not go home to sulk. I realised that I am good at some things, but not advertising. I made it my number one goal to figure out what I I have yet to learn to become the best. In my opinion you just have to really want it and when you combine the right traits with relentless drive – then it eventually clicks.

Unfortunately, the tempo in which we operate also means that when you join an agency, there is not much time to prove yourself. You have to show results quickly. The margins in the agency business are quite thin and no one really has the resources to train people from completely zero.

This field also requires an above average stress tolerance. That is inevitable. I do not believe there will be a new reality where creative people will have much more time to do everything that is asked of them.

Keep in mind that your work doesn’t become automatically better simply because you have given yourself a really long deadline. The best results will come when you reach a certain level and have confidence in what you do. This is when you’re able to start putting out very good work in a relatively short time.

As I said before, Sweep’s goal this year is internal growth which means we want the competences and capabilities of all of our people to keep improving. We manage this through the standards we set for our work and specialised creative workshops.

The idea behind the year of internal growth is for our people to gain more confidence and feel at ease no matter the challenge they come up against.

Are Estonian marketers able to keep up with the pace of change or is it moving ahead of us and we are running after it?

Sandra: The honest answer is no. On one hand people are in a comfort zone, on the other hand there is so much new information coming in every day that it is hard to process it all. If I were to read a marketing book, by the time I finished it, it would already be outdated.

Siim: If a company decides to position itself as being on the curve or slightly ahead of the curve, it is possible to be successful. There are many agencies in our field that do not dare to do this because they are not ready for the risk that comes with it.

If you’re under constant financial pressure, it is fairly easy to fall into the trap of making short term decisions. However, if you don’t work on the things that make your company more stable or grow your business it in the long term, you will eventually find yourself in a position where you have to close your doors.

I think being open to new ideas will always be the best bet to be able to live relatively stress free and produce impactful work consistently. Since the world will keep changing increasingly faster we do not want to hold on to any beliefs that prevent us from keeping up with the pace. Our mindset needs to be that we’re always willing to challenge our beliefs about what it takes for a brand to succeed.

Sandra: That was probably the most controversial sentence yet (laughs).

Siim: In believe in this wholeheartedly.

Author: Siim Kera, TULI

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