At the recent One Show Creative Summit held in New York City last week, Anna Qvennerstedt, copywriter, senior partner and chairman of the board at Forsman & Bodenfors in Sweden, presented a fascinating agency business model that has paid off in abundance for her agency.

Over the past 10 years, Forsman & Bodenfors has continuously been among the world’s best creative agencies, and is responsible for the much acclaimed Volvo Trucks Jean Claude van Damme Epic Split campaign.

Upside-down agency model

Qvennerstedt presented a different way of working: bottom-up rather than top-down. As she stated, “The model that most agencies use has been around for years. We turned it upside down.”

Upside-down agency model

A creative team, account director and strategist have full responsibility for their own clients and creativity. Each unit of 3/4/5 people and their clients is seen as a separate business enterprise, and there are no executive creative directors overseeing their work. The bottom of that pyramid is the CEO.

Forsman & Bodenfors create an environment of safety rather than fear. No teams compete against each other within the agency. Rather, they collaborate with each other. They share the work with others in the agency during the creative process and work on it until they find the right solution.

“We hire account people who have an opinion on creative and a passion for creativity as well as creatives that have client passion”, says Qvennerstedt. It’s a team with an entrepreneurial spirit. No one person is that important. We have created a nice environment. We are ‘nice’ about going to pick up your kid from school, as the teams own their projects and they are responsible for their success”.

Be humanistic and create the balance

Forsman & Bodenfors operates as a lean machine with 60 creatives, 40 clients and 200 campaigns a year.

Forsman & Bodenfors in numbers

Impressively, only four creatives worked on the campaign they are probably best known for: Their award-winning blockbuster Jean Claude van Damme Epic Split campaign for Volvo trucks.

It’s a fascinating model that has proven to be a success for the agency, its staff and clients such as Volvo, H&M as well as SK11, amongst others. For more information on the agency, visit their website.