Jari Helgason is a Creative Director and co-founder of Brandenburg, one of Iceland’s leading independent creative agencies. Since founding the agency in 2012, Jari has helped shape work for some of Iceland’s most recognizable brands and organizations, including Nova and the Football Association of Iceland.
His work has earned recognition across Iceland and Europe, and recently made history by becoming the first Icelandic agency to win a Cannes Lion.
Jari Helgason joins us all the way from Iceland as a co-pioneer of ShopSwap™. Born out of the Indie Agency News Sister City Program, ShopSwap™ sends agency talent across borders for a fully immersive stint at a partner agency overseas. Our first guest, Jari, comes to us from Brandenburg, Iceland’s renowned design and advertising agency.
In this episode of Question Everything, Jari walks us through the Brandenburg campaign that won Iceland’s first-ever Cannes Lion, unpacks his award-winning design philosophy, and shares his biggest takeaways from his time at Curiosity.
00:00:04
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Question Everything, a podcast all about learning from the successes and the failures of those who dare to, well, question everything. This podcast is part interview, part therapy, and part Price is Right. We have our own game board stacked with questions that'll make even the most successful CMO sweat. I'm your host, Ashley Walter, CMO and partner here at Curiosity. Today, I'm sitting down with Jari Helgason, owner and creative director of Brandenburg, one of Iceland's most respected and awarded independent agencies. In this episode, you'll hear why Brandenburg refuses to use AI in its creative work. How to give feedback like an Icelander, the work that won Iceland its first-ever Cannes Lion, and Jari's biggest takeaway from being our first international swap shop guest. So pack your bags and stamp your creative passport
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00:00:54
This episode is a celebration of global friendship, craft, and perspective. Let's get started. Jari Helgason is a creative director and co-founder of Brandenburg, one of Iceland's leading independent creative agencies. Since joining the agency in 2012, Jari has helped shape work from some of Iceland's most recognizable brands and organizations, including NOVA and the Football Association of Iceland. His work has earned recognition across Iceland and Europe and recently made history, becoming the first Icelandic agency to win a Cannes Lion. Today, we're pleased to announce that Jari is the first international guest to pilot our Swap Shop program, where we trade creatives from around the world for a one-week immersion. Jari, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. We're excited to have you here. You've been in Cincinnati for a couple of days now.
00:01:46
First reactions. It's been amazing. I mean, Cincinnati is actually one of my favorite cities for many reasons. Bengals, the Bengals being one of them. That's right. You're a huge Bengals fan. I'm a huge Bengals fan. And I just love the city. I love the vibe, the architecture, the food. It's been amazing. Well, we love having you here. So we met actually through a mutual friend, Doug Zanger, the head of Indie Agency News. And Doug has a program called the Sister Agency Swap where we get to meet different agencies within the organization. And you went to Doug all the way in Iceland and said, I want to be partnered with. A Cincinnati. Cincinnati, yeah. It was kind of a joke. I just threw out Cincinnati because I love the city.
00:02:33
And then he came back, I think, a couple of days later and said, I actually found a partner for you, Curiosity, in Cincinnati. So that was wonderful. But we didn't really think much about it until we had our first online meeting. We just kind of like meshed so well together, like right from the get-go. So it was, it has been wonderful. I agree. Uh, we've been really just impressed with your capabilities. Everybody we've met at your company has been incredible. I look forward to co-pitching someday. I think at some point we've got to bring our two teams together. We have to do that. Like do some collab and do some work together. That would be, that would be great. Okay, we'll get on that. All right, so you know how this podcast works.
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00:03:17
I have a game board stacked with 12 questions. You don't know what's behind there. The power is completely in your hands. We'll get through as many as we can. And I win. How many dollars do I win at the end? There's like a $5 Skyline gift card at the end of this, if you're good. I'm good with that. You like Skyline. Yeah, I tried it for the first time yesterday, and I liked it. I loved it. Good. Great reviews. All right. Where do you want to go first? Let's do number two. Number two. So you hosted our design director, Andy Millard, in Iceland first. So he was just there a couple of months ago. What did having an outsider inside your organization teach you personally?
00:04:01
Well, one of the things I learned is that not everybody likes hardfiskur, which is our skyline. Andy didn't like it, so that was disappointing, but having Andy over was it was such a, like he's such a nice person, and he just fit in like right at the like the first day and we actually spent a lot of time together me and Andy and I took him out for a for a drive on the south coast to see to see the our beautiful country and so we we spent like a day in my car just like talking and doing like stops and with your dog with my dog, with my lovely, lovely dog. So, one of the things I learned was that I didn't realize how much of your business is pitching.
00:04:54
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And I'm quite amazed by it, like in our industry that people expect us to do work for free. And yeah, it's such a big part of business here. I mean, we do it occasionally, but we really don't like doing it. I don't know, that's something that I need. think needs to change. If I would give any advice to people out there in companies, it would be just to have the guts to go out and select an agency based on its own merits and not have them work for And I think it will be a much nicer process, actually. I can guarantee that you will get much nicer work if you select your agency and just pay them for their jobs. It is such a hot topic in the U.S.
00:05:42
I mean, I've sat through and participated in so many panels, debates, discussions. Some people like to pitch. Some people hate to pitch. Some people vow to never pitch. And it's really challenging, especially as like a smaller independent agency where you can really prove yourself in a pitch, right? Yeah. And sometimes that's the only way you're getting new business. You might not have a huge creative director who is really well known that just left Weiden + Kennedy and is starting their own shop and has this great big Rolodex to lean on. And so for some agencies, they would say that's how they generate new business revenue. I'm curious why it's not a thing in other countries. It is a thing, but it's not, like, so much of like what we do.
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00:06:28
We do it, do it occasionally. But when will you say yes? If it's something exciting and something that we really want to do, like the work we did for the Icelandic national team, that was a pitch. Yeah. And when we do pitches, we go all in. We're not going to lose. We're going to win this. That's the attitude. And your whole agency is all in. It depends. I mean, for that project, we had every designer have a go at it, and we came up with some really good stuff. And I mean, we lost a lot of money on that pitch because in Iceland, versus probably what you have here, at least there is a price at the end, but our market is so small that it hardly even pays.
00:07:21
Even if you win the client, it takes a long time to just get your money back from the pitch. So what's your advice to us? Say no? I was actually talking to it last night with uh, Jeff and Trey, and I think it's hard for like to change something that's so yeah, so like deep within the business but I think it has to come from the companies themselves, like let's not do this let's just let's just see who we like, because it's hard to be the one that changes it. But I think it needs to change. I think it needs to come from the ANA or even a higher level of government than that because we can say no, but there's 5,000 other agencies that are going to absolutely say yes.
00:08:11
And even when it's not a pitch, typically the agency that goes more all in wins. And so, you know, there's a couple of consultants out there that are like no-pitch consultants. I love working with them. And they'll say, if you bring spec creative, you're eliminated. But if you're not that clear on what's acceptable in the pitch, one agency is going to take it all the way through. You know what I mean? And it's hard to win on, like, your credentials alone sometimes. And I think it's, I mean, how do you, like, start out if this is the model? Like if you're just like couple of young people forming an agency, how do you even get into like, into the like limelight of pitching? It has to be really very hard, I imagine.
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00:09:00
Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating, I love it. Let's go back to the board. The pointer is on six, so... We'll make it easy. Make it easy. What's a piece of work you love that never won an award, but you think deserve to? Okay. So many awards, that's a hard one. No. I actually, there's this thing in Iceland, it's, I don't know if it's only in Iceland, it's called Design March. And it's this- it's a pretty dumb name, because it's in May, not in March. And it's not like a whole month; it's only a weekend. And there's like a lot of like kind of like blankets, but it's all about design and creativity. And there's all those events. And like some years back, I came up with...
00:09:53
this idea of an event for Design March, and it was in Icelandic it was Hanna Hapnath, which translates to designed rejected So it was like I curated an exhibition of rejected work. When I was thinking of it, I was like, I have so many, because as a creative, our work is like our children. We love it so much. And when someone rejects it, it's really hard. But when I was trying to pick my own stuff for that show, and I came up with this idea, I had a hard time because when I looked back at all those precious things that were rejected, they weren't really that good, like later, like when I looked at it eight years later or something. But if I would have to pick one, I'm going to go with an identity I did not long ago.
00:10:57
So we were approached by a group of photographers in Iceland that wanted to form a... like a center for their profession in Iceland, and they came to us and said, "Can you do the... We don't really have a lot of money, but we have some, but can you do the identity for us?" I went to my partners at Brandenburg, and I was like... there's no money in this for us, but do you mind if I work on this? Because I really want to do it. And so I went back to them, to the group, and said, I'm going to do this for you for free, but you're only going to get like one identity from me. You're not going to get something to choose from, like we normally do.
00:11:45
And you're not going to have any say in it. I'm just going to do whatever I want. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. And then you can go somewhere else. And they were like, okay, cool. We don't have to pay. So, I decided I was not going to do some cliché like the... like the aperture blades or stuff like that because there are so many clichés for identities for that profession, and so I took a look at really deep dive into like the technology behind the cameras and lenses and stuff. And what I ended up with was like, what every photographer loves is, like, I'm an amateur photographer myself, so we all love lenses, the glass. So I started to look because so much of the technology has changed.
00:12:36
There are mirrorless cameras, and so much is obsolete. But the technology behind the lenses has stayed the same. It's the glass, and I never thought about how it worked. It's just like in each lens there's like lots of like pieces of glass and they all have this like different shapes.With different names, and they all work together, like in unity. Like, one class like takes light and makes it narrower, and the next class like makes it wider again, and they all like make this perfect thing, so I thought. This is something I want to use. So I ended up doing identity with these, actually all the different glass types that are in a lens. And it actually spells out LMI, which is like the... the initials for their group.
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00:13:34
So I really liked it, and they really loved it. And the only reason I gave it to them, it was not because I'm so good of a person. I wanted to win an award for it, but I haven't really finished it. But thinking about it, I have to get back to it, finish it, and win some awards for it. Well, are they going to use it? They said so, but it's been a year, and I've just been busy with other work. I have to contact them again and see how they're going. On the plane ride home. Yeah. Well, I want to go back to the forgotten children or the displaced work, the work that didn't get sold. And so here in the US, we'll call it like the cutting-room-floor ideas.
00:14:19
Have you heard that phrase? I feel like does something like that exist here where designers and creatives are putting in work that doesn't sell in? Like there has to be, is there an aftermarket for great ideas or a place to showcase ideas that didn't get sold in? I think like this is probably, I shouldn't be saying this, but we, like all designers have likee a treasure of old stuff that they haven't used haven't sold and they we resell it yeah I once did a logo with an M so I'll probably have something old that I can maybe start out with and make something new of it. Cool. So there's the recycling going on. Okay. All right. Let's go back to the board. Let's do 11. All right.
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00:15:12
So in the US, AI is becoming almost unavoidable in the creative process. Some see it as a superpower. Others think it's absolutely killing creativity. Where does Brandenburg fall? We've actually... like two of our two of the partners have like spoken like out against it, written like a like a piece for the newspaper and online, but I mean it is the future; it's coming whether we like it or not. Personally, I am, so we don't have like an official stance, but it's funny. Some of the stuff I'm going to show you tomorrow is that we actually did packaging for a client. There was this ice cream for kids and it was like, I think it was maybe the old packaging was really not good and had terrible illustrations on it and we did it.
00:16:17
We did it, and we did like... Spent almost a year on it, doing 3D models and rendering animal characters for the new packaging. And when it launched... first off uh like nostalgia is something like I'm I'm uh I'm you can see i have gray hair so so to me nostalgia is like some like 80s 90s something but apparently there's like a bunch of young kids that also have nostalgia oh yeah and so they were pretty mad that we ruined their perfect memories of this shitty packaging that we redid and all the like all the comments online were like this is AI trash. And and we were so so it was so blindsided by that it was like that. We spent almost a year on it. It's not AI, but that's what worries me.
00:17:18
A lot of our work is judged to be AI, even if it isn't. Yeah, I believe it was Pedro Lerma we had on the show, and he did... a really amazing Super Bowl ad. And there was lots of incredible like hand illustrations. And they got a bunch of AI backlash, but it was 100% human-created. And so it's interesting, even my eight-year-old daughter will look at something and ask if it's AI. Oh, really? Yeah. And so even at that age, they're questioning kind of everything. And is it real? Is it not real? Which I think is fascinating in itself. A part of it is fascinating like, can we just like do like in the future do whatever we want, whatever we think of? Like, like, budget is not going to be a thing?
00:18:09
But I mean it's yeah are you using it all are you using it for comping? I mean your decks are like the most beautiful decks I've ever seen in my life is there any AI in there? No... I mean we use it for like sketching but not for the final product, but we use it for sketching and for like, storyboarding. But where it's best that we use it a lot for what I think is supposed to be used for is the boring work. The operation stuff? Yeah, for the operation side, like financials and crunching numbers. Do you guys do timesheets? We do timesheets, and we have them like AI read through them and like, do amazing stuff with that. So we have an overview of clients, like bad clients, good clients, like financially wise.
00:18:58
And that's what is good for, like, the boring stuff. Yeah. In my opinion. Yeah. You shouldn't make it take away the fun stuff. That's right. That's right. All right. Let's go back to the board. Oh, let's do, let's do 12.
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Design is subjective. What is your design philosophy? And I'm curious, how do you critique your team's work? Okay, wow. I don't really think... So when I graduated, there was an American graphic designer- I don't know if you're familiar with him- he was called David Carson. He did, I think, Ray Gun magazine, and he was really wild, like broke all the rules. So he was like kind of my icon when I started out. I've never been like... a designer that uses grids or stuff like that.
00:19:51
I mean, I know all the rules, but I like to break them all. So I guess that's my philosophy. It's like not having one. Rules are meant to be broken as long as you know they're there. So yeah. So how do I critique my team's work? So, Brandenburg is actually- we are really, really, I mean, all the partners- we are creative. We are designer-driven. And we are really a chaotic place. So we have a lot of systems in place, but we never follow them. We're always late but always come through so we don't really have like a like a system for it but it's actually, Andy brought it up with me when he was in Iceland he said he said I love how you guys, because we we don't have offices we're just all working like like you have upstairs like in all everybody in one area everybody seated together so he said it was uh it was like I love how
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00:20:54
How many times a day everybody gathers around one screen and is commenting on work. And I think it's just natural. And I was really flattered by it. I mean, maybe it's a system without being a system, but that's really how we... We really work like lateral. We don't have much hierarchy. It sounds like, from what I understand, people really embrace feedback, and they seek it, and they want it, and they want it. Like even when the work isn't perfect, you're not waiting for it to be perfect and then present it. Yeah, I mean, we want it to be perfect. But before you get to the end of it, you're showing it. Like the art directors and designers get mad at us for not giving feedback because we're so busy.
00:21:44
But I think it just happens naturally. Yeah. But even the notion of, like, hey, come over here and look at this. What do you think? Versus here, you might wait for a formal review. And you're going to make it as perfect as you can up until that point. And you present something. Like you guys, it seems like are just constantly. As we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you go. Yeah. There's something to love about that. Yeah. You can copy that. You have my permission. All right. Let's go back to the board. Back to the board. Give me three for 400, please. Three for 400. You've helped Brandenburg make Icelandic advertising history with its first can lion. Tell us about that work and what it meant to bring that recognition home to Iceland.
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00:22:29
I mean, even before I knew you, I knew this story. Okay. I actually didn't work on that, but we had a great team working on that. It was for our energy drink. There was a lot of strategy work that we did beforehand. And what the team found out was that this segment was focused on masculinity and all the same concepts. What we did with the drink is called Orca, which basically means energy in Icelandic. Okay. So the team just wanted to tap into culture and artists, so we did this amazing logo for this drink. It's kind of you can read it if it's upside down or we turn it. The idea was that you like when you drink it, you can always read it. That's cool.
00:23:31
So it kind of reflects, I don't know the English term for, like, when something reflects perfectly. But the logo does that, and the idea, we did packaging, but the idea was always... to have local artists and illustrators do the imagery to be used on each package. So we did send that to Cannes Lion and that was the first Icelandic lion. Incredible. Yeah, it was incredible. Did you set out to win a Lion? Was that part of the brief? Is it always part of the brief? No, I mean, I think with, so Artnar, my partner, he, one of the partners at Brandenburg, he worked on it. I mean, he has like great aspirations for winning awards abroad. Me, I don't care so much, but it's still cool.
00:24:33
I mean, it was pretty cool. But yeah, I think it means a lot to Artna, and I think he was thinking about it the whole time, and he sent it in for the award, so he did an amazing deck for it, and it really sells it well. The entry. Probably better than I did just now. The award entry for it? Yeah. It's a lot of work, isn't it? Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah, but I think the award industry is like getting a little bit crazy. I mean, it's really expensive, and it's really just business now. It's just, but fine. Are you still submitting? We still like awards. I know, I was there. Are you still submitting for them? Yeah.
00:25:13
If we have something, a lot of what we do is sometimes it's so based on our language, so it doesn't translate that well, even though it's brilliant in Iceland. It's hard to like translate it uh so sometimes, even if we have great work, we're not going to send it because we don't feel we can get it across, but like, something like this and we try to like send something every year. Yeah, yeah. Um, how did you guys celebrate internally? Did you, or did you just move on? We just moved on. You moved on. Yeah. Did the local newspaper write about it? Did the city care? They didn't even care. I think, yeah, we sent it out some, tried to do some PR around it, but nobody cared.
00:26:04
Well, we read about it. Yeah. I think it was an Ad Age, right? Somebody wrote about it. It was like when we did the identity for the national team. It was not that well received in Iceland actually. It was much like people abroad thought it was much cooler. It was like...there was some somebody thought it was like too like in viking heritage and at that time that was like wrong we shouldn't like we should be ashamed of that or something like so so that was odd to us but it was so well received like abroad so but everyone loves it now I think but it was kind of strange to like see how it was like I think like the regular Icelander loved it, but like the design community in Iceland was like, there were some, yeah.
00:26:57
I mean, if you're not making somebody mad, you're not doing it right. You're not doing anything right then. All right, let's go to the board. Let's do 10. All right.
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Does Brandenburg have any annual traditions or rituals that are uniquely yours? Do you have a favorite? We actually, we do. We have this one thing that we do, I think, like twice a year. So we call it Kunstlerburg. I don't know why we do everything in German; it's just because of our name. It doesn't make any sense. So Kunstlerburg is like we, from every salary, we withdraw some small amount and Brandenburg doubles it. And then there's a group of people within the agency that... go out and buy, like, art, and we do this like twice a year, and then we have this like, random, like wheel or some fun way to select it, and if we all all get numbers, and if your number comes up, you get to pick the first piece of artwork.
00:28:10
There may be like six, seven pieces, and they're like really nice stuff. So people are really excited about it. And then the next person gets to pick next, and so on and so on. So that's a lot of fun. We also have like this, like every autumn we have like… we have like a company like like uh we call it a company trip but we really don't usually go far uh and we do that every every autumn and we do some wacky stuff one time we went to all the worst bars in Reykjavík And I mean really rough bars. Just dive bars. Yeah. And like drove a bus to all the bars and just had a drink at each bar. I heard Andy's taking you to a dive bar. Oh really?
00:29:05
Yeah. And so and but this one time and we kind of like did it again this year we had this great idea. So, like, a lot of people at the agency had like, bought their apartments or moved in that year, so we decided we were gonna like visit people in their homes, and so we like had breakfast at one place, and it was so amazing just to, like, people you work with, you spend so much time with, but you've never really been to their home. I think we went to, like, eight people's homes that day. And we kind of like redid it this year, like in a, maybe a little smaller scale, but it's so much fun.
00:29:51
You get to know a person so much better just by seeing how they are in their home. That's a great idea. This is not the same, but it just made me think of when we did a cookbook one year where every employee could submit a family recipe. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was so cool. And so that was really cool. And then they got to write a story about it. So it was a grandparent, or it was passed down for generations, or there were some really funny ones, but it was a really cool look at kind of the personal side of our teams. But I love this idea. I wonder what would happen if I just showed up at someone's house. People will freak out.
00:30:32
But if everyone is doing it and they arrive in a bus, there's nothing you can do about it. Then it's a party. I mean, of course it was arranged. Yeah, of course. That's a great idea. All right, let's go back. Let's do number one.
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ShopSwap takes you outside your agency and for you, your country. What can you learn by getting outside your own bubble? I think I can learn a lot because I've, so we like the founders of Brandenburg, we founded it in 2012 and we all came from the same agency before. So, and we probably, we didn't mean to, but we probably took some of that culture with us. So I've never really worked anywhere else. So I don't really like know like what other agencies do or how they work.
00:31:30
I'm just super hyped to be here and see. First of all, your office is probably the coolest office I've ever seen. Thank you. And just to see how other people function and work and how they do creative stuff. It's really interesting. I think we should continue doing this, like sending people over. I agree. Yeah. I'm next. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. You're next. I'm definitely going to. I think I should come back. Yeah. Only you. Only me. Once a year. I love that. I think I should maybe, yeah, hold hands to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. So I can go to another Bengal game. Yes. Speaking of, they lost, which is super sad. Yeah. I'm used to that. I know you are. I'm the curse.
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00:32:11
Okay, all right, let's go back to the board. Should we finish four or nine? I'm thinking about, let's do nine. Okay, as Brandenburg grows, is the goal to stay focused on Iceland, or is there any ambition to take that creativity to more clients across Europe or even beyond? We've always had aspirations to work globally. We have had some work. That's something we would really like to do: work for global clients and on bigger projects. Because Iceland is such a small market, we also get to do a lot of, like, crazier stuff. I don't think like a lot of what we have done would fly in America, but we would love to, like, have a go. Yeah.
00:33:06
We've always like, had that vision. Like we want to, like, I'm not gonna say like have Brandenburg, New York, or go there. Just yeah, Cincinnati, just like, I don't know. I mean, the world is so small now. Are you guys mostly project-based or AOR-based? Because I think that's a difference a little bit too. Like, we do a lot more AOR long-term type of work. Yeah. We don't do a lot of projects. I think we, I mean, most of our work is for like, for long term relationship. Yeah. But we also do projects all the time. But I think the best work is for, like, when you really know someone and the trust is, like, total. Between client and the creative.
00:34:00
And so we would prefer that, but we don't say no. We never say no to a fun project. Yeah. How do you vet it? How do you know it's going to be a fun project? Is it the client? Is it their creative appetite? Is it the brief? Like, when do you know? I think it's probably the client and the project itself. I mean, the briefs are very seldom exciting. It's what you do with them that gets them exciting. I mean, sometimes there's just chemistry, and you know that you're gonna. Yeah it has that has to like be but um yeah I would I would have to say like just a project or like uh yeah like the core idea of the brief what what what is it they want you usually see sorry really it doesn't take long to see if it's gonna be fun or not I can almost tell if we're gonna win something on my first phone call I have oh really yeah Yeah.
00:34:59
Now, assuming we don't screw it up, I can pretty much tell you just get that feeling. You feel the chemistry; your values or your points of view are aligned. And sometimes we say yes, even if I don't have that feeling, for the record. And then we don't win. I'm like, I told you, but. Yeah, I think that's probably a big part of it. Just like the people side. I always say, yeah, you follow the CMO, not the brand. We can make almost any brand fascinating, interesting. But you have to have the right person at the top to buy the right kind of work. Yeah, to take it all the way. Take it all the way. Yeah. All right. Let's do seven. What's the hardest part about being both a creative person and an agency owner?
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00:35:46
Money, I think. Yeah, because when I was starting out, I started out as a graphic designer, then art director, and then creative director. And whenever people started talking about money or budget, I was like, yeah. Cool, I'm out. No interest. Sounds like Jeff Warman. Yeah, so you don't have that privilege when you actually own a part of the business. So that's probably the biggest part, but also especially in later years. It's so much like, about the people, like, your employees have problems. There's like somebody gets sick or hurt and there's so much to deal with that you're like if you don't own the business you don't have to deal with but nobody's like talking about or just happens behind locked doors and it has to be taken care of But you're still getting your hands dirty, it sounds like.
00:36:48
You're still in the work deeply. I mean, all of us who own Brandenburg- we are four owners. We all are hands-on and lead the creative work. How do you divide up your responsibilities amongst the four of you? It's just who has time to take this on. I mean, the clients are very different. Sometimes there's like a personal relationship that decides it. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's just who has time to work on it and really, really wants it. Do you do anything special to keep the four of you aligned? That's probably the hardest part because we- I really wish we could work more like together. Yeah. So that's probably something we, and we always talk about, we have to fix this because whenever we do work together
00:37:50
Uh like on a project like all in uh something like really magical happens uh and so that's yeah that's something we're always talking about it but we are too yeah for the record all right I think we have time for one more um let's do five Iceland punches way above its weight creatively. Why do you think that is?
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I think we are creative at heart, like just being Scandinavian and all that. But it's also because we are such a tiny little nation. There are only like 400,000 Icelanders in the world. I think that plays into it as well, that we see amazing work done abroad and we don't want to make any less than that, even though the money is not even close to what...
00:38:49
What is being paid for that work, like across the pond. But so yeah, I think it's also just ambition. I mean I think we're just Icelanders; we're really ambitious they just want to be hard workers. Yeah, that's great. Well, this has been so fun. Yeah, I agree. For coming on the show. Your first podcast. How did I do? You did great. I threw up three times on the floor, but we will edit that out, right? That wasn't the Skyline Chill, right? No, that was not the Skyline Chill. Or was it? The world may never know. All right. Well, we like to end our podcasts by getting to know you a little bit more. It's a little this or that. Rapid fire. First one that comes to mind, you say.
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00:39:33
All right. Okay. All right. Here we go. The Blue Lagoon or the Hallgrimskirkja? I would, I'm gonna have to say Blue Lagoon because we recently had them on as a client. So I'm forced to say that. So Blue Lagoon for the win. We'll see. All right, midnight sun or all around the clock darkness? Midnight sun, definitely. I love that. When's the best time of year to come? I would say probably June. June. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what you want, but mid-time, it's... unless you have a hard time sleeping in bright environments, because it's just like this. And you can go play basketball at 2:00 a.m. and read a book in the park. Do your nightly rituals change?
00:40:32
I think everyone's mood changes. So it's because the winter months can be, I mean, they are much darker; they’re short days. So a lot of people have depression and have a hard time dealing with it. But you can just see it in that. We don't have many sunny days. I've been so lucky with the weather here. This is a good time to be here. But everybody has a smile on their face in the summer. It's really joyful. That's awesome. All right. Agency owner tasks or creative tasks? Creative tasks all day. Easy one. That was an easy one. Yeah. All right. Global client or a local client? I'm gonna say local because of the freedom, but I would really love to work with a global team, but I just like the freedom we have back home.
00:41:36
But yeah, I value that too. All right, I got another easy one for you. The Bengals or the Steelers. Bengals. Who dey. Who dey. All right, my friend, this was so much fun. Yeah. What's the best way for folks to contact you if they want to get a hold of you? I think I am on LinkedIn, but I never go there. It's the most boring site in the world. So if somebody sends you a message on LinkedIn, will you see it? Maybe six months later. All right, there you go. Get a head start. Okay. Maybe I'll think about it. Maybe just an email. Email? I mean, I'm not going to get flooded by emails. Just put my email there. Okay. All right. We'll do so. Thank you. That will work. I will read my email every three months. Okay. Perfect.
