Swedish brand Klarna launched in the U.S. in 2020 with a campaign using existing Swedish film, television, and archival footage that we licensed and added our own cheeky English subtitles to.
What we learned very quickly is that a majority of Swedish footage is not licensable because it’s owned by the government, which made sourcing usable footage incredibly challenging. YouTube, Vimeo, googling “Swedish…”, friends of Swedish friends of Swedish friends’ friends, Swedish student films, Swedish exploitation films from the 60s and 70s, the Swedish film institute website, and lost CD libraries of Swedish mid-century experimental films became our sources for over 30+ spots that we were able to produce for this launch. I’ve never sent so many random DMs on Instagram trying to track Swedes down.
This was a björn to produce and a real team effort between Mirimar creatives, our rock star business affairs manager who was able to track down rights holders on vacation (many on boats) with no wifi, offline editors constantly loading mass quantities of footage and trying dozens of versions of rough subtitle scripts, post production working with the lowest of low-res footage - and all of it done over video calls. Add a shoot done remotely in Sweden at the height of production shut downs, an online giveaway produced by our unicorn digital producer which also required 15x versions of the same spot with VFX comps, plus one video in Danish that we needed to cast and overdub into Swedish, of course.
I am very proud of what we were able to achieve. Tough to narrow them down, but here are some of my favorite spots from the campaign.
Agency: Mirimar US
Directed by Andreas Nilsson @ Biscuit
