Together with Zlatan Ibrahimovic we have done a celebration to Sweden. It's our country's unique nature that inspires and challenge the people at Volvo when they develop their cars. It's also here, at home, in the magnificent wilderness that they find their strength. Just as Zlatan does.
CLIENT: VOLVO
AGENCY: FORSMAN & BODENFORS
ME: ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
THE COMMERCIAL
PHOTOGRAPHY - BEHIND THE SCENES
My work on this project was to document every step we took for different output material such as social media, TV and press. Pictures were used for Zlatan's and Volvo's Instagram and Facebook.
"You don’t have to look like a blond with blue eyes to be a typical Swede. Hundreds of thousands of young Swedes are like Zlatan, born in Sweden with parents from other countries. They find it hard to identify themselves with the children in Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking” stories but they love Zlatan.
I know how a school class in a suburb in northern Stockholm, where over half have a background like Zlatan’s, reacted when they saw the commercial. They stood up, put their hands on their hearts, like they had seen in American films, and joined in, each and every one with their individual pronunciation but with passion and feeling. The rest of the day they imitated Zlatan’s Rosengård South Swedish accent and said: ”Yes, I want to live I want to die in Sweden.”
In two minutes Zlatan did more than what decades of integration committees have tried to do. He anchored these kids with foreign backgrounds in Sweden, in the Swedish. They felt that if Zlatan can, we can, too. His stirring chanting of the national anthem was a real success right on target, in the goal of inclusive nationalism.
"
