Here at Sandberg Trygg we are obsessed with making sure that we communicate effectively with our target audience. But that doesn’t mean that everyone understands what we are saying.

Last week I read the true story of Henri Winkler, the actor who played the high school rebel ‘Fonzie’ in the US comedy series Happy Days. For those who remember him, Fonzie was the ultimate loveable rogue. And could be often found sitting aloft his Harley Davidson acting ‘cool’.

What viewers didn’t know was that in reality the story couldn’t have been more different. Winkler suffered from dyslexia. He spent many unhappy years at school finally being diagnosed with the condition when he was in his mid-thirties. Getting a licence to ride his beloved Harley was pretty much impossible. Dyslexia can affect both letters and symbols.

After years of been told he was ‘no good’ Winkler perfected his own way of reading Fonzie’s lines despite finding it incredibly challenging. He adapted and did it on his own.

We often read about people who are using their celebrity to leverage even more wealth, status and adoration. Winkler, however, went on to write stories and teach children with dyslexia. He also helped increase awareness of the condition through the publishing of his books. The main character, Hank Zipzer, is based on Winkler’s own childhood experiences and he has toured across the USA & UK reading to schoolchildren.

Last week he was made an OBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his efforts in the UK. His comment: “Just because we learn differently does not mean we are not incredibly smart human beings. That’s something I need every child to understand.”

Real inspiration from a real Hollywood hero.

Check this out:

Christian Boer, a graphic designer with dyslexia, has created a font called “Dyslexie” that is designed to emphasize the differences between similar letters to make it easier for dyslexics to read.

Find out more at: http://www.studiostudio.nl/project-dyslexie/

Communication is never easy. Particularly not in a foreign language. And you can only guess what the people who wrote these sign really wanted to say. Or you can just smile. The photographs were taken in Istanbul.

Anyone who’s been involved with creating global campaigns has had his or her share of headaches as they wade through feedback from local sales organizations. ‘The Chinese hate it, the Indians don’t understand the headline, the Germans have no word for future-proof, the Italians would like to use another model, the Brazilians are doing their own stuff … and the Americans, well, if we don’t make the necessary changes, they’ve threatened to send in the Marines.’

Is there a remedy (apart from taking a boatload of industrial strength aspirin)? Yes. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, there is the Sandberg Trygg way. We’ve found that to have any chance of succeeding, local organizations have to be involved right from the start. After all, they know their markets – and the cultures that shape them – better than anyone. Their insights provide valuable input to the creative process. And when the time comes to adapt and localize centrally produced materials, they’re in the loop and ready to make helpful recommendations.

If you’d like to know more about our approach to multi-lingual global communications, drop Barbara a line at . She’d be delighted to answer any questions or give you a few tips and ideas.

When I was growing up in England (many moons ago), advertising was liberally sprinkled with all manner of grammatical transgressions.

These ranged from the tantalisingly tautological ‘Domestos – kills all known germs dead’ (they’re already dead if you’ve killed them, right?) to the British Egg Industry’s admonition that we all ‘go smash an egg.’

More recently, there was Butterfinger’s ‘crispety, crunchety, peanutbuttery’, Hyundai’s ‘powercision’ and Snickers’ irresistible ‘Substantialicious.’

The moral of this short blog entry is if you have something to say and others have already taken your favourite words – or the most relevant ones – don’t be disheartened. Just toss the rules of grammar out the window, and start inventing.  It’s not only embiggening, it’ll make you feel beyonderful, too.

PS. Embiggen was first used in an episode of The Simpsons in 1996.

Mark Twain once said ”I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.”
There is, of course, something in what he said. But how do you write briefly and succinctly? Here are some useful tips.

1. Think before you write. Before you start writing – think about what you are going to write and in which order your ideas should come. Your text will be both easier to write and read if there’s a structure.

2. One thought per sentence. Each sentence should only express one thought. Otherwise you risk confusing the reader and giving them an excuse to stop reading. And that’s not the object of the exercise.

3. Keep sentences short. Sentences must vary in length to avoid boring your reader. But the average length should be short. Fifteen to 20 words per sentence would be a good average.

4. Simple English is best. You need both simple and more complex words for clear expression. If the right word is a big word, go ahead. But if a shorter word does the job, use it instead.

5. Avoid unnecessary words. Most texts can be cut in half and still say the same thing. Unnecessary words are often included unconsciously but they just slow things down. Or even worse, confuse the reader.

6. Put action into your verbs. Passive verbs kill sentences. Things happen without you knowing who did them. Active verbs liven up sentences while making things clearer. Here is an example:
Passive: The car is driven to the petrol station to be washed and waxed.
Active: John drives the car to the petrol station to wash and wax it.

7. Sleep on it. Let the text rest overnight. When you sleep your subconscious is working hard, finding a new way to express that tricky sentence.  In addition, you take a break and waken with new fresh eyes, ready to fine-tune the text.

8. Get a reader’s opinion. Ask someone else to read what you have written. It’s a quick and easy way of getting valuable comments.

Don’t be fooled by the ready smile and the polite, friendly manner. Like a bird of prey, she hovers over our printouts, swooping down with her red marker to eliminate stray umlauts, greengrocer’s apostrophes and a thousand other illiteracies. For sensitive American audiences, she happily removes taps and installs faucets, while never straying from the sidewalk to the pavement. In fact, very few words in any language or medium leave the building before she’s cast a critical eye over them – carefully weighing linguistic and cultural subtleties. The people who wrote or translated them wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would the clients. Thank you, Barbara, for not only being a patient sounding board, but also our ultimate quality insurance policy.

PS. If you have any questions of your own about English copy, by all means get in touch with Barbara at

Many of our customers are looking to sell their products and services internationally. So they need solid, confident, native English copy.

Because it’s not just about grammar. Texts need to have a style and tone that rings true to the reader. A reader who is often more wary of foreign suppliers and needs extra reassurance that they are speaking the same language – both commercially and culturally.  One word out of place and you’ve suddenly got a much bigger mountain to climb to gain their confidence.

In Sweden, there is an impressively high level of English. But with that comes the real risk of overconfidence, which can lead to gaffes the size of the Gulf of Mexico. The well-known phrase “fit for fight” is, in fact, an entirely Scandinavian invention. To native English ears, the right expression is “fighting fit”.  It might look like a small thing but so do lederhosen … and they’re equally threatening to overseas customers.

Here’s an article about this for the Swedes.

You’ve heard of course Aesop’s fable about The Hare and the Tortoise. An ancient story with a moral that may be hard to apply to the world of business today.

About 50 years ago a lot of companies could act like tortoises and still be successful. Product lifecycles were long and competition was limited. Sales reps had the time to visit all customers and prospects before anyone else could come up with a better offer.

But business got faster. Markets were divided into more and more segments to better satisfy customer needs. Time to market grew in importance, as did adaptation to the market. A classic example is Facit AB, who was world-leading in mechanical calculators and did everything to prevent the progress of digital calculators. But around 1970 digital calculators took over and in 1972 Facit was already on the brink of bankruptcy even if it took until 1998 for the company to be put into liquidation.

An important milestone in marketing was when Al Ries and Jack Trout launched the concept of positioning in 1972 in a series of articles in Advertising Age. Being first on the market was key. And if you weren’t first you had to invent a new category (“raise a new ladder”) where you could take the lead. Or to put it another way: Better to be a fast, high-leaping hare than a slow, low-profile tortoise.

Without doubt it’s the hares that win today. The web has changed the pace at which news and campaigns spread and goods, services and ideas break through. Now it only takes a few hours. Take for example, BP’s chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who happened to say,  “We care about the small people” in front of the world’s press. Only a few hours later someone had done a parody on the Berlitz ad concept “Improve your English” with Svanberg in the main role.

The hares stay ahead, get attention and gain influence. And probably that’s the way it’s going to be.

No sooner said than done. Now and again guest writers will contribute to this site with their thoughts and ideas about advertising, communication, B2B, brands, inspiration and other interesting topics. And if you have anything to share, just let us know.

Our first featured guest is Anna Cederberg Gerdrup, a former client turned freelance reporter and author. She tells us about her thriller The Martyr, which takes place in the business world of Gothenburg, and about the joy of writing.

First perspiration, then inspiration

Anyone who’s written a long text knows that you can’t wait around for inspiration. It comes once you get started. Like a reward. First perspiration, then inspiration. And when you’ve got it and sentences start to flow across the screen, you need to stay focused and not go overboard. It’s easy to get side-tracked. Because your brilliant idea for a twist in chapter five demands more research, and surfing around various sites can be devastating. Without knowing how, you’ve left your fantasy world and entered reality. Then you need to get your focus back and that’s not always easy. This process repeats itself again and again until you get to the last full stop.

My writing process, which finally led to a novel, has been a journey of discovery with many new experiences.  It starts with discipline. You need to glue yourself to your chair. No bedtime reading – it can lead you off in the wrong direction and confuse your own story. A certain amount of isolation is necessary otherwise you lose your concentration. Plenty of perseverance – rewriting and rewriting produces a better text in the end. And then you have to have patience. You can’t be too hard on yourself. The text you’ve created in the morning, and feel very proud of, might read poorly in the afternoon. And then you have to keep up your spirits and fight on until you get it right.

But why write a novel? For me it’s the joy of writing and fantasizing. Describing the setting and creating characters. And telling a story. What I didn’t know before was that after a while these characters get a life of their own, and steer the writing as well as the mood.
I felt guilty the night Fredrik Lager took his life. Could I have prevented it? No. And that the widow kept on wearing an old-fashioned and uncomfortable Chanel suit wasn’t my idea. She demanded it, anything else was unthinkable. And I can still smell Leroy’s cigar. Mimi got me reading the obituaries, and I still do.
Now we’ve parted and I don’t know how they lead their lives. But spending time with them has left an impression on me. I’ve got encouraging comments from people who have read about them. I’ve been invited to author events and inspirational evenings. I have a new network and met people I otherwise would never have met. Writing the Martyr has also inspired me to a new way of thinking. The little seed of a thought that resulted in a new career.

The Martyr is only available in Swedish.

No, it’s not a typo in the headline. Happy New Year to all of you celebrating according to the Gregorian calendar. To all others: Happy New Year in advance! Time is, as famously said, relative and so is chronology.

According to the earliest known Roman calendar the month of March and the vernal equinox marked the beginning of the New Year. Other calendars emanate from the autumnal equinox or lunar cycle. No matter which chronology, religion or cultural belonging, the New Year marks the beginning of something fresh and positive, and is worth celebrating.

Other upcoming New Year’s Eves during 2010 are for example the Chinese New Year (14 February) Vaisakhi (16 March), Norouz (21 March), Rosh Hashanah (9–10 September) and Al Hijra (7 December). And there are many more. Why not pay a visit to one of the multicultural calendars online and update your planner. You probably have several international clients and partners who would appreciate the extra thought involved in observing their holiday.