The Way I See It: Paul & Linus

Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom are co-founders and chief creative directors of Mother New York. The Swedish-born partnership originally moved to America in 1996 to join Fallon Worldwide, where their work included campaigns for Miller Lite, Lee Jeans and MTV. They talk to Diana Goodman about chasing the American dream, not looking back, and being known as crazy Swedes

We both had a normal, average upbringing back in Sweden.
It was a good country when we were kids and we grew up with very strong social democratic ideals. It feels really exotic to talk about this today but it meant a lot to us. Very likely, it has given us an edge in how we think and conduct business. Other than that, we played in the snow and ate pickled herring.

On a more personal note, we grew up dreaming about America while watching a guy with leather pants and a limp, named Zeb Macahan. He was the hero in a series called How the West Was Won, which introduced us to America. Ironically, when we arrived in the US no one had heard about it, which was very disappointing. It was just another mini-series that had bombed and been taken off air after a couple of episodes. In Sweden, it had a huge cultural impact. On Friday nights, every Swedish family brought out the Cheez Doodles to watch Zeb Macahan and his adventures.

We got into advertising because we were both models.
Paul was a photo model for Chiquita Bananas and Linus modelled for a brand of backpacks especially designed for boating. It’s hard to remember which ads made an impression on us when we were young because there was so little advertising. Instead, we have much stronger memories of watching news in Serbo-Croatian, or Ykkyskanava (Finnish news), or some crappy Polish comedy show about a witch. Yes, it’s depressing, but it’s the truth. In terms of education, Paul studied art and engineering and came to the conclusion that art direction and advertising could be a good way to reconcile these two things.

Linus studied economics (import-export) while also working as a sportswriter, before entering the same advertising school as Paul (RMI-Berghs). Additionally, we’ve both had secret military training. We started working together in 1990. We were the first team hired at a small start-up called Paradiset. It later became Paradiset DDB in Stockholm and we had seven fantastic years working on clients such as OLW, Diesel, Björn Borg and Norrlands Guld. From that to running our own company in New York: it’s been a hell of a ride! When you’re growing up, most dreams take place far away and to us, America has always been a place where everything is possible.

The idea of a non-judgemental, open-arms nation where anyone is welcomed, coupled with the notion that anyone can make it, is the very core of dreaming – which, in turn, is the very core of creativity, progress, inspiration and change. We’d hate if America got more like Europe. It needs to stay alone as the Capital Country of Impossible Ideas and Big Thinking, as a melting pot and a refuge for odd thinkers. The problem is that while this is a beautiful idea, it’s also very fragile. America hasn’t lived up to its promise in the last decade. This is devastating and you start to question your own dreams.

Politically, taking a stand on the left, right or middle is pointless; that whole thing is over. We’re on the side of the apes. We’re all getting dumber by the minute, we’ve stopped evolving, and we’re now destroying ourselves and everything around us. The irony is that we’re enjoying it.

Children are no different from dogs and what they need most is exercise, rules and love – in that order. Most people do it the other way around: love first, then rules (or no rules – kids can do what they want and parents can’t say no), and, if they have time, a bit of exercise. Seriously, it fucks kids up. They become freaks.

We judge people by their actions and thoughtfulness towards others. Talk is cheap in our book. How you treat the people around you is generally a pretty good measurement of a person. At Mother, the single most important criterion for hiring someone is if they have heart.

We don’t feel there is a stigma attached to working in advertising. On the contrary, advertising is one of the few honest professions left. We’re here to make you think and buy stuff, which is fair game. It’s just a matter how well you do it. Can you make people love you? Can you excite people? The Sex Pistols without Malcolm McLaren would have been another frustrated pub band. He just knew how to package shit and sell it, and ended up changing the direction of the world.

Additionally, the advertising industry is still a great place for a working-class person to be able to make it and be successful. We’re not sure about the rest of the world, but here [in the US] advertising doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. It just cares whether you have any good ideas.

We couldn’t give a rat’s ass what other people think of us. If you focus on being a good, honest person, everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry about the rest.

Sometimes people get weird when they meet us. Perhaps the perception is that we are ‘two wild and crazy guys’, but we’re not. We are very average and somewhat boring, like silence, have never done drugs, like to go to bed early and are perfectly happy not to be the centre of attention.

Money is number three on our list of priorities when it comes to work. First is to be able to create interesting work; second to have fun and make friends; third to make a living.

We are always most proud of our latest campaigns – which right now are Stella Artois, New Balance and [cult New Wave band] Devo. Generally, we don’t look back and we’re awful
at saving stuff. When you start looking back, you’re kind of done. However, the Jukka Brothers hold a dear place in our hearts [for MTV through Fallon]. So many things came together while doing that campaign.

Fallon has been very important to us.
Bill Westbrook [then creative director] was the one who, without reservations, believed in us
when we arrived fresh off the boat and couldn’t speak English. Pat Fallon introduced us to
American business life and Midwestern values. We learned so much from them. The actual
leaving part was natural because we told Pat a year ahead that we wanted to start our own
place. We’re all about being open: no surprises.

What most people don’t know is that we wrote and sold an entire feature film to Paramount Pictures. At the end of the day, we decided not to do it because we didn’t feel it would feel fresh when it came out; the timeline was crazy long. Humour needs to be fresh and have a ‘born-on-date’ on it. Otherwise, it generally sucks.

Our nationality is probably no longer relevant to our work. It was a bit more
challenging when we were fresh off the boat in 1996 and couldn’t speak English. We sounded like two Muppets and that’s how we sold the Miller Lite campaign [featuring Dick, a fictional adman]. Two Muppets walk into the Miller Brewing Company: what happens? It was everything but slick. All heart, right on the sleeve.

We like the advertising industry because it never gets boring. The fact that we get to do so many different things is wonderful and rewarding. We learn things constantly. One day you’re trying to reach couples online for K-Y lubricants, next day you’re all caught up in the world of sports for Powerade, the next hour you’re discussing photography with Bert Stern for Stella Artois. It’s just crazy how lucky we are that we get to stretch our brains in all these ways.

We say this with humility because it has been a really rough year in NYC, but Mother has done really well. The poor economy, the larger transformation our industry is going through, and the set-up of Mother suddenly reached some kind of critical mass and we’ve been hiring every month for the last 18 months. We’re extremely thankful for our luck.

How can advertising adapt when audiences are becoming so diverse? Advertising is a feisty little parasite that finds its way into anything. It morphs and changes all the time, and it has a hard shell. Cockroaches are soft little vulnerable babies in comparison.

Most people marry for the wrong reason – because they’re in love. That only works a little bit less than half of the time, according to statistics we just made up. Instead, if you took love out of the equation and married someone who had qualities you didn’t have, you’d be significantly more successful. Additionally, if you gave up the idea of trying to control the other person, you’d be very successful. If you stopped constantly thinking of being loved all the time, you’d be married forever.

We’ve now spent more time with each other than any other person in our lives. We show up at exactly 9.15 every morning and leave at 5.15 in the evening. We don’t let each other down and we don’t control each other. We don’t talk unless something needs to be said. We don’t exaggerate. Until right now, we spent exactly 41,688 hours together, and it feels like we just met.

Incidentally, we just sold our telepathy plan to AT&T for $45bn. It’s unlimited everything – talk and data – and you don’t need a contract or a certain kind of phone. It’s taken us 20 years to develop it. You simply know what the other person thinks and feel. It’s weird but definitely true.

Music is important to both of us. Linus is inspired by George Strait, alongside people like George Jones, Merle Haggard, Mahalia Jackson, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Dr Ralph Stanley... and even a dude named Scott H Biram from Austin, TX. They’re all blues, jazz, rockabilly, gospel, singer-songwriter, country exceptionals. Thinking, beautiful outlaws.

For Paul [whose one-man band is called Monkeybacon], music is like a brain spa. Or exciting, like popcorn. It can be silly. It can be serious. You can practise it with friends, or by yourself in your underwear. Composing, practising an instrument or playing a live concert
are completely different blades on the same Swiss army knife.

Our current job is very much like making some kind of musical stew. We follow the musical sheet for a bit, then we say fuck it. Someone insists on the accordion, someone else thinks their hair is really important, someone wants to play in a mysterious and ancient exotic scale. It’s all OK as long as the song sounds really good in the end.

Most of the fights we have as a creative team are about religious beliefs. We’re no different than the rest of the world in that regard. Individually, we’re both convinced we’re right and neither will back down. There isn’t a simple way to deal with this, except by going karate on each other once in a while. A good ol’ ass-whoopin’ session back and forth is totally underrated in terms of keeping a long relationship going. It’s something that isn’t in vogue right now, but it’s been working for us.

We both like hearing birds chirping. It’s so honest. They sing so beautifully, loud and clear. And it’s frankly amazing that it’s all for free. We love the idea that no one has yet figured out a way to charge for entertainment so special

We have never approached advertisingas if it was difficult. Actually, we have always approached it as if it is something very silly that we HAVE to do. It makes a huge difference mentally. And you know what? It really isn’t that important in the bigger picture, so it’s a win-win on a mental/life/approach level.

We do use the products we’ve worked on. For example, we wear New Balance, drink Stella Artois, shop at Target, watch NBC and use K-Y Yours+Mine when we’re having sex.

There are definitely products we would refuse to work on. But we’re also picky about the people we work with, since we have a strict ‘no-assholes’ policy here at Mother. Life is simply too short not to get along and have a good time.

Our aim of making Mother a ‘collective’ simply means that the idea of what you are doing is bigger than any one person. Structures based around a single person are not healthy, empowering or particularly efficient. Our management philosophy is, ‘use your ego to do what’s best for the group.’ We’re very hands-off unless we believe something truly isn’t working.

Firing people is not something we have ever wanted to be good at. There are plenty of people out there who feel a personal power surge in firing people right and left, and that’s OK. But we don’t, and we try not to get into that situation – mainly by spending more time when hiring people. However, sometimes it needs to be done, and then you just do it as fairly and honestly as possible.

We don’t have regrets. Regrets are for owls. They sit in their little trees in the forest, turning their feathery heads all around, regretting stuff: “Should’ve done that, should’ve done this...” Meanwhile the other birds are singing and flying around in circles. Owls are fascinating but they’re also pathetic. We’re not owls; no regrets.

What makes us really angry… is people who don’t listen and/or clip their toenails on the subway.

If we could change the world, we would… ban clocks and watches. Why do we constantly need to know what time it is? In most cases it’s totally irrelevant. Time is the one thing that truly screws things up. If there was no time, we’d be significantly more productive and happy. It could seriously be a way to eliminate stress on a global basis.

Are we afraid of dying? Doesn’t everything come down to this question? Just like the weather, it’s out of our control. It’s going to happen, it’s just a question of when. So no, we’re not afraid. Unless you’re going to a really meaningless meeting to present a strategic PowerPoint thing in, let’s say, Milwaukee and the plane goes down outside Cleveland. That would just flat out suck, big time.

In the end, what really matters is… nothing. We know it sounds uninspired, but you’re fucking dead. It’s over. What are you going to do? Lie in your grave and think about all the good times you had? All the friends you made? Please, dream NOW. Get into trouble. Fuck up. Live while you’re alive. That’s really the only thing that matters.