StrawberryFrog

StrawberryFrog founder Scott Goodson is a passionate believer in the need to tap into issues consumers care about in order to engage their attention. He talks to Isobel Roberts about Sweden, socialism and making the world a better place.

Having started out with ideas of a career in law, there’s no way StrawberryFrog founder Scott Goodson could have predicted that a chance meeting while travelling across Europe with the Swedish woman who would later become his wife could have led to a successful career in advertising, let alone the launch earlier this year of his first book, Uprising: How to Build a Brand – and Change the World – by Sparking Cultural Movements.

Canadian born and now a resident of New York City, Goodson has been a champion of movement marketing ever since he opened up the doors of his independent agency StrawberryFrog in Amsterdam back in 1999. Prior to that he’d spent 10 years building his career in advertising in Sweden after starting out on the launch of Björn Borg’s fashion range, and it was his experience in Stockholm that sparked his interest in movements.

“Sweden is a very socialist society,” explains the CEO, “and many of the marketers came to marketing with a very strong sense of social values and marketing wasn’t meant to be a harsh, mercurial thing as it was in the US. It was meant to be about entertainment and art and more importantly it had to have values that had something to do with making the world a better place. So I grew up for 10 years there with brands doing that kind of work and not only did they succeed in becoming vibrant businesses, they did help make the world a better place in their own way. They had strong focuses, each had its own philosophy and sense of value.”

And so, on launching his own shop, Goodson wanted to put the focus on the consumer rather than platforms. With his background in early interactive, the agency began primarily as a digital shop before growing to a full service agency, and in 2004 he moved across the pond to open up the company’s US office. Since then StrawberryFrog has added homes in Sao Paulo and Mumbai, and as the agency has grown Goodson’s approach to movement marketing has also finessed.

“The world changed and it became social and the concept of movements went into 3D. It’s not just talking about values and philosophies now as consumers don’t care about a message around a product, they want to see an idea about the rise in culture that they care about.”

Joining the movement

For Goodson, this means not just defining a brand’s values and purpose but taking it one step further and attaching that to an idea of cultural significance to make the brand more relevant to consumers and to fuel engagement. It’s this philosophy that has led its founder to dub StawberryFrog the first cultural movement agency.

“There is so much noise and complexity out there that movements and creativity can help clients grow their businesses by having a ‘red hread’,” he continues. “If you think about a movement, you have a point of view and you’re trying to make the world a better place in some way, you invigorate your people, you invigorate your consumers, and if you focus that thread you can build a lot of communications from it and that communication can be everything and anything about the product, it could be about anything that is relevant to consumers.”

‘A time of revolution’

While honing the insights for his book, Goodson also began to notice the rise of social movements in general across the globe – from the riots in London to the uprising in Egypt and Tunisia to the recent troubles in Greece. With the power of social media to mobilise people, he believes in the effectiveness of this approach now more than ever.

“We are living in a time of revolution,” Goodson says. “People are engaging with brands, and brands can build a movement strategy and engage with consumers about issues that they care about, and do it with creativity and tact. If you don’t do that you have no currency or credibility or relationship so when you do come under attack, when you do have issues, you’re naked and you have no connection.”

Back to the day job, and StrawberryFrog is currently toiling away on campaigns for clients such as Heineken, Pampers, Emirates, Jim Beam and Asics. Goodson also has plans to grow the agency to better serve its global clients, as despite its relatively diminutive size, when it comes to the networks, for Goodson it’s all about the right attitude.

“There are companies out there that will always want to work with the big agencies and that’s fine,” he says, “but I think today it’s clear that the StrawberryFrog model is a viable alternative to huge companies. You don’t need a huge corporate agency, you can do it via a smaller team of people. There are options and alternatives for clients.”