On My Radar: Petter Westlund
Petter Westlund, co-founder & CCO of B-Reel, surfs the web as well as the waves & aims to be a fire starter.
What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?
The Rick and Morty VR demo was pretty awesome. Everyone loves [American animated science fiction comedy] Rick and Morty and adding this new dimension to it is going to be really fun.
What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?
All the Google stuff to find things and places, communicate, create things.
What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?
I bought a fire-starting tool this weekend. I’m going on a camping trip soon, I wanted to upgrade from matches.
What’s your favoured social media platform?
Instagram I guess. I’m a lurker.
What’s your favourite app on your phone?
Surfline! To check the waves. “Know before you go”. I surf a few mornings a week (perk of living in LA) and this app has live feeds from local surf spots.
What’s your favourite TV show and why?
I thought Narcos was good [trailer above]. Amazing story, reality is more unbelievable than fiction sometimes.
What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?
I can’t lie, the 1980’s fantasy Dune. It changed my life as a kid. Later on I learned it was considered this enormous failure. I still think it is great though.
Sting, one of the stars of David Lynch's Dune.
Where were you when inspiration last struck?
Today, when I was chatting with friends at work, we had a good flow. When you work with people who are excited about their work, conversations often spark new ideas.
What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?
The technology, especially social media. I feel we have experienced a few amazing phases during the time we’ve been around so far. When we started out, the web was in many ways kind of dull, very functional.
Then video and rich media made for more interesting experiences - making possible things like our Wilderness Downtown experience with Arcade Fire. The rise of social media changed how we share and take in the world around us, something we leveraged in our MTV Bump platform. And now more recently, video is transforming that space too, on a more personal level with things like Facebook Live.
If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?
That we would create more usefulness and value for the people experiencing our work. And I think we have many more opportunities for that today. Tech is helping shrink the divide between product and communication; it's all brand experiences that we can help shape.
What or who has most influenced your career and why?
Most of all the awesome people I have been lucky to work with through B-Reel. Early on, probably the Commodore 64 I had as a kid which thought me the basic nuts and bolts of 'digital'.
Connections
powered by- Production BRF (B-Reel Films) Los Angeles
- Chief Creative Officer Petter Westlund
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