The AmCham Finland Open House on Friday, October 2nd, celebrated the 1st anniversary of the organization in New York. But, in every way, it celebrated the growing presence of Finnish entrepreneurs and business owners in New York. And, in one sense, it was somewhat of a homecoming.

The homecoming was evident when Poju Zabludowicz, head of the Tamares Group, which owns 1500 Broadway, the new home of AmCham Finland, appeared to give his best wishes to Erika Sauer, the head of AmCham Finland New York. A Finnish-born real estate magnate, Zabludowicz symbolizes the ultimate height of business success for someone born in a country of slightly more than 5 million people. But, as with its neighbor to the south, Estonia, Finland punches well above its weight in the business world.

Pujo Zabludowicz; Erika Sauer; Timo Soini, and Kristiina Helenius at the AmCham Finland New York Open House

The event was held in a raw space down the hall from where AmCham Finland New York will take an office, in a co-working space. But the space was the ultimate New York party scene, with partitions, dry wall, and bare floors, all with stunning north Times Square views. At the tail end of UN Week, the event was significant for the presence of Kai Sauer, the ambassador of the permanent mission of Finland to the UN, as well as the new foreign minister of Finland, Mr. Timo Soini. Soini read prepared remarks that underscored the significance of the U.S. market to Finland, now more than ever.

Chris Pfaff and Kai Sauer, Finland’s UN ambassador

Kristiina Helenius, the president of AmCham Finland, thanked the more than 75 people who attended, many of whom had braved strong winds and rain to make the event, and pointed out the success of the Launchpad USA program, which is opening doors for Finnish (and Estonian) ventures. Helenius had presided over a Nordic Investor Summit in New York in May; at least half of the presenting companies have already established offices in the U.S.

Kristiina Helenius, president of AmCham Finland, and Toni Toikka, CEO of Alekstra

It was an open house (avoimien oven päivä), but somewhat of a door-opener as well. At least four Finnish ventures were present at the event, all of whom had recently set up offices in New York. This is a tipping point for the Finnish venture scene; even a year ago, few if any Finnish ventures were making commitments to expand to New York – or the U.S for that matter – but the strategic vision of venture capital funds such as Inventure and Vision+ has pushed more Finns to settle in the world’s largest market and, more importantly, its largest city.

One can expect more Finnish ventures to land in the New York market, and there is every reason to believe that AmCham Finland will be part of this trend. Onnea, Suomi!

Last night, I hosted/moderated/produced a panel on branded entertainment, ‘Gaming the System: Branded Entertainment for Producers,’ at The New School that was super-hot, for two reasons. First, the session occurred during Advertising Week New York, and included a veritable all-star roster of panelists, including Ian Schafer, founder/CEO of agency Deep Focus, and founder of its recently-formed branded content studio, DFx; Will Misselbrook, head of branded entertainment Condé Nast Entertainment; Colas Overkott, CEO of multi-screen content and ad firm Sync; Luis de la Parra, senior vice president, partner solutions, Univision; Andy Oakes, managing director of the UK’s leading marketing publication, The Drum, and Warren Weideman, CEO, First Look Productions LLC.

Ian Schafer; Will Misselbrook; Andy Oakes; Colas Overkott; Warren Weideman, and Luis de la Parra.

Second, the event’s content and discussions got so hot that the NY Fire Department was called in. Yes, just as the panel discussion started, a fire alarm sounded, followed by a slightly panicked intercom message from “The Fire Captain,” beckoning us all to the street. So, an impromptu networking session, amongst 96 passionate industry professionals, convened on West 13th Street. Only in New York. Some might just call for a short networking break; they call in the fire engines with my events. That’s how we roll.

NY Fire Department fire engine and firefighters arrive at the scene, 55 West 13th Street (note: a server in a 4th-floor rack overheated, and set off a temperature alarm. Yep – we were jes too darn hot…)

Ian Schafer showed a Ruffles case study on brand engagement, and discussed his views on the shortage of good content, saying that distribution has exploded, with new platforms every week, but great content has become more of a premium. Ian founded DFx to “take back” the production control of branded entertainment.

Ian Schafer, founder/CEO of Deep Focus and DFx, discusses the new branded entertainment production paradigm

Luis de la Parra showed how T-Mobile and Univision have partnered on a Youth Awards program with a Miami event that now includes multiple platforms, and creates strong brand extensions.

Luis de la Parra presents the Univision-T-Mobile branded entertainment case study

Colas Overkott showed Sync’s revolutionary Sync2Ad product, which has enabled – for the first time – synched TV-mobile ad units for brands including Samsung, Dunlop, and Air France, among others.

Colas Overkott demonstrates Sync’s Sync2Ad product

Warren Weideman discussed the “Top 10 Things Not to Do in Branded Entertainment,” and gave great historic examples of brand integration into films. His new show on CBS, ‘The Inspectors,’ produced with Litton Entertainment, looks at postal inspectors, and includes U.S. Postal Service participation.

Warren Weideman discusses the “Top 10 Things Not to Do in Branded Entertainment”

Will Misselbrook discussed his work with luxury brand Coach, and how he essentially led branded entertainment for a company that had not developed a solid branded entertainment play. Andy Oakes discussed the differences between U.S. and UK audiences and regulators with branded entertainment, noting that the tradition of non-commercial television had limited the scope of branded entertainment, but cited the Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) as one of the groups leading the growth of branded entertainment in the UK.

Will Misselbrook, head of branded entertainment for Condé Nast Entertainment, with Andy Oakes, managing director, The Drum

The value of branded entertainment with jaded audiences, including millennials less susceptible to traditional advertising, led to discussion of storytelling for brands. The discussion, in a room full of producers, led to numerous conversations about platform-specific stories, whether on Snapchat or YouTube, that have now created a hunger for content that is instantly shareable.

The evening was significant for myself and for the guild. It was almost 10 years to the day that the PGA-New School relationship was formalized (for the record, we did an event on podcasting that featured the likes of Robert Spier, from NPR and Peter Rojas). Sponsored by the Media Studies program at The New School, our PGA New Media Council East salon series has included a number of venues (including The Core Club; the 57th Street Screening Room), but our relationship with The New School is special. And enduring.

Paul Hardart, Director of the Media Management Program at The New School, welcomes the audience.

Colas Overkott; Chris Pfaff; Luis de la Parra; Warren Weideman; Andy Oakes, and Ian Schafer after the PGA New Media Council East panel on branded entertainment, at The New School, 09.30.15

Join me and six branded entertainment luminaries at my PGA New Media Council East mega-panel during Advertising Week New York, ‘Gaming the System: Branded Entertainment for Producers’ on Wednesday, September 30th, from 7:00-9:00 pm, at The New School’s Lang Auditorium, 55 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), 2nd floor.

In addition to great networking, food & drink, and a gathering of the new media tribes, the following presenters will appear:

• Ian Schafer, chairman, US CEO and founder, Deep Focus
• Warren Weideman, founder, First Look Productions LLC
• Luis de la Parra, senior vice president, partner solutions, Univision
• Colas Overkott, CEO, Sync
• Will Misselbrook, head of branded entertainment, Condé Nast Entertainment
• Andy Oakes, managing director, The Drum

You can RSVP at:

http://www.producersguild.org/events/Sessions.aspx?id=688263

I hope to see you on Wednesday, September 30th during Advertising Week New York for this event.

Reaktor Gutter Invitation

Our friends at Reaktor (www.reaktor.com) are having a little recruitment party next Wednesday, 9/23, at Gutter in Williamsburg. Check out the invite here and RSVP to satu@reaktor.com.

As more TV is delivered over IP networks, and as more mobile viewing takes place, the synched TV-mobile experience will soon become a more enriched unit for advertisers and a fun – yes, you heard that word! – way for consumers to enjoy ads. Again.

Approximately 84% of TV viewers are dual-screeners (according to Mary Meeker KPCB Internet Trends 2014), and that figure jumped 200% since the 2012 London Olympics. More significantly, those dual-screen viewers are spending 50% of their viewing time using a second device (Millward Brown Abreaction, ‘Marketing in a Multiscreen World, 2014). During ad breaks, 67% of the audience shifts to mobile (United Internet Media, 2014).

As contextual content – user-aware; location-aware content served to individuals – increases, the synched ad solution market will rise. Solutions from the EU 2nd screen market have, so far, led the way. Paris-based Sync (a spin-off from Visiware) conducted the first such unit placement during the half-time of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final. The perfectly synched spot, a rich animated interactive ad unit for smartphones and tablets in the app of L’Equipe (France’s top sports app, with more than 9 million downloads), highlighted the precision of Gillette razors, and included a contextual game, asking users to guess the precision of the shots during the first half, and instantly provided users with the live result. The unit, created by Sync’s patented Sync2Ad unit, which was developed by the Visiware studio, bridged the gap between TV And mobile advertising, between the brand and individual consumers. More than half of the top 20 French apps currently have installed the Sync2Ad SDK, and Sync is actively signing partnerships for Sync2Ad in other countries. The new ad format creates unique additional high-value inventory for publishers, and can be used for their own promotional purposes.

In-app advertising is far more likely to gain the attention of viewers, who are well used to blocking ads on their desktop browsers. What will likely happen is an understanding of how gamification can reward the synched ad viewer. When Yahoo! streams the NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars from London on October 25th, the worlds of TV and mobile will undoubtedly collide. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo! and its ad agency and ad network partners view this experience. And, yes, how the NFL – no stranger to the 2nd screen world – sees the synched ad experience. So far, the U.S. market has seen small steps toward synched TV-mobile ads. Xaxis launched an attempt in this field in the spring of 2014, and NBC has made in-roads with Never.no, a Norwegian 2nd screen solutions provider. But, overall, the mobile ad shift has not lived in the synched universe.

The hurdles overcome with user privacy surrounding Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) has hampered some of the progress in this arena. Also, critical mass is an issue for app publishers. Meaning, unless there is a solid audience using apps while TV spots are aired, or with devices that have apps live or open, the opportunity may be lost. This is where gamification lends itself to the experience. A synched spot needs to have true bi-directionality to really enhance the experience, where users could, in a game construct, lead to new levels of play or engagement. This is nothing that the SMS marketing world has not known for years, and has done with great success in the participatory TV genre that has included ‘American Idol,’ ‘America’s Got Talent,’ and other war horse shows that have, literally, taught the U.S. population to text.

TV as we know, and the ad units that support it, need to change just as live TV has changed radically in the past decade. When on-demand streamers such as Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix figure out how to engage viewers with synched spots, the arena will expand dramatically. And, one can only hope, create more fun for TV viewers.

Click on, people. Click on.

Pär-Jörgen Pärson, general partner at Northzone, and an early backer of Spotify and Bloglovin, welcomed guests to Scandinavia House in New York on a steamy Tuesday evening, August 25th to a Nordic Showcase of start-ups selected by the best accelerators and incubators in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. His remarks said it best; the reason that the Nordics are kicking such serious ass in the EU, and global, start-up market is due to one word: socialism. Yes, the cohesion created by the Scandinavian model of state-sponsored education, healthcare, and – in the case of Sweden in the mid-’90s – home computing has yielded entrepreneurs better educated, better prepared, and creatively forged in markets where innovation is as much a natural characteristic as it is a personal trait. The driver for the success of large companies – from Ericsson to Kone to Lego – is also the driver for Nordic entrepreneurs.

I coined the term “Finntrepreneur” in 2011, in the wake of Nokia’s implosion. It was initially used to market ex-Nokian entrepreneurs who had taken the plunge in the start-up world. Now, four years on, the Finntrepeneur is everywhere. She, or he, are creating seminal new technologies and digital media services at a frantic pace. It is no longer cool to work for a big company in the Nordic region: start-ups are the new vitality.

 

And, unlike the U.S., the Nordic start-up scene is infinitely more diverse. It was not a surprise, then, to see that 6 out of the 10 presenters at the Nordic Showcase, produced by Helsinki-based Slush, were women. Women from Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In an era where female start-up founders are still marginalized in the U.S., the Nordic Showcase proved again the power of Nordic progressivism in action. The two Slush event producers, Eva Fogdell and Ghita Wallin, are not only Finntrepreneurs, but students. Yes, Slush – the dynamic, ever-growing conference that is the largest venture confab in the world – is completely run by students from the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship. If a group of U.S. students attempted the same feat, it would flop around like a perch on a dry dock in blazing summer heat (sorry, just speaking the truth).

For the record, the Nordic Showcase held this week may have made history, as the start-up incubators/acclerators and premier growth ventures from all 5 Nordic countries were represented. Erik Engellau-Nilsson, VP of Swedish e-commerce powerhouse Klarna, also spoke, but more as a quasi-mentor, displaying the kind of sangfroid that investors so relish: I’m here now in New York, and we have grown well, even after past mistakes. How refreshing, in this age of rocket-phase “unicorn” ambitions, to hear start-up founders and execs discuss operations and geographic expansion in mature tones.

One of the more illuminating opportunities of the evening was the chance to see Icelandic entrepreneurs present. Breakroom’s Didrik Steinsson and Tagplay’s Sesselja Vilhjalmsdottir displayed new paradigms for, respectively, workplace privacy and automatic web updates. Swedes in the house included Per Emanuelsson, CEO of Soundtrap, a mobile music education and production platform, and Sofie Lundstrom, CEO of Toborrow, a unique lending platform for small businesses. The Danish side included Thomas Helms, CEO/founder of Vaavud, a smartphone wind meter, and Gulnaz Khusainova, CEO/founder of EasySize, a personal fashion e-commerce platform. The Norwegian contingent included Jeanette Dyrhe Kvisvik, CEO/co-founder of Villoid, an app that enables users to follow fashion trends and buy the latest fashions, and Ivar Sagemo, CEO/founder of AIMS Innovation, an IT performance analytics platform for large enterprises. The Finns were well-represented in the persons of Jenny Wolfram, CEO/founder of FaceForce, a brand reputation and ad performance tool, and Katariina Rantanen, CEO/founder of Cosmethics, an iOS app that scans bar codes and cross-references ingredients with a database that enables users to make smarter product and health decisions.

The historic nature of the Nordic Showcase will be borne out in the coming months and years: more young entrepreneurs will hear of the various U.S. successes of these start-ups and accelerate their moves into the massive American market. And, yes, Slush 2015 (November 11-12 in Helsinki) will be an even more immediate barometer of how fast the Nordic venture ecosystem is growing.

In the region where the sun shines least, cohesive innovation seems to burn brightest.

https://soundcloud.com/chris-pfaff-1/1006-chris-pfaff-and-mitch-askenas

I appear in the U.S. segment of this YLE (Finnish Broadcasting) program analyzing what they saw as a then-current global financial bubble, particularly relative to technology and new media ventures. Pekka Palmgren, producer with YLE, shot this interview with me in mid-September, 2011, in the park across from the old AT&T building at 32 6th Avenue.

I appear at the 14.39 mark.