What are your preferred pronouns?

He/him/his

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Where's your hometown?

Copenhagen, Denmark

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In as few words as possible, how would you describe your role on the Miro brand project?

For AKQA Copenhagen, I set the copy direction for the new brand identity and helped bring the project to life.

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What was your path to your current role? How did you get your start?

I have a masters in English and Contemporary Culture, and I actually started in journalism, working with culture and op-eds at Denmark's largest newspaper, Politiken. Then I switched to communications of the more ... commercial kind. It just seemed like more fun, and I got quite a lot of great opportunities from the outset. I've been at agencies most of my professional life, and I just really like the hustle and bustle of the agency world I guess.

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When you're not writing, what are you up to?

I live with my girlfriend who's also a creative (she's a furniture/lighting designer). Together, we can handle anything. Plus hanging out with friends, family. I have a long standing love affair with the guitar. I play every day, sometimes for hours.

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What (or who) are your go-to’s for inspiration or trends that influence your writing?

Dave Harland. Dan Nelken. Vikki Ross. Howard Gossage. David Ogilvy. And then artists like Wilde, Blake, Dylan, Bowie, Young, Agnes Martin, Bruegel, and Rembrandt. My father was a poet, so his voice is always in the back of my head when I write.

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What is the one skill beyond good writing that you think makes the biggest difference in your work?

Curiosity.

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How would you describe your approach to writing and verbal work?

I'd like to procrastinate a little longer before answering that, thank you.

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Where do you think the copywriting and verbal industry is going? Any predictions or forecasts?

If you're not bringing new thinking, creativity and ideas to the table, AI will probably take your job. There's so much BS advertising and marketing out there. Low effort, mediocre stuff. I think AI is a wakeup call for all of us to be original.

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What piece of advice would you give young creatives and copywriters just starting out?

Always be kind. Don't be a diva, even if you experience early success. And if you think everyone else gets the good briefs, that seemingly boring brief on your table is your chance to create something amazing.

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What do you wish more people knew about copywriting?

It's the creative thinking behind copywriting that's the hard part, not the writing itself.

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Outside of writing, is there anything that keeps you feeling creative and inspired in your day-to-day?

Caterpillars taking a Sunday walk. Shoelaces having a dramatic love affair. Birds singing in the sycamore tree. Anything that keeps me away from my phone and TV.

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Where can The Subtext readers keep up with you?

That would be my LinkedIn. 

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Bonus Round: When it comes to writing, are you digital or analog?

A little of both?

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Bonus Round: Fuck, Marry, Kill: Copywriting Edition 

Fuck brand manifestos (sexy but deceptive), kill brand attributes, and marry product descriptions (they are you best chance to surprise and delight, if you make the effort).

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Bonus Round: Choose your fighter: Oxford comma or em dash. 

Em dash. 

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The Miro Rebrand

Can you give us some background on why Miro decided to refresh their identity?‍

Miro is a company that epitomises the term "meteoric rise". It was founded in 2011, and is now a trusted tool for 99% of the Forbes 100, with 60+ million users and a valuation of 17.5 billion dollars. Those are grown-up numbers, not startup numbers.
Miro needed something that reflected that impressive transition, as well as a strong identity that could set them apart from the steadily growing slew of competitors. Also, they had a strong brand affinity among its core user base, but quite little brand awareness in the market.

‍Can you tell us about what the strategy and discovery process was for this project?

‍From a copy perspective, the process was to not only find out who Miro was, but who they wanted to be. Even though the company is young, Miro is no longer a fresh-faced startup. Far from it. It's a trusted, essential tool that companies rely on, and one that sees itself as energetic and idealistic.

That fact brought an interesting tension that we had to solve through the communication. The way we solved it was by making Miro stand out from a sea of slightly similar competitors by positioning the product as an enabler of bigger thinking. A product that embodied the belief "in the power of what could be" through exploration, collaboration and transformation.

Also, with the rise of digital ways of working, and working from home on the back of pandemic, Miro's value as a tool that could mimic face to face efficiency at work needed to come across in a clear and appealing way.

How did the strategy inform the creative work – both verbal and visual? Was there any key insights or findings that drove the work?

‍The essential finding was to empower teams to create the next big thing, and as a broader societal insight, that "we need to innovate the way we innovate". Meaning that as professionals entirely reliant on technology to create something of lasting value, we need a digital space where the process is as free and unhindered as that of the real world. A space that imitates and makes room for the seemingly unimportant conversations around the coffee machine or the random post-it with an off-kilter idea that turns out to be genius. Those tiny moments/happy accidents are often pivotal.

Can you tell us about the process in developing the visual and verbal work for Miro?

‍I would say the verbal work played the important role of giving context to the visuals, and creating small concepts within every delivery and touchpoint that were relevant to the needs of the customers in that context. Making the idea behind the design sing. Do it justice. A lot of that was creating from/to lines (fine to phenomenal, blah to aha, stuck to somebody stop me) to provide stories that the art directors/designers could create from. We quickly realised that in order to show the next big thing, you kinda have to create it, haha. So we spent days coming up with ideas for imaginative near future inventions that still seemed plausible. Surprisingly hard! Of course we also created a ton of headlines to make the designs come to life and acted as guiding stars for the identity: Rocket science isn't rocket science. Good vibes, great ideas. Today, tomorrow starts in Miro. Next big thing? No big deal, etc.‍

What factors do you consider when evolving a brand’s voice? (i.e. how the client team will use it, how customers will react to it, what level of change it will require?)

Set the bar high. Don't pander to what you think the client wants. They didn't come to you to get more of the same. Don't settle. Go for the most interesting angle you can find. Create a story that feels true to the brand AND makes your creative sense tingle. Then simplify, simplify, simplify. That's how we landed on "Enter with a dream, exit with the next big thing" as the main line. If you do that and are certain that it's true to the company's values, I believe it becomes easy for the customers to like and the people working with it to execute on. When you're done with the concept and it's gone through all the way to the CEO, you absolutely have to make it fun for the people at the company working with the voice and identity. They can tell if you're phoning it in, and then all that hard work was for naught.

‍What were the biggest challenges that you and your team faced when working on this project? Any significant hurdles to overcome?

Aw man, the process was full of hurdles. It started out great, then hit a wall of epic proportions where nothing really seemed to land with our clients at Miro. Looking through our team Miro board in our darkest hour, we noticed a tiny image of a portal, posted earlier by our lead designer, and so the idea of seeing Miro as the portal of transformation was born. It was still an intense process from there, but we had a clear idea of where we were going.

How would you describe the updated Miro voice?

Dynamic, hopeful, empowering, empathetic. Working to achieve something of lasting value is hard. We - the writers working on it - wanted people to feel that they could take the work from fine to phenomenal together, and bring everything that makes them human into Miro - the good, the bad, the weird, the wonderful - and come out stronger. Often, the best work comes when you've managed to create an environment where it feels like you're not working. That friendly, encouraging atmosphere sums up the updated Miro voice nicely.

Is there any particular element of the Miro work that you’re particularly proud of and want people to see or understand?

It sounds hammy, but I think I'm most proud of how we injected inspiration into every nook and cranny of the work. Even the names for the team members in our illustrations played with adding personal super power epithets (Visionary Varun, Kinetic Kira, Mighty Max, Empowered Ella etc.) as did the names for the new colour palette (Adventurous Apricot, Leapfrog Lime, Brainstorm Blueberry, Teamwork Teal etc.). Also, the illustrations of the near future innovations are exceptional.

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Creative Credits:
Agency: AKQA
Verbal Identity team for the Miro rebrand:
Lasse M. Rørdam, Simon Magnusson and John Cross.

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To read more about the rebrand, visit the Miro blog and the full AKQA case study here.