Ad Agency Satumaa Merges with Swedish Family Business

Advertising Agency Satumaa is merging with Swedish Family Business. The acquisition is carried out as a share exchange where the owners of Family Business Mårten Knutsson and John Lagerqvist become shareholders of Satumaa. Marko Edfelt, now CEO of Satumaa becomes the manag ing director of both companies.

The reasons for the merger are simple. During its twenty years of existence Satumaa has become an expert in multichannel marketing, especially in digital field. Satumaa takes care of the social media visibility of almost 50 brands in Scandinavia and Baltic countries, and has an active dialogue with millions of consumers. Satumaa’s digital know-how has gained international recognition, and the company has won dozens of digital and social media awards worldwide. Satumaa’s largest clients are TeliaSonera Finland and L’Oréal.

Family Business has focused on sales and creative brand activation. One of the clients is Absolut Vodka, a brand Family Business has worked with since the company started in 2002. As a result of the work the consumers have seen Absolut bottle in various new forms from an all-leather rock’n’roll design to a flashy disco look. The best-known example of new thinking is the Absolut Unique campaign, which was huge sales success and brought the agency more than 40 international awards: from a Gold Lion in Cannes to Gold in The One Show. The latest Absolut design was created in cooperation with the Andy Warhol Foundation and can be found in the shops now.

"After working closely together for almost 18 months, it feels great to have the Family Business professionals in the family. This merger strengthens our know-how and offerings both in Finland and Sweden. There is very little overlapping in our processes so I really think this is a perfect match," as Marko Edfelt puts it.

"In Satumaa, we have found an astonishingly solid and well managed business, great leadership and exactly the digital creativity that clients will demand tomorrow. For 18 months now, we have collaborated with Satumaa on various projects, and the Finns are so good to work with. They work hard, they know what they’re doing and they constantly over-deliver”, says Mårten Knutsson, founder of Family Business and CCO of the new company.

Joined together the companies can offer a service chain covering all marketing steps from initial contact to the final sale. Using both virtual and physical means of contact the brand can be present 24/7 and make sure consumers choose the product or service in question.

"With Satumaa Family Business we’ve built an agency for a new, more demanding era of advertising and marketing. Combining top creative talent with cutting-edge know-how regarding the backends of contemporary marketing, Satumaa Family Business can deliver the kind of original advertising that moves both hearts and sales. With experience from both award-winning campaigns and the most demanding of international corporations, yet with our feet solidly planted in the Nordic soil, we’re now, together, taking a leap forward – both as an agency and for our clients," says professor Alf Rehn, the Chairman of the Board of Satumaa Family Business. 

The new Satumaa Family Business has offices in Helsinki, Stockholm, Tallinn and Turku. In addition to the advertising agency the group has PR & Communications agency Drama Queen Finland and brand content and social media agency Drama Queen Sweden, and a service design agency Passi&Ripatti. The group has over 70 employees and annual net sales over 8 MEUR. The clients include Absolut Vodka, Carlsberg, Chimney Group, Crescent, Electrolux, Falcon, Festis, Hesburger, IDO Group, Kahlua, L’Oréal Nordic, Malibu, Moominworld, Neste Oil K-market, Orkla Foods, Orthex, Somersby and TeliaSonera Finland.