Fredrik Carlstrom says: “We have better people”

Question: How Do You Compete With Big Companies?

Fredrik Carlstrom: We compete by, I mean, they’re at a totally different level. I mean, their model is being big, and being able to deliver certain things that we can’t necessarily deliver. We work with the beset people in the world. I mean, we have better creatives. I think we’re much more easily adapt-- we can adapt to things much more easily. And we don’t have to do a lot of the things. I mean, you were saying earlier, how do you motivate people? We don’t have to take on massive-really-not-that-fun projects to pay for hundreds and hundreds of people. We can be a little more picky with the stuff that we do. And in our model specifically is sort of borrowed a little bit, I guess, through my film work, that we’re-- you know, how a film studio would have, you know, they have a layer of kind of very experienced executives, and then they have a bunch of sort of more administrative people. But the people in the middle, it doesn’t make sense to have a bunch of directors and cinematographers and gaffers on staff, ’cause you staff as you go. And similarly, if we have-- in an ad agency, if you have an art director and you have a bunch of people sitting around, you only use them. And so we use a lot of freelancers. I mean, New York is the best for that. I mean, there’s just so many amazingly talented people that you can bring in for a project, specifically. And so I think people. We have better people.

Recorded on: 6/12/08