It’s the last days of a years work at Stagis. We are about to close the doors for the holidays and take a break before we get back to work on Monday Janurary 6, 2014. But just before I leave my desk a few memories from a busy year and my wishes for 2014.

One of the things I wanted to happen in 2013 was developing more leadership and seniority in the company. I wanted a new board of directors (myself and two other members of the board) and two senior level team members who could become partners in the firm. I partly succeeded. In October we got a new board as Frederik Wiedemann, CEO of Agilic and former cofounder and partner of RED Associates joined as chairman and Thomas Hertz, CEO of the fashion brand Stine Goya and former Chief of marketing and communications at the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation (DR) joined as member of the board. Together our goal is to develop and grow Stagis. We are in the process of hiring new senior people who aspire to become partners at Stagis, the first two roles to fill out is a senior communication adviser and a chief designer. I’ve been looking for both for a while and I hope to have good news regarding that mission very soon.

As our vision formulation process with the Municipality of Kolding last year went well (see the case here), I thought we’d create a forum to discuss city branding and regional branding in the context of my work with authentic identities. In October we succeeded in creating a great experience for directors and consultants from Danish Municipalities. More than 150 people joined our city branding conference and they came from exactly half of the Danish Municipalities, 49 out of 98. I was the proud host and had the honour of presenting such iconic experts as Wally Olins from Saffron, Pekka Timonen, City of Helsinki, Sebastian Zenker, Rotterdam University and David Zahle from BIG. The event went quite well and we’ve received very good feedback. I’m quite sure we’ll create a continuing forum in 2014 to try and help the cities develop ideas and concepts for branding and creating growth in the future. Stay tuned during the spring! Until then we will continually bring new videos from the October conference. The first two videos with Wally Olins and my own presentation are freely available to watch on our website now.
Two partners joined the project; Dansk Erhverv (The Danish Chamber of Commerce) and avisen Kommunen (the professional Municipality weekly) helped communicate and host the event, making it a great and visible day.

Speaking of visibility – Stagis has been a bit on the media this fall. I have had the pleasure of joining the panel at Kulturknuserne (Culture Crushers) on Danish National Radio (DR), a weekly radio one hour program where the panel gets three new challenges within the world of culture and the arts and our job is to discuss the challenge and give advice to the cultural institution on how to solve the problem. In the latest program I joined we did the experiment of shutting down the Danish Ministry of Culture and reopen it in a new form. I quite like the format and the panelists. And we’re thrilled to have more than 100.000 people listen to the show.

The financial crisis isn’t quite over yet – at least not in every type of business. One of our clients were quite confident as they planned an international branding and marketing venture during the spring and summer. But things in the market didn’t turn out so well and rather than going forward in the process of implementing strategy and creating a new strong brand in their market place, they ended up cutting costs and laying off people. I’m hoping for better times for them and keep remembering that keeping open doors at Stagis and being in business after 16 years is an accomplishment in itself.

Call me nostalgic, but this time of year always makes me think of the things I did and didn’t do – and telling myself all the things I want happening for the next year. To be honest I’m never able of fulfilling all of those hopes and dreams but I like to try. In 2014 I’ll try to grow our business doing more stuff with new clients, more talks at different events and by delegating some of the responsibilities at Stagis to new team members. We’ve had a strong focus on identity and strategy formation as two interconnected disciplines underpinned by our methodologies and processes that help map and define the authentic strengths of the company. In the new year I want to put our design and corporate communication capabilities in focus. Creating strong design and communication concepts and delivering high quality execution has been at the heart of what we do since 1997 and I want that to develop and grow further.

So in Janurary, let’s meet and talk identity, design and communication – and how you can change our business or how Stagis can change yours. We are shutting down for the season holidays Friday December 20th through Sunday Janurary 5th.

I wish all our clients, partners, staff-members, freelancers and friends happy holidays and a happy New Year!

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I Stagis bød 2013 på en ny professionel bestyrelse og en flot tilslutning til konferencen Kommunebranding13. Men også udfordringer. Finanskrisen har ikke sluppet alle steder og det viser sig af og til på viljen til at satse på kommunikation og branding. Her giver Nikolaj Stagis en status for vores rejse gennem 2013 og et bud på, hvad 2014 vil bringe for Stagis A/S.

Stagis holder lukket fra fredag den 20. december kl. 16.00 frem til mandag den 6. januar 2014 kl. 9.00. Vi ønsker alle vores kunder og samarbejdspartnere en god jul og et godt nytår.