I’m intrigued by your company name, what does it mean?
We started Peel in 2018. We always wanted to be international, and our strength was understanding Iceland. When we created Peel, we wanted to say we wanted to peel through the bullshit to the core of the brand. Similar to peeling an onion.
We avoid the 'theatrics' of larger agencies. In the past, the media setup was heavily traditional, and agencies used to rely on paid media. We wanted to focus on tech and data, but we quickly learned that the Icelandic market wasn’t looking for analysis. Clients would say, ‘No thanks, we just want to see something nice.’
The market here is so different from the rest of the world. When a new expert comes in and tries to apply global methods, it doesn’t fit. Flexibility is essential in Iceland: we’re talking about 350,000 people if you’re not running international campaigns.
How do you work as an advertising agency in Iceland?
We've wanted to be a small agency from the start. Traditionally, the Icelandic way is growing a company from within, when you have 10 agency people in a meeting with the client. We bring in the best experts in Iceland, as needed, rather than having all expertise in-house.
Clients, particularly in the US, find our small agency structure interesting, because they have specific teams for strategy, for example. I’m the CEO of Peel, I do project management and strategy. So I’m in a lot of those meetings.
When we launched Peel in 2018, we believed, naively, that we could collaborate with all the ad agencies but Iceland is such a small country and the pool of clients is so small that agencies have been protective.
Our setup proved perfect for the 2020 Visit Iceland tender. We understood that no Icelandic agency could run the Visit Iceland account without a global partner because we are a small island and we need to allow the expertise from abroad to help us in a way.
We ended up working with two global agencies, one of them M+C Saatchi.