Founded in 1954 in Paris, France, Marie Claire is one of the world's leading high-end women's periodicals, known globally as a popular fashion publication that connects women's issues with humanistic tastes. With Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, fashion cosmo and known as the five major fashion magazines. First-line stars, models, and fashionistas in various fields at home and abroad have been interviewed on Marie Claire, sharing their fashion views, life stories, and professional insights.
In the interview, Folke shared the story of how he found the key to the Netflix economy and led a group of young people to create the future.
Folke Engholm is one of the first to start scaling up the Netflix economy, having founded a fashion brand and a Netflix economy. After founding D.Brand, he had set up a company related to Netflix and celebrities with some friends and Sweden's most popular singers. That not-so-successful venture made Folke realize that it's hard to build a brand and a concept with just one internet personality.
That's why he later founded Viral Access, which works with thousands of KOLs.
Matching brands to different KOLs isn't easy, so Viral Access has built its own big data bank and a matching system with 3 million profiles, which it assigns and matches through smart AI.
This model is very good for the 18 brands in the hands of Viral Access, with more than 100 projects under the brand for accurate resource matching. It helps brands to shorten the distance between them and consumers, reduce the noise of the brand's voice, and accurately find the people who will be interested in the product.
Many international brands don't understand the Asian market, and they don't know where to project their product needs.
Viral Access collects as much data as possible to help brands define their target group profiles, develop creative plans, and communicate with their target demographics in a different way.
After observing KOLs working with Viral Access, Folke discovered a golden rule - be authentic. This is a truth that applies to any online personality, regardless of domain.
Folke believes that brands and fans will always come and go, and that only KOLs who can tell their true stories and feelings will always attract fans, and Viral Access' role is to build bridges between KOLs and bring the most authentic netizens to their fans.
Filip Tysander, the founder of Daniel Wellington, met Folke in Shenzhen many years ago when Filip was hoping to have the right person to assist him with his QC operations in China. It was this encounter that allowed them to recognize each other as similarly promising individuals, and they hit it off right away, leading to the subsequent collaboration.
After taking on the DW project, Folke decided to take a big gamble. During that time, he operated 14,000 online celebrities for social media marketing, which helped DW achieve great success in the Asian market. In just 1 year from 2014 to 2015, DW was all over Asia and became a fashionable watch in hand. Whether it is on Weibo, or Facebook, Twitter, it can be seen everywhere on major websites around the world.
When you ask everyone who wears a DW watch why they chose DW, the answer is usually: it's a great watch, and a lot of KOLs have worn it.
DW's success comes from innovative ideas. folke says that as long as you believe in yourself and the product, then don't be afraid to try something new and bet big.
You can't hold back much more than you put in, that's Folke's law of the universe.
Currently, Viral Access has a growing workforce; in 2017, the company had just 50 people, and now it has more than 150. But Folke doesn't see himself as a leader or a boss; he prefers to think of himself as Viral Access' coach.
To ensure more effective communication, the company has maintained a flat organizational structure. He believes that it is in the nature of Swedes to keep communication fast and open.
He encourages his employees to come up with different suggestions and ideas, tries to listen to them, finds inspiration for them, and encourages them to participate in the case more completely. Watching his staff grow together as a family is a matter of pride and happiness for him.
Just like Viral Access' philosophy " Fast, Fearless, Fresh, Resilient", Folke likes to try to innovate and encourages his staff to do the same. Being a pioneer in the industry, it's important to be brave to innovate and not afraid to make mistakes.
In his office in Shenzhen, Folke has set up a table tennis table. One similarity between Sweden and China is the love of ping-pong, and he hoped that the table would be a good way to connect the different styles of culture within the company and bring joy to the employees.
At Viral Access, there's a standard called the "happiness metric," which measures whether employees are having a good time every day. To that end, Folke brought the tradition of the fika (Swedish for "coffee break") to Viral Access, giving the company a 30-minute break every afternoon to relax with afternoon tea and snacks. He believes that creating an office with an open space allows employees to think freely and with leaps and bounds, allows for closer teamwork, and allows each individual to shine in their own way. He always tells his employees to be honest about Viral Access' motto: Move with the times.
Although he holds the title of CEO, Folke Engholm is essentially a family man, a husband to a beautiful wife and a father to his children. Whenever he has free time, he always prioritizes his family first. Whether it's playing tennis, squash, or golf together, being there for his family is the most important thing.
In addition to his family life, he sees himself as an adventurer who likes to try new things, take on challenging projects, reach out to new things and meet new people. It's this job with Netflix that inspires him to be creative in his work and brings precious memories to his life.
The road to entrepreneurship is always a difficult one, but Folke has always believed that Viral Access, with its focus on influencer marketing, could lead to success.
Today, Viral Access has won over the hearts and minds of influencers including Marshall - Zound Industries from Sweden, Spotify, 6ixty8ight, Ice-Watch, APM Monaco, and major international companies like Gap and Microsoft, among other large international companies. But Folke is not satisfied with that, he will lead Viral Access to observe and practice innovation and take on more challenges!
Founded in 2013 by Folke Engholm, Viral Access specializes in community and micro-influencer marketing in Asia Pacific, combining creative strategy with years of hands-on experience to become the leading micro-influencer marketing agency in the region.
In response to the trend of digitalization and media transformation, Viral Access has developed its own unique micro-influencer operating model and strategy to create breakthrough growth and value for its clients' brands. Viral Access provides a one-stop service to help brands achieve their marketing goals through long-term community strategy planning, unique creative content and micro-influencer combinations, and customized brand messaging.
Viral Access has the largest database of collaborative influencers in Asia Pacific, more than five years of experience in micro-influencer marketing, and a team of more than 150 professionals who provide a full range of services from content creation, community strategy planning, micro-influencer screening and communication, content marketing integrity and quality checking mechanisms, data collection and analysis and optimization.
This article is based on an interview with Marie Claire
"Finding the Right People, Creating the Right Communication.