Global Fintech Pioneer Klarna Leans into Swedish Origins for First Major U.S. Brand Campaign

Global fintech pioneer Klarna is launching its biggest brand campaign in the U.S. to date, in partnership with creative agency Mirimar. The 'Klarna: Swedish for smooother shopping' launch will lean into the company’s Swedish origins to introduce American consumers to the revolutionary online shopping service.

Launching today and continuing throughout the summer, the 360 integrated campaign features a unique series of online films, an interactive virtual shopping experience, brand and media partnerships, social media, podcasts and digital activations and promotions. Doubling down on Klarna’s Swedish origins, the film portion transforms over 50 years of Swedish cinema, TV and soap operas into entirely new stories with comically mismatched English subtitles. This same thinking informed the shoppable-entertainment interactive experiences, gaming integrations and social activations that will roll out across the summer.

Founded in 2005, Klarna offers products and services to consumers and retailers within payments, social shopping and personal finance. The campaign is part of its evolution from payments to delivering an end-to-end shopping service and app, which will introduce Americans to a smooother way of shopping online.

“Klarna always strives to deliver more from our products and services—that’s what the extra ‘o’ in smoooth represents—and this campaign is no different,” said Klarna CMO David Sandstrom. “We aim to bring an element of entertainment to the shopping experience, so why wouldn’t we deliver more to our audiences in our marketing, too? We wanted to genuinely entertain and reflect the elevated shopping experience we’re bringing to U.S. shoppers in every aspect of this campaign.”

"It’s been exciting to partner with an innovative tech company like Klarna. They entrusted Mirimar to help build the brand here in the U.S., and from day one, we’ve shared ambitions to make great work together,” said John McKelvey, Mirimar’s founder and chief creative officer.

The campaign was created during the Covid-19 pandemic. To pull it off, Klarna, Mirimar and renowned Swedish director Andreas Nilsson collaborated remotely between New York, Stockholm and Los Angeles. (Nilsson directed parts of the campaign, shot on location in Stockholm). Andreas Nilsson said: "Not sure when I last saw an unusual project like this blossom into such a beautifully absurd campaign. Coming up with simple, brilliant and unique ideas like this is hard. Keeping them simple during the course of production is sometimes even harder. Thanks Mirimar and Klarna for sending me down the wormhole of nostalgic clips from my Swedish childhood. It’s been a trip."

For Mirimar, the campaign represents the first work under its new agency banner. It was established in late 2019 by John McKelvey, who previously co-founded JohnxHannes, which was Ad Age’s Small Agency of the Year in 2019. McKelvey and members of the Mirimar team previously developed work for Squarespace, as well as Expensify’s 2019 Super Bowl ad, brought extensive fintech experience to the campaign.

“Creating a global brand campaign during the pandemic was a challenge, but it forced us to think and create differently,” said Luke McKelvey, co-founder and managing director of Mirimar. 

Independent media agency Noble People and social and influencer agency Movement Strategy also worked to bring the campaign to life.