Electrolux’s Nikos Bartzoulianos knows where he sits in the divide between performance-driven and brand-driven marketing.
“I belong to the latter more,” says the home appliances brand’s chief marketing officer. “Performance is a skill that you can easily buy. It’s an algorithm, you just do it. But the craft of brand building is a bit more rare and unappreciated in recent years.”
Founded in 1919 in Swedish, the company is the second largest appliance maker in the world by units sold, after Whirlpool. They sell premium washers, dryers, vacuums and kitchen appliances with brands including: Electrolux, AEG, Frigidaire and Westinghouse. With cheap alternatives in the marketplace, Electrolux relies on its strong Swedish branding to connect with consumers.
“As a trend in the industry, we see the celebration of the machine instead of the human experience. We’ve been trying to highlight not the product itself, but what the brand stands for,” says Bartzoulianos. “The brand is more important in a commoditized industry.”
Electrolux brands stand for “shape living for the better.” The three main pillars are human-centric innovation, Swedish premium simplicity and an ever-lasting relationship, under the umbrella of sustainability. “We celebrate the human and not the machine,” explains Bartzoulianos. “We curate life long experiences around care, taste and well-being that shape living for the better in a sustainable way.”
In May, the brand dropped the “Tough Being Beautiful” and “Wash Life Balance” spots. Last month, the company dropped the “Every Bit of Life and Well-Being” campaign in Poland that will soon roll out globally. At the core of these campaigns are humorous ads that play up the Swedishness of its products.
Prior to joining the Electrolux Group in 2024, Bartzoulianos spent eight years at Samsung Electronics and five years at Procter & Gamble.
Bartzoulianos will be speaking at the Brand Innovators Building Brands with Purpose, Creativity & Emerging Tech Summit at HSBC in London on November 18. Brand Innovators caught up with Bartzoulianos from his office in London to discuss balancing global with local marketing, as well as the importance of positioning the brand as Swedish, even outside of Sweden. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about your approach to storytelling in your recent campaigns?
It’s the manifestation of our new brand archetype. Electrolux used to have a more passive tone. In marketing terms, we used to be a caregiver brand. What we discovered was that given the tremendous amount of innovation we have had throughout the years, the brand archetype that suits this brand is a hero brand like Nike is a hero brand. A brand has to be depicted in this tone. Some of the core values of Scandinavian culture are humility and humbleness, which is an amazing value to have.
But that shouldn’t mean that you are not also bold and confident. We decided to shift in mindset and communication with everybody on the team around the world to be bolder, in an unconventional and witty way. We show the benefit of the product but it also tells the story of the brand. It’s a brand that is bold, confident and is not afraid to use humor and be self-critical to ease the superiority claims that we make. Because above all, we are very humble. All of the communication needs to have some entertainment and aspiration value, whether it’s the lifestyle, the characters we introduce, how we demo the product benefit. All of that needs to connect seamlessly to the product benefit.
Why do you focus on Swedish culture in your ads?
There was a big debate about whether or not to use Sweden. One of my big pushes was to basically capitalize on the Swedishness of the brand. Some of the markets might have some concerns if Sweden is this relevant for our consumer. Whenever we tested it, it scored extremely high. It’s not the topography of Sweden or the colors of the flag or the geography of Sweden.
It’s the lifestyle values and what Sweden and the Swedish lifestyle represents that is universally relevant. This is something that no other brand can replicate. It adds meaningfulness and also differentiation. Especially in an era where many Korean or Asian or Chinese brands start to compete more and more on price and features. Where we need to provide the relevant information, the relevant innovation, the relevant features that serve consumer needs in the best possible way.
As a brand that stands for the humanness of consumers and their needs, how are you adapting to new technologies and AI?
We’re embracing new technology. We apply a healthy level of skepticism because it’s not about AI for the sake of AI. It’s what is the right application of AI in a way that is useful and helpful to the consumer. In other words, our journey doesn’t start with technology. The journey starts with the consumer. What is the consumer need? What do we want the end consumer experience to be? Then what is the available technology? How can we use that, tailor it to fit the consumer lifestyle in order to better serve their needs? That’s how we use it. We were at a conference in early September and we saw amazing innovation. I’m not 100% sure all of that is actually needed.
Maybe 5-10% will be actually needed. In our case, we test AI as a system. We try to make AI useful for the end consumer in the best possible way. For example, we use them to make recipes easily available. Then our ovens would be seamlessly optimizing the cooking time and settings, for example, to make everybody a very good chef.
Can you talk about your approach to balancing global and local?
It’s something that is omnipresent in every company I’ve worked at. There is no one-size-fits-all. There is a role for local markets. There is a role for global. What the brand stands for cannot be different around the world. It needs to be said. How it’s executed and activated can be nuanced and locally relevant. My approach is to think global and act local. The key is to empower the markets. I’m in no position to know what the Polish consumer needs but my marketing head in Poland knows. The Australian marketing head knows their market, so they come and co-develop the campaign we are going to launch there.
I’m not going to do it alone. Does this mean I need to have an extra meeting or two? Yes. Does this mean we need to get outside our comfort zone and our time zones? Yes, it does. That’s what it takes for greatness. Coming together to the same table is the best way. That’s what separates great brands and great performing teams from teams.
Can you talk about how your past experiences have helped you shape your perspective in your current role?
I spent almost 10 years at Samsung. One of the biggest challenges we had with Samsung was global versus local. How much can North America run on its own, for example? It’s a super big, very important market. It sets the culture. For big brands, obviously, if North America doesn’t work, then it’s failed. So the local U.S. team always played a very important role. In a big company like Samsung, you can afford having two speeds. I observed independent campaigns running in the U.S. versus the global ones.
We worked on building more governance and stabilizing this by involving the markets, making them part of the journey. Offering something that can actually work, not just for the world, but also for North America. It’s not easy. It’s painful. It’s more difficult than you would imagine when you identify the things that unite them rather than the things that separate them and focus on the differences. It’s a mind shift that is needed.
