In 1948, Mr. Ivan Hammar worked as global PR
and brand manager at Facit. He got the idea
that the company should have a human PR
symbol and asked for a draft.
”I met a great
resistance when
introducing the
character,
especially from
people in the PR
business, but
despite this, I
believed in the
idea.”
”Slowly, and
carefully I started to
introduce him in
various settings, in
PR material,
instruction booklets
and so on.”
”Thanks to the sales director, Carl
Skande, the Facit man started to show
up at exhibitions, in shop windows, and
his popularity increased steadily.”
”Today, I meet people who can’t find words to
express their gratitude for this creation.”
(in 1968)
The Facit men joined Facit in the global
expansion in the period 1950-70.
Facit wanted to make office work more joyful,
and those 1 million Facit men certainly
contributed to this.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this was
an innovative piece of marketing. Office work was
considered as boring and consequently, products
from Olympia, Olivetti and the others were
regarded as boring.
Facit was different. It’s very hard to estimate
the benefit of this clever marketing.
Those more than 1 million Facit men can be
found throughout the entire world today.
If you wanna buy one in Sweden, you’d
probably have to pay about 800 SEK...
They provide a great memory of a great
company that collapsed back in the 1970s.
The story behind him reminds us that if you want to
do something new, you will always encounter
criticism since no one has thought about it before.
Photos taken at:
Åtvidabergs Bruks och Facit Museum, Sweden
http://brukskultur.atvidaberg.se/index2.html
Åssa Industri och Bil Museum, Sweden
http://www.assamuseet.se/
Thank You!
Most of those images come from the fantastic Facit
archives in Åtidaberg. Many thanks to
’Brukskultur’ and to Åtvidabergs Kommun for
taking care of this great source.
Christian Sandström is a
PhD student at Chalmers
University of Technology in
Gothenburg, Sweden. He
writes and speaks about
disruptive innovation and
technological change.
www.christiansandstrom.org
christian.sandstrom at chalmers.se