Story type: News

A  brief history of Ciceron time

Our founding fathers – the brothers, Andreas and Christian Palm, started their idea of what was eventually to become Ciceron Group in 2005 at Handels Lab. Many post-it thoughts and business plans later they founded Arena Event – Your Personal VIP-Service. Under this name they put together luxury trips to New York, Miami and of course Las Vegas.

To spread the word Christian’s Las Vegas expertise was picked up by none other than the Swedish newspaper Expressen and he shared his insights of Sin City in a weekly column called “Veckan I Vegas”. From his basement in Tyresö Christian kept up with Vegas and mentally he attended every celebrity party there was.  

Arena Event slowly grew but there was something that did not sit perfectly well with the brothers – the name did not exude the perfect schwung. One day, over a bowl of Samyang Ramen fast noodles, Andreas and Christian were talking to their friend, Micael Dahlén, and the idea suddenly hit them – what if we rename ourselves Ciceron, after the Latin Cicerone, meaning guide. After some debating about the pronunciation and if it was too hard they made up their minds and ”Cic-uh-rohn” Group was born. (2006)

Andreas and Christian continued to steer the ship with post-it project management and lots of enthusiasm. They gathered inspiration from the best of the best in service; hotel chains like Ritz Carlton and their storytelling, Disney’s culture of everyone caring about the cause and helping high and low and Zappos and their excellent customer management and WOW-thinking.

After realizing the post-it approach to project management sometimes led them to just rely on luck (and boy were they lucky) they decided to expand the team and move to their brand new offices at Kungsgatan 39.

They decked out the office with trendy items like clocks showing the time in different time zones, but most of all, they decked in out with passionate, knowledgeable and highly committed people, loving every minute of traveling the world with a client base that kept growing.

The first large trip in 2010, took the whole team to Sicily and the Ciceron Service Academy emerged. Prepared with proper budgets, show flows and binders full of information the team started WOWing guests in a way that had not been seen in the Swedish traveling industry before,

2012 gave Ciceron an opportunity to grow with our amazing clients at Cylinda  requested field staff working with the same kind of spirit and WOW-mentality as out in the world. This was the start of Ciceron Ambassadors (later to be renamed Activators) – making friends, educating and extracting WOWs up and down our long country.

2012 also saw the first chartered flight in Ciceron’s history as a strike prevented 144 people from traveling on the scheduled day to a large conference in Miami. This trip would also include tropical storms destroying a rooftop dinner and headaches miraculously cured with birth control sugar pills, proving the placebo effect is real.

In 2013 Ciceron Group had grown out of their office at Kungsgatan and moved into their magnificent office at Mäster Samuelsg. 10, where we still reside today, as you clearly know by now. This started the Ciceron Party era, with a combined birthday for Andreas and moving into the new office party.

Ciceron started the initiative to invite our best clients to Q-breaks where we invited interesting people to share ideas and lots of talks about the importance of culture. Some of the Cicerons started doing keynote speaking assignments to spread the way we look at service, culture and the WOW and the effect this has on bottom lines. (2014)

With some new recruits, especially passionate about the Swedish market, we started growing rapidly in the events sector. Taking our way of working and applying it to venues around Sweden. Our mission: to make a conference in Kista the best, most memorable and mind-blowing experience seen. With this our creativity sparked. Being an office with passionate employees the ideas kept flowing. An unlocked level of creativity and letting imagination run wild gave incredible results! (2015)

We started challenging ourselves in creation and wanted to share it with all our clients, friends and family by hosting a huge 10-year celebration at the office! We turned our office into New York, the carnival in Rio, the jungle in Borneo, and a pharmacy – in the classic Ciceron neon green. This is also the year when we voted to bring in our magical, but oh so hard to resist, candy wall. (2016)

Something big happened in 2017. We rebranded ourselves. We re-did our logo, our pitch deck and we said goodbye to green (not in a sustainable matter – that kinda green we welcomed even more).

Our proudest, most joyful moment was our 2018 win in Agency of the Year. We were known as an outsider, a mythical group amongst the rest of the industry, and this was our debut. The joy was indescribable to the extent that we could not do any proper work for a few weeks. This was also the start of our 3 year winning streak in Agency of the Year. We celebrated with another big party – Spaceron.

This was also the year that we noticed something missing in our portfolio, a proper studio. Ciceron Studios saw the day of light and our productions went from shaky home videos with a cute VHS feel to high quality productions.

Our 2019 was hectic – we grew to 34 people and extended the office to include a few rooms one floor down. We were on our rolliest roll and produced events and traveling more than ever, going into 2020 with the highest spirit.

We all know what happened then – we produced our first digital live event!  In a modest 36 hours.

A few years of struggling like the rest of the world 2023 came with the largest event we ever put together – 4095 people traveling into Stockholm for 3 days of conference, fun and parties!

And then there was the story of the ketchup – the glitter ketchup – that we excitedly pitched knowing there was edible glitter and yeah, ketchup. We spent a collective 1h workshop blending different types of glitter with ketchup. Needless to say, our dear colleague who got the pleasure of continuing the experiment and spent a month trying to find the perfect glitter-ketchup combo, was not too happy with the pitch team. (PS. We did not charge for the ketchup hours, but we did eventually manage to make a very nice glitter mustard).

And now we are here – ready and eager to party with you all again, celebrating our 7th consecutive year in the top 3 of Agency of the Year, the Home of Brand Experience and a team of 30 passionate HQ Cicerons and a huge family of Ciceron hosts.

Beginning of 2026 – block every calendar you have because we are already planning Ciceron 20 years! You are invited!

SES pitch recommendations 

We have teamed up with a group of other brand experience agencies in Sweden to put together some pitch recommendations, together with SES (Sponsrings & Eventsverige) to help our clients get the most out of their briefs and proposals. 

We always put our hearts and souls into our pitches and love getting to know our clients. We believe these are good recommendations to get the most out of what you are looking for in an agency and will help save time and money.

Read about it here.

The trendiest of trends: Generative AI, holograms and AR. 

By Sofia Norelius

As a Millennial at a relatively young office, my age is sneaking up on me at times. Even though I see myself as somewhat young still and pretty in tune with what is going on in this innovative world I find myself sometimes free falling into the bottomless boomer pit when it comes to new technology. As Creative Director and lover of all creativity in general I try to keep up with the latest trends and cover up those pits. At least give me the chance to choose to avoid them or let myself helplessly fall into the magical world of make-believe where AR holograms of insane campaigns have been created physically and not just manufactured in post-production and spread online for people like me to gasp at. 

First of all let’s distinguish between them

• Generative AI: the use of AI to create new content, like text, images, music, audio, and videos
• Holograms create a virtual environment 
• Augmented reality overlays digital information on top of real environments, in other words, creates post-production. 

So, how can these three be used in the best kind of way in the brand experience industry? AI tools such as ChatGPT are used daily at Ciceron to use time efficiently, creative copy, images for decor ideas, sound bites, concepts, as a search engine and much more, and boy has it a great tool when stuck on an idea! We cannot wait for the participant admin tools to become sharp and reliable enough to simplify our processes making us make our project management even more efficient and smooth. 

Holograms we have used for example in a showcase breakfast event where an Oscar Zia hologram performed for our guests, while the actual person was away on other missions. 3D hologram logos for branding have also been used frequently at events. But what has stood out in marketing and brand experience over the past few years has been the increased use of AR holograms. Where AR holograms are created in post-production to post on social media and spread as a real campaign. An example was Manchester City making a grand entrance in Tokyo. Large, futuristic, holographic cards projected on top of team buses traveling around the city looking as real as can get. Or the huge Lätta butter spread packages on top of famous buildings not to mention Jacquemus handbags as large as SUVs roaming around the streets of Paris, making a lot of us swoon in hopes of it being the real deal and googling what production company has put wheels on the bags. A positive note is that this sparks the imagination as never before, but a challenge is to physically compete with these digital experiential campaigns who has captured so many people wanting to imagine it all real. 

I believe all campaigns sparking creativity, inspiration and imagination are good in the end, challenging us to think new, think big, and incorporate new technology in new, fun ways to create the best experiences and streamline our processes! 2024 – bring on more of these trendiest of trends! We are ready!

Why visual content makes a difference

By: Ann-Sofie Fällman

Most people probably have a rough idea of what content is, or at least what it could be. I often tell my friends that I work with content production, and I’m quick to provide examples of what it is that we do. However, when I leave the discussion open and ask for their perception of the content, the answers are often a bit hesitant. 

”-Is it like social media and influencers? We don’t really work with that.” 

To which most often reply: ”-Yes, it can be, but it’s so much more!” When I continue to bring up examples like motion graphics, informational videos, tailored graphic communication, internal tutorials, event sizzle movies, invitations, artwork, and infographics, there is often a reaction of sudden realization. Most people actually know what content is, but do we know why it is so important? In fact, there are several established theories that provide answers to this question: 

Absorbed faster. Visual content is registered and processed in the brain much faster than information presented solely in text or speech. 

Stored for longer. Visual information is stored significantly longer compared to text and speech. 

Trigger emotions. A picture is worth a thousand words, making it easier to communicate and convey core values. 

Increases credibility. Visual content increases credibility towards a brand. Research shows that people are more likely to absorb information when it’s backed up with visuals. 

So, the next time you’re figuring out how to convey a message, look back at this post and remind yourself why visual content is the key to successful communication.

All paths lead (back) to Ciceron Group

By: Tua Solax

They are nurses, real estate agents, personal trainers, entrepreneurs, and soon-to-be doctors. Some of them even have their forever homes in other parts of the world and some have been with us from the very beginning of Ciceron’s history.

They all have other occupations that have little to do with the world of brand experience and events, but once or twice a year, they drop their everyday lives and transform into Ciceron hosts. Why? Well, there is more than one reason why we say once a part of the Ciceron family, always a part of the Ciceron family.

It indeed makes a lot of sense that former Ciceron HQ employees and key personalities within our hub of Ciceron hosts have such diverse everyday lives and occupations today. The power of diversity in terms of backgrounds, skill sets, and. personality is a vital part of the Ciceron core. We believe that the diversity of experience and backgrounds is unquestionably a force to be reckoned with.

We are forever grateful for every single member of our extended Ciceron family, those who work with us regularly, and those who make time to join us once a year – every single one of them is indispensable and part of what makes Ciceron unique.