SFV brought its entire cultural-heritage brand together in one place

Outside the window of one of the National Property Board Sweden's local offices, at Storkyrkobrinken on Slottsbacken in Stockholm, the Royal Palace rises up. It's one of the buildings SFV manages, along with the other royal palaces, the national stages, and a host of other buildings that carry Swedish identity, both at home and abroad. The agency's roots reach back to the 1600s and the office of the Superintendent (överintendentämbetet) that Axel Oxenstierna created to keep order over the realm's properties.

Managing the story of Sweden is an honor. But it's also an unusual kind of communication challenge. Because how do you hold a brand together when the work spans everything from embassies and parliament to rock carvings, churches, and palaces — and forests?

The challenge

How does a sprawling agency hold its brand together?

SFV is a distinctly decentralized agency, and that used to be reflected in its brand work. What a communicator needed on any given day was rarely in the same place.

"In one place you had the graphic manual, the visual identity. Images were somewhere else. The brand guidance in a third place. And the overarching processes and guidelines in a fourth," Stefan recalls.

The consequences hit everyone who had to produce or find material. The systems were never built to talk to one another, which is highly inefficient. From the user's point of view, you were forced to move between a whole range of interfaces and systems instead of going to one place and grabbing what you needed.

And the complexity wasn't only about where things were kept, but about how different everything was that had to fit under the same brand.

"We manage very different types of buildings. Everything from embassies and residences abroad to parliament, to ancient monuments like rock carvings and rune stones, churches and palaces — and forests, a seventh of Sweden's land area," Stefan says.

Each of those property types comes with its own demands. What was missing was a hub that tied them together.

The solution

A communication portal that unites the brand

The solution grew out of something that was already there. SFV had long used an image and media bank from Mediaflow. It worked well — but the ambition reached further than the images.

"We needed to develop a communication portal that brought together the different parts of our operations. We wanted to be able to steer the brand, deliver guidelines, and have a unifying place where we could present everything in an attractive, functional way. That's why we chose to move forward with this solution," Stefan says.

The hard part was getting perspectives that rarely meet to coexist in the same interface — the brand-driven and the down-to-earth practical. In Mediaflow's Brand Portal, they found the points of intersection where they can work on the brand from different angles — from the practical to the more brand-driven — all in one place. That was what really mattered.

In concrete terms, it's the practical, everyday tasks that have gained a shared entry point.

"We gather everything that touches users in their daily work in one and the same place. Everything from how you order or produce a sign, to how clothing and vehicles should look, to who you contact on press matters and how the offices should be branded," says Stefan, who notices the difference in his own daily work.

"It simplifies things. Instead of working across three or four different parts, you can always pull it together in one and the same portal. An incredibly powerful tool precisely for simplifying and bringing things together."

The result

The right material, in one place, in everyday work

The real test wasn't how the portal looked, but whether it actually got used across the large and dispersed organization. That ambition was set from the start.

"It shouldn't be a showroom — it should be something you use every day. It has to be practically useful. You should be able to order a sign, stay on top of clothing, brand a vehicle, and understand how the premises should be used — just as much as you should have concrete press contacts," Stefan says.

"We've had a huge amount of response. Users find it easy and smooth; they find what they're looking for. And they think it looks great. We're proud of what we manage, so it's rewarding to be able to present it in an attractive way."

Ask Stefan what he values most, and it isn't the looks.

"Accessibility is probably what I'm most proud of. It's easy to find the right thing, easy to get a handle on all the parts. I'd actually say the result has exceeded our hopes. Whichever direction you come from, you find the parts you're looking for."

About the National Property Board Sweden (SFV)

The National Property Board Sweden is a government agency that cares for and develops Sweden's shared, culturally and historically valuable buildings and environments — sustainably and for the long term, for generations to come. Its holdings include the royal palaces, national stages such as the Royal Swedish Opera and the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten), government buildings, embassies and residences abroad, ancient monuments, churches, and forests and land equal to roughly a seventh of Sweden's area. The agency's roots reach back to the 17th-century office of the Superintendent, founded under Axel Oxenstierna.