The Viking Manifesto

A call to arms for a new way of doing business.

The vikings used to drink from the skulls of their enemies.

Now they sell furnitures in flat boxes.

They took a civilization based on pillaging, plundering and narcotic mushrooms and gave us the Nobel Prize, IKEA, Ericsson, Lego and Absolut. With a population of just about 20 million for Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, today's Viking only account for 0.3 per cent of the world's population, yet produce a whopping 3 per cent of all world exports. Scandinavian products are first-rate, but it is their brands that have swept the world.

The violence is gone, but modern Vikings still have an ingenious and slightly blasphemous approach to making a name for their companies, products and causes. The Viking Manifesto explains why advertising doesn't work and why this is good, why competition is nonsense, why reward and punishment are an inferior form of motivation, and why money doesn't make the world go around. It's the method without the madness. It's old, it's new and it works.

The Vikings are back and they mean business.

• Introduction
  • "No one will ever buy a Swedish Vodka!"
  • Let the blasphemy begin
• Part I: Marketing Principles
  1.  If there's something you'd rather be doing, do it
  2. Invade with a good idea
  3. Visionaries often look back
  4. A change of course, but never a change of heart
  5. A few words before we set sail: learn the basics
  6. Plan your attack
  7. Use your weaknesses to your advantage
  8. Decide which small god to pick on
  9. Think small and see the big picture
  10. Think big and see the small opening
  11. Even in a war of words, actions speak louder
  12. Make money on suffering, despair and poverty
  13. Make money on human decency
  14. Be humble and rude (rather than arrogant and polite)
  15. Adopt a target group — people you like or people like you
  16. Make money by giving things away
  17. Start innovative, stick to your principles, change
  18. Blend in by standing out
  19. Learn the new maths
  20. Perfect the product
  21. If your product is really terrible …
  22. There are millions of products, but only two brands — be both of them
  23. Competition is a secondary consideration
  24. The tools remain the same
  25. Advertising doesn't work and why is this good
  26. A good story is worth millions more than it used to be
  27. Viking Zen (or summer fashion at 30 below zero)
  28. Go against type
  29. Use education as marketing
• Part II: Corporate Culture Principles
  30. Pillaging, plundering and other family values
  31. Everyone's in charge
  32. Learn to make the right mistakes
  33. Problems are a manager's best friend
  34. Put berserkers in front of the boat (… but don't let them steer)
  35. Put violence in perspective and take it out of your business
  36. Make a note: slavery is an administrative nightmare
  37. Empower your women
  38. Competition is nonsense
  39. If you want to motivate, forget reward and punishment
  40. Talk is cheap, but still overpriced
  41. Ressurect the lost art of decision-making
  42. Keep people honest
  43. Plagiarize the plagiarist — an original idea worth copying
  44. Put lawyers in the last boat
  45. Use creative accounting for a better world
  46. Controversy is great, if you're right
  47. Rethink money
  48. Two approaches to dealing with crisis — proactive or poodle
  49. Take marketing studies with a pinch of salt
  50. Don't leave luck to chance
  • Appendix: The Latest thing from AD 900

Well, it was funny at least. Otherwise, it was mostly a book that touched on Guerilla Marketing, and tried to make it into something purely Scandinavian.

Not bad, but not really good either.