The Platinum Egg 2021: Jacob Nelson.
Enigmatic adman Jacob Nelson was born in Lomma in 1966. Ever-present, ever surprising, he is always discreet. (They say he and the Mona-Lisa are distantly related.) Growing up in an educated, artistic household, with the director of Lunds Konsthall, a major art gallery, for a mother and an adventurous dentist (root canals on lions in Africa) for a father, Jacob learned early on not to be afraid to look at things from new and unexpected perspectives.... “I grew up in a home that was half gallery and half library – art and ideas everywhere.” After finishing school, where he turned out school newspapers and promotional material for school revues, Jacob dreamt of teaching history and Swedish, but his grades weren’t good enough for university. So instead of sitting through lectures on the Battle of Poltava, he ended up in the darkroom of a Malmö ad agency, Benner & Co. Unexpectedly but unsurprisingly, when he reported for military service, he was deemed officer material. In the midst his cadet training in Skövde, when the deadline for applying to the AD program at Berghs School of Advertising loomed, time, graphic art knives and drawing boards were in short supply. There was, however, an old typewriter. Thus he ended up in the copywriting course, instead. The rest is history, and it’s well-documented in the Golden Egg books. After a brief stint at ad agencies Werne & Co in Malmö and Motor in Helsingborg, Jacob headed to Rönnberg in Stockholm, where he did memorable creative work for the Post Office, TV3, Viking Line and Expressen. Later he spent several eventful years at Paradiset DDB, with clients like Diesel, Arla, Norrlands Guld and Cloetta. For the past two decades, following a brief interlude at Romson, he has been a creative director at Forsman & Bodenfors. His next challenge has been taking over as chair of KOMM, the industry organization for Swedish communications agencies. Nothing turned out the way Jacob thought it would, yet everything went exactly as you might have thought.