SF and SF Bio – which is which?

They have similar names, similar logos and are constantly confused with one another, even internally by us at Bonnier - for instance, in the newsletter that went out to all employees last week. Yet, SF and SF Bio are devoted to completely different business areas. We asked Stefan Klockby, CIO at SF, to help sort things out.

"I agree that it's confusing," says Stefan. "Initially, it was one company involved in both film and cinema, but in 1998 the operations were divided into two companies: SF Bio AB, which operates cinemas in Sweden and Norway, and Svensk Filmindustri AB (SF), which is a production and distribution company with operations in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. SF produces and distributes its own films along with foreign, especially American, films for the Nordic market. We do this at the cinema, on DVD, for television and on new platforms. These are two fundamentally different areas of business."

What are you doing to reduce the confusion?

"Wherever possible, we try to explain the difference in all contexts, especially towards the media," says Stefan. "I usually draw a parallel with Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks - two completely different companies with the same name and logotype."

One thing that especially confuses matters for the public is that the name of SF Bio's website - the site where tickets for all SF cinemas are sold - is sf.se, whereas SF itself as yet has no public website at all.

"It's obviously a problem for us that the site, sf.se, is an incredibly strong brand," says Stefan. "But it's important to know that SF Bio sees us simply as one supplier among many. We work with them under exactly the same conditions as all other film producers."

But why doesn't SF have its own homepage?

"SF promotes individual film titles to the public. We don't promote the company name SF, and we haven't had a great need for a separate website from a 'corporate' perspective. But the Nordic operations have grown and developed considerably n recent years. In addition to distribution, we have also invested a great deal in local film production in other countries. This, combined with international sales from our film rights libraries and our ability to communicate and develop interactive applications on the Web with all our stakeholders, has now created that need."

Over the next few weeks, a new website, Svenskfilmindustri.com, will therefore will be launched - the details of which will follow here on this website. It will consist of two parts: a Swedish section that will be a combination of a public and business-to-business site, and an English section that will serve as a pure business-to-business site. Hopefully, this will help to distinguish the two companies, both internally and externally.