In this blog, I double click on what I have labelled New Nordic Public Affairs, including some of the new trends, I see in this region, and some strategies to approach them.
The idea for this topic came after I did a few presentations about Public Affairs in the Nordics for international companies, who were either focused on /worried about the coming Danish EU Presidency, one of the coming 6 elections in the Nordics the coming 18 months or just wanted to get a better understanding of certain policy areas lead by Nordic Commissioners.
In part 1 of this New Nordic Public Affairs mini-series, I focused on what characterizes the playing field for Public Affairs Professionals (PAPs) in the Nordics + what makes it different - if you haven’t read it yet, then I recommend doing so before you read on.
But before you read on, remember to subscribe to the blog, its free, and only about Public Affairs.
New Nordic Public Affairs?
As mentioned in the first blog on this topic, several elements have changed the playing field for Public Affairs Professionals (PAPs), during the past decades.
In the first blog, I identified four important factors, that all shape the playing field businesses face when conducting Public Affairs in the Nordics:
In this second part, I expand the figure with four of the new trends, which I believe will continue to influence Public Affairs in the Nordics during the 2020s:
A New Political DNA
I have written about this for the past few years, among other places in my book “The Public Affairs Engine” from 2020. After observing politicians and studied election campaigns, I am a firm believer that on an individual level there are external factors that have changed politics, which PAPs have to take in to account if they want to succeed in PA, especially due to what I call the triangle of death:
Low trust in politicians & no patience among voters, everything is polarized & binary
24/7 news cycle (frenzy) driven by SoMe - fight for attention is endless and very hard for newcomers
Attacking opponents (also companies) can be a winning formula = no need for dialogue (I can recommend the article below about this topic)
These factors have in my view changed how politicians behave, and the Nordics is no exception. If politicians want to get elected, they have to adapt to these factors, like it or not. And thus, changes in the DNA of politics inevitably also result in changes in the playing field for PAPs.
Further, there is another joker in all this that feeds in to this triangle of death described above: The classical left-right continuum understanding of politics does not quite cover the complexity of the political arenas in the Nordics anymore. Voters are not as loyal, parties have been weakened, which is also why new parties are popping up from election to election. This trend-in-the-trend represents a shift in voter or political consumer focus and especially gen z, x and eventually gen alpha have different value-sets and - contrary to what many believe - I do not believe that these new generations are very homogenous, rather the contrary. So if you are a new politician trying to tap in to a voter base, you will eventually need to be very much in sync with the zeitgeist.
And thus, if this is the new normal for politicians, it will eventually also become it for PAPs.
New technology & digitalization
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed a broad cultural shift to more agile, intelligent ways of doing business, and the Nordics seem to really embrace technology and digitalization. Apparently Nordic companies adopt digital technologies at a 15% higher rate than their European counterparts and therefore also rank near top on digital adoption in Europe.
Source: McKinsey
Artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud solutions are considered to be core transformative technologies with broad applications across multiple industries, including Public Affairs.
A short ex-course on AI: For me this is not about if AI will influence Public Affairs or not. I believe it will. But it is more about when and how. Whenever there is a hype about a new technology or way of working, think of the classic Gartner Hype Cycle, before you sack everyone in your team doing manual work.
People really want to believe that the latest new thing will change status quo and improve something fast. It might. But not as fast as you think. The perspective should usually be longer, and not quite as sensational and disrupting.
The hype about AI is real though. Just look at how many AI-experts are suddenly popping up on LinkedIn. I recently even saw an ice-cream producer promoting an AI-ice-cream… But not all tools and products are great just because they have AI in their name - this is especially also true for Public Affairs.
Tools and technology typically account for <10% of the PA team budget. In marketing and communication, it’s typically around 20-30% of a CMO budget that is spent on technology and tools.
This amount will increase in PA for sure, but my bet is that the main part of new budget will be allocated for digital tools, not necessarily AI-based. Teams need to improve how they work together, share and discuss information. You do not necessarily need AI for that. AI needs to move out the shadow of “infinite interns”.
But the main point here is that Nordic PA teams are very digital, they are open to new ways of working, and will increase spend in these area substantially in the coming years.
Micro-mobilization & astro-turfing
Micro-mobilization is the next wheel put in motion due to the two previous new trends. And in a Nordic environment with local communities and organizations playing a big part in the societies, then this can result in comeback for micro-mobilization - and have in mind this is both on-line and off-line.
Currently there is a trend in the Nordics (and Northern Europe) that SoMe campaigns and activities are being reduced as a part of a PA plan simply because it is too risky to engage with stakeholders, also reflecting the New Political DNA as described above - the SoMe-trend is also something I covered in the Public Affairs Manager Survey 2025.
If SoMe-activities are reduced based on a simple risk/reward analysis conducted in the PA team, this has at least two implications.
First, SoMe monitoring and analysis (e.g. sentiment) will still matter as PAPs will still need to follow what is being said and what is trending, it might even be more important. What is tricky is that it used to be enough to just monitor Facebook and Twitter as these platforms covered the majority of stakeholders. Now this is much more fragmented, and you have a battery of SoMe-channels, chosen by stakeholders based on values and believes, not just availability.
Second, many have totally written of “old” media and especially local media in their PA activities. But having the New Political DNA in mind, politicians are extremely focused on what their constituents think and how they behave. So local media or localized channels can still play an important part in PA activities. E.g. in Norway the local media have historically been strong and important to include in PA activities, and in light of the SoMe “retraction” local media can perhaps play a more important role for PAPs, at least in election years. In countries with weaker or less influential local media, I have observed that outdoor campaigns e.g. billboards at bus-stops have had a revival, which I myself on more than one occasion have proposed clients. I have always believed that death sentence over physical campaigns have been exaggerated. Yes, people look at their phones while waiting on the bus or when they use the metro, but they look at a screen full of noise, which then makes it possible to influence them while they look out the window or connect the brand or message to a place familiar to where they live or work. When SoMe was in its infancy, many PAPs chose SoMe as it provided a form of framing control, which served as the base or a building block, and then later more traditional media could be included or approached. But now, with all the toxicity and trolling on SoMe this might again cause a revival to local media or more physical local campaigns to influence or mobilize locally, maybe to influence a local MP.
The term micro-mobilization is closely tied to another term, astro-turfing. Astroturfing (originally referring to artificial grass) has a bad rep, but the term is basically the practice of enabling or promoting (critics would say “masking”) the cause or movement and encouraging it to push on. Normal grassroot activity is very “natural”, impulsive or unstructured, while astroturfing may turn a movement into a near-professional organization. Like it or not, it is a phenomenon which some PAPs know about and shouldn’t be scared of addressing. As long as you as a company are transparent about the causes you support and you are ready to explain it in public, then you are shouldn’t be scared of this.
I have observed astroturfing many times in the Nordics, even though that some of these companies conducting it, never heard of this term before. But the reason it has been a tactic used is due to the strong local communities, the “pluralization” of stakeholders involved in policy creation as well as the special Nordic way of listening to the point of views from “minorities”. Further, there are also certain historic reasons for why it is easy to activate these types of local groups, e.g. more territorial or cultural reasons: rural vs. urban, defenders of local traditions vs. more globalist, secular views, peasantry vs. king etc. These types of views are still prevalent in the Nordics, maybe more in Norway than in Denmark, but in my view still found across all of the Nordics in varying degree. It is basically about polarizing, or finding “cleavages”, a term, btw, coined by famous Norwegian political scientist Stein Rokkan!
Lastly, astroturfing can sometimes also bring very different partners - maybe even opponents - together, which can serve as powerful alliances. Often these ways of more indirect or “outside” lobbying is considered to have a more long-term focus than direct lobbying towards ministers or MPs. This is true, but it also reveals that this is often how you succeed in the Nordics, by playing the long game and adapting to environments - something foreign international companies sometimes have a hard time understanding.
If you are more curious about astroturfing I have discussed this topic with PhD Marco Kovic on my podcast, The Persuaders, on Apple Podcast here.
Organizational shifts
The mentioned particularities and differences in Nordic Public Affairs are mainly externally oriented. However, there is another trend at play, more internally focused, which makes PA stand out in the Nordics, or more accurately, that make the PA functions different.
The PA functions in the Nordics are - based on my hundreds of observations and conversations - usually placed under Communications or Regulatory Affairs/Legal departments, as most other places in Europe.
However, the composition of the PA functions are typically different than other parts of Europe, something I also covered in the Public Affairs Manager Survey 2025. A shift has happened in the Nordics.
Depending of course on industry (and maturity of the PA function), there has been a tendency that the PA functions have leaned towards Communications, mainly due to the importance of media sentiment and the plethora of stakeholders involved in the democratic processes and power struggles in the consensus-seeking Nordics.
Thus, the skill-set needed to handle this environment has developed to be broader than “just” lobbying/networking skills. At the same time, when the PA function is placed under Communications, this also forms a path dependency for the PA function, that typically directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, supports the path set by Communications, and in my view also become influenced by a certain Nordic way of conducting “communication” as a discipline.
So in short, this particular Nordic path forms a demand for certain PAPs with particular knowledge about e.g. media processes, stakeholder understanding and engagement, the political “consumer” - and if we zoom out a bit, what we can define as more generalized skills.
On a final note, I will stress that there are further organizational changes happening currently across Europe, perhaps helping PA towards the goal of increasing legitimacy - especially the need to move away from being purely a cost center towards a business enabler, i.e. become more business-oriented, value-focused in essence. In a Nordic context this also has certain consequences for which specific business-skills the PA discipline should acquire. I have written a bit about this shift also, if you are more interested in perspectives on this.
Conclusion: New Nordic Public Affairs - old wine, new bottles?
As I have outlined in these two blogs, there are clearly areas in which PA in the Nordics differ a lot from other parts of the world. In essence my take is that you will only succeed with PA in the Nordics by playing the long game and adapting to environments - something foreign international companies sometimes have a hard time understanding. The examples of these companies entering the Nordics and basically destroying their brand along with their chances, are plentiful.
New Nordic Public Affairs? I am convinced that there is something different in the way societies and politics work in the Nordics, which then again form how Public Affairs work. Or needs to work.
Maybe, for now, to answer the headline above, the conclusion is maybe rather “new wine, old bottles”?
/Kopp