If I have to name the advertiser of 2011, I don’t have to think long; it’s easily KLM. The reason? The Royal Dutch airline launched numerous digital platforms in the past year, experimented wildly with social media, and turned Twitter into a mature customer relationship channel. If there’s one company that has fully embraced the extensive possibilities of digital communication, without forgetting about both its commercial and communication targets, it’s KLM.

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I have to admit. Lately I have an obsession. It’s a bit of a nerdy obsession. It’s about defining the agency of the future. Maybe this doesn’t sound dead sexy at first glance, but bear with me for a moment. In return I’ll promise you this will lead to excitement and I’ll throw in some relationship advice in as a bonus. But let’s first get back to the nerdy part. The part I’m diving into is defining the agency of the future. The more I am getting into that, the more I am convinced that the agency’s biggest challenge is not about understanding online or social media. The biggest challenge is a fundamental reboot of the way we define the concept of ideas. I think it’s unbelievable – and maybe even unforgiveable – that in the advertising business we seem to make everything we do important and big, but in the end we never truly rethink the essence of our ideas. To honestly ask ourselves if maybe a different type of ideas is needed to actually become measurably important in driving conversions. The large part of the business is still about the holy grail of finding the big idea. That one and only idea that can be campaigned 360 degrees – including social media and online, mind you! I think 360’s make you dizzy. And sick. Sick is not good. It makes you look greenish and, yes face it, unattractive.

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Asheru (known to many as Ash) Alhaag is a young man who joined our agency, WE ARE Pi, early this year as our genius intern. Ash has a very positive do-er attitude with great style and an entrepreneurial spirit. Already at the young age of 22, Ash is the Editor in Chief of the online publication, Collect & Curate: a venue that appeals to the 20-something year old who has a varying set of aspirations and appreciates the modern trends set by music, fashion, literature, and art. It is a magazine for youth culture by youth culture. Ash and his co-editors are the epitomes of a new generation that creates and shares content online without any restrictions.

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In a recent crowdsourcing campaign airline Transavia asked the consumer to come up with a new slogan for the company – the prize: one year of free travelling around Europe and your slogan on a plane. An impressive 110,000 slogans were submitted. But to everyone’s surprise the top 10 nominated slogans were ridiculously bad. All of them were lame, hollow, and generic. Among them: “A good story”, “The choice of Holland”, and “We fly for you”. The eventual winner “Makes you happy” only makes some sense when referring to the fact that it made me laugh out loud.

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Great for the art of advertising!

Last week a few local political parties (PvdA, GroenLinks, and SP) in the Amsterdam city council proposed a bill that forbids outdoor banners on buildings and scaffolding in Amsterdam. The current law allows 50% of the building façades to be covered in commercial messaging and forbids this along the canals, with the exception of corner buildings. According to the local politicians proposing the ban, this specific type of outdoor advertising causes ‘visual pollution’. BlowUP media, for a large part depending on this form of advertising, is taking legal action against the bill. Understandable. But, is a ban really such a bad idea? And, what does it mean for the advertising world?

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If you work in Amsterdam as an American, there are some special moments when you see the striking differences between cultures in regards to race. The most widely known is the tradition of Sinterklaas. The Dutch version of St. Nick comes up from Spain with a bunch of helpers, who are named Zwarte Piet – Black Pete. Foreigners, who first hear about this tradition, usually call this tradition racist, while the Dutch will respond, “What are you talking about?” You quickly learn here that stereotyping black people is not a big issue.

The most recent case in point is brought to us from Mona – the makers of dessert puddings – for their latest new product innovation, ChocoDreams.

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As it turns out, the client does hold all the cards. 9 long years in the business and I have seen, heard, abjectly denied, laughed heartily over and accepted the most extreme client requests. I have driven the hardest, thickest-skinned creatives to tears. I cried alongside them.

But still, we always got paid. In fact, the agency always had the last laugh. We always thought we had “the Kings on the river”. We could blur the line between advertising and art. We painted cities’ faces with whatever we felt like, changed the world one mobile phone sold to a child at a time. And we were rewarded greatly. There was a time when the mighty ad giants were household names – neigh – gods. Entire agencies jetted about the place on private planes for pitch parties. There were posh sandwiches on Mondays. More…

Robert Röling, PhD student at the University van Amsterdam (economic geography), wrote an article about his research on Amsterdam’s success in attracting international agencies and creative talent. The article is titled “Small Town, Big Campaign: The Rise and Growth of an International Advertising Industry” – it is published in the academic journal Regional Studies. Röling’s thorough article starts with describing the history of international advertising. In this context scholars nowadays speak of four big waves of international advertising, Röling explains. And Amsterdam is the centre of the fourth wave. More…

The World Cup has given me the opportunity to see far more Dutch TV than usual, and this is how I caught this advertising gem made by Dutch mayonnaise brand, Calvé. It says “if we knew where our food came from, would we make better choices?” Then continues with a rewind sequence culminating in this choice shot. I get that the brief is to tout the eggs coming from free-range chickens. The execution has farm all over it. Though I doubt the chickens actually live like this as free-range generally means there is a tiny door at the end of a massive chicken coop housing thousands of animals and a one meter square patch of dirt on the other side. Anyway, Calvé – a Unilever brand – is getting with it and making strides toward rubbing themselves in sustainability. And three cheers for getting my attention with rewinding chickens in a decidedly low interest category for me. More…

While BP pollutes the Gulf of Mexico with around 100.000 barrels of oil per day, British-Dutch oil company Shell is broadcasting a very sober corporate commercial on Dutch television at the moment. In the commercial a Japanese kid plays his electrical guitar in his bedroom. His parents are annoyed by the noise and turn off the power – in Japan you have a switch that allows you to turn off an individual power socket. The message; Shell sells clean gas in Japan, so the people can enjoy clean energy. At the end, a voice-over adds with some tongue in cheek: “as long as Mr. Yukotami [or a similar name] allows his son to do so”. More…

In the US, commuting to work generally consists of sitting in your car in traffic. There are a handful of cities where you might take the subway or a bus. But you’re still looking at 30 minutes or more of unpleasantness. At my last two jobs, I managed to live within walking distance. I did this partly because I do a lot of research into the psychology of happiness, and two of the things that we can never get used to, unlike a nice new car that loses it’s happiness boost pretty fast, are noise and commuting. More…

How Apple closed the technology gap between older en younger generations by making user friendly software

Recently I came across this ancient ad for Remington typewriters. How old fashioned, I thought; “For young. For Old. For everybody”. When it comes down to today’s digital ‘typewriters’ the gap between grey bearded men and their grand children has never been bigger. My dad for example can only use – let’s say – 5% of all the functions that I use on my computer. This problem did not exist in the time of the mechanical typewriter. More…

How Philips confirmed my preconception about LED and shed a whole new light on its tagline

In 2004 Philips launched the tagline ‘Sense and Simplicity’. I clearly remember that I liked this small phrase straight away – though it wasn’t hard to improve the previous one: ‘Let’s make things better’. Sense and simplicity communicated exactly what I wanted to see in consumer electronics; made by intelligent engineers and translated into a simple product that I can intuitively use. Just like the iPhone; loved for its sense and simplicity. But last weekend I saw a Philips ad that gave sense and simplicity a whole new meaning. More…

Here are two easy words to learn in Dutch: vriend and collega. I’m betting all you non-Dutchies get those right away, but if not, those are the words for friend and colleague. What was interesting and frustrating to me upon arriving here in Amsterdam was the difference in implication of those words in English vs Dutch.

Let me explain. When I started working in Miami, Winsy Dunwoody, a new fellow planner immediately invited me over to dinner at her house with her fiancé. I could have been a psycho killer or a total bore but she was willing to find out, open her home to someone new in town and make them feel welcome. I’ve been in Amsterdam for 13 months now and have never been invited to a Dutch colleagues’ home. More…

Even now, a year after moving, everyone I meet asks me why I left CP+B to move to Amsterdam. Before this move, every other job interview, offer and acceptance had followed essentially the same pattern. A day trip from Boston to Richmond. Or Richmond to Boulder. Eight to ten meetings with planners, heads of client service, creative directors. Hurried lunches with three people trying to get a little food in your face. Scurrying off to the airport and back to the current job. Then a call a week or so later, always from an HR person with no authority to negotiate, pretending they do. More…