Last time we judged KesselsKramer’s work for Hans Brinker more of the same. Well, here is something new. And we like it. This dedicated YouTube channel invites people to create some advertising for the Hans Brinker hotel – “the most discouraging hotel of Amsterdam”. The reason that Hans Brinker asks the crowd to help out, is that it believes in advertising, but not in fancy advertising agencies. It doesn’t matter whether you share “a talking kitten, your drunk friend cycling or a Rick Astley video” you just have to make sure that you mention Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. When a video reaches a 1,000 views, Hans Brinker will pay you €10 in cash. It looks like KesselsKramers – Hans Brinker’s fancy advertising agency – made some nice examples to trigger the crowd. If these examples help to make this campaign actually get picked up by the crowd, we’ll like it even more.

In the past decade KesselsKramer has made some great advertising for Hans Brinker; always convincingly underselling the Amsterdam budget hotel with a good sense of humour – making it very attractive for shoestring travelers. If it comes to underselling, this “High Tech” virtual receptionist with a constantly changing mood, does the job. It is a pity though that the concept is a little worn out; Burger King’s revolutionary Subservient Chicken was innovative 10 years (!) ago. What also surprised us is that the receptionist doesn’t really answer your question; “Can I borrow your pen?” was answered by “Kanker Hoer” – read: cancer prostitute (?!). If this concept is to show that Hans Brinker has a shabby advertising budget; well done. Then again, we liked the shitvertising better – it didn’t require much budget either.

The Hans Brinker budget hotel likes to tout its ‘what you pay, is what you get’ (= not a lot) business model. Like in this banner, based on  ‘research’ that showed that 47% of the visitors don’t use their bed at all – they are too busy partying. Apparently the sleeping is often done when Amsterdam has already been left far behind.  The agency that made the ad, KesselsKramer, is practically married with the hostel. Over the years the consistent anti-advertising (of which the most famous example is the ‘shitvertising’; Amsterdam dog turts adorned with little flags that say “Now there’s even more of this at our main entrance”) delivered the hotel an incredible amount of budget travelers. In reverse, the hotel delivered  KesselsKramer an incredible amount of free publicity. A symbiotic relation in ‘optima forma’. The banners will be appropriately displayed on hostel.com and Tripadvisor. Who said online display advertising is not effective anymore? You just need to use the medium in a smart and relevant way.

Last Thursday Boards Magazine organized their first European creative ‘workshop’ in Amsterdam. The theme of the day was ‘The New Age of Storytelling’. Alex Melvin (founder of 180 Amsterdam) and Mark Aink (general manager of S-W-H) co-hosted the day and invited an interesting mix of international and Dutch speakers with different creative backgrounds and inspiring angles on storytelling.

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