Weird, but pleasantly weird. That was our first thought when we saw this commercial for telco provider Ben, created by Kumpany and directed by Hein Mevissen. The story roughly combines the tradition of Sinterklaas (the Dutch St. Nick) with the style of a Spaghetti Western. The protagonist is wearing Ben’s corporate colour and needs to “deliver this sack to Holland”. We don’t know what our blue friend is carrying or when he will be arriving in “Holland”, but that’s o.k. cause according to the press release nobody knows. To make the campaign integrated, you can follow him on Facebook and see what places he is visiting. One thing seems pretty sure, he’ll bring something for everyone – which is probably an interesting telco deal with Ben. It’s quite a bold choice of Ben to change its advertising property so radically. Then again, it is the only wise choice to make Ben stick out again in the overcrowded competitive field. Ben was introduced in 1999 by KesselsKramer with a legendary style that was so distinctive that the brand obtained instant fame. Then T-Mobile bought the brand, killed it in 2003, and made it come back again in 2008. But it was never able to reclaim its fame. This brand new commercial has the potential to do so. Let’s see what happens.

Last Wednesday the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Nederland) hosted a session in ‘De Kring’ on the Rembrandtplein dubbed ‘XXX Expat’ (XXX is part of the city’s shield), with the noble aim of bringing two parts of the Amsterdam ad industry together; the Dutch and the expats. Some would say these two groups are surely two sides to the same coin, others would say these are separate entities with little or nothing in common other than geography. The somewhat lacking relationship between these two communities has been well documented over the years, yet despite this, nothing has ever quite bridged that gap, except of course – modest as we are – Amsterdam Ad Blog. Lode Schaeffer (ECD at Indie), new chairman to the ADCN is determined to branch out and readdress the balance. The idea was simple; get five speakers from leading agencies in Amsterdam to each give a presentation about the experience of living and working in Amsterdam as an expat.

The evening kicked off with Chris Baylis (ECD at Tribal DDB, British), Baylis talked about “Dutch optimism”, something he applauded as one of the great positive cultural traits of the city. He continued, however, by showing how this optimism has a downside when applied to the work place, and quickly becomes a laissez-faire attitude to deadlines and overtime. He explained how shocked he was upon arrival that Dutch employees as a rule refuse to work weekends, a delinquency he had thankfully managed to stamp out of the agency by hiring more international folk who were prepared to sacrifice their free time and days off. So the thing you initially like and champion in a culture becomes the thing that you don’t like and try to change. This insight came up a few times throughout the evening.

Next up was Eric Quennoy (ECD W+K, Australian) who took us on a leisurely, sprawling train of thought following his journey of experience in Amsterdam during the five years that he’s worked here. This talk was more free-form than lecture, and all the better for it. The last 5 years of his career have been “the most productive and the most satisfying so far”, which he puts entirely down to the city itself. The “nurturing environment” and “oasis of calm” allows all the chaos to go into “your work instead of your life” and the “beautiful backdrop of the city” affects you positively as a creative person. He pointed out that in other cities you spend half your time competing with other companies, watching what they are doing, trying to stay ahead “keeping up with the Joneses”. Whereas here he feels free to do his thing. Just as great artists retreat to epic landscapes to create their final opus, “we ad people do our best work out of Amsterdam” – well said Eric.

Jennifer Skupin (Creative, KesselsKramer, German) started things off by unwittingly, but comically, reinforcing a certain national stereotype when asking to “be in control of her own slides”. The idea of structure and control versus fluidity was evident in her presentation as she contrasted German ways of defining things versus the Dutch way. The prime example being KesselsKramer, which is branding meets design meets advertising. This idea of blurring the lines between different disciplines would be all but impossible in her native Germany. She admired the Dutch “strong sense of design” and the importance attached to “corporate identity”. She made an interesting point by contrasting Dutch police cars and fire engines with German ones. Dutch design won, hands down. However not all aspects of life in Holland were equally pleasing and she termed Amsterdam a ‘stop-off place for the International crowd’ populated by the transient.

The following speaker was Ron Smrczek (ECD TAXI, Canadian) who was the freshest blood on stage with only ten months in Amsterdam under his belt. Therefore – as he admitted himself – some of his observations were “rose tinted”. His main points were about Amsterdam being beautiful, old, multicultural, yet English speaking and how the city stays true to its roots and history. TAXI merged with a local agency, so there’s a strong Dutch culture at the office, he joked about the way everyone took lunch together, which was great, but “WHY does it have to be exactly the same every day?!”
His final observation was that on the surface there doesn’t appear to be a huge ad or design industry here, but if you scratch away you can find little pockets of magic.

Finally, Stephen Hancock (Creative Director 180, British) set up his well thought-out presentation by observing that 180 still feels quite isolated “in our own spaceship” as an international agency – even after 13 years here. What attracted him to the ad scene in Amsterdam was the random mix of people and nationalities in the mix, as opposed to London, for example, which seems to churn out “one type of person, quite wanky.” He agreed with previous speaker Jennifer Skupin that it was easier to blur the lines here and many disciplines under one roof and noted that historically Amsterdam has always been progressive, global, outward looking. Another typical thing about the Dutch is that the way of thinking is far more polarized; you either “love or hate” something – which he literally quoted from the invitation – as opposed to the lukewarm “like or dislike” (see picture). The combination of a “no nonsense” approach and wanting to have “everything under control” is translated in Dutch design; it all looks so well ordered and linear. Designer Dick Bruna, famous for creating Nijntje (or Miffy), was mentioned as a product of this sense of restriction and discipline. His final point was the town and its industry is small enough that “everyone in this room knows each other by default” so there was no more excuses in bringing the Dutch and the International audiences closer together.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the speakers were on the whole positive about Amsterdam. Their insights were largely shaped by the amount of time they’d spent in the city and the experience of living here; as opposed to any really deep insights into Dutch culture – perhaps Stephen Hancock’s design references came the closest to this. Ultimately the event worked best as a rallying call and reminder to the Dutch ad community as to just why so many international folk move over to work in Amsterdam. In fact it’s sometimes far too easy to take the good life for granted.

Here some more pictures.

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 series of tongue in cheek messages conveying the unattractiveness of the Hans Brinker hotel in the Kerkstraat, KesselsKramer this time conceived these freshly designed posters apologizing for the bad service. Let us be clear about one thing: the concept of positioning Hans Brinker as the crappiest hotel in Amsterdam is rock solid. It has proved its success wonderfully well over the past decades by attracting millions of shoe string travelers visiting Amsterdam. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t mind seeing something new.

The good thing about working as an ad agency for small clients (with small budgets) is that your creative playground gets much more spacious. Big brands often don’t dare to stick their neck out, let alone go political – the consumer might turn against them! Not Lotte Yoga School; she hasn’t got much to lose. And that’s why she gave KesselsKramer carte blanche. And when you do that, you get distinctive work. Together with these posters – that promote a €5 trial session – Lotte Yoga School also sent each politician a letter. Unfortunately they are not very well written – here’s one that invites Geert Wilders to try yoga. In any case, a sympathetic idea; if we ever feel our brain is getting rigid, we’ll try out Lotte’s Yoga School!

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.

This film for Ben promotes a website that allows you to dance with Bashir. The webcam application that recognizes your dance movements was built by SuperHeroes and based on the commercial ‘Ben & Bashir’ by KesselsKramer – directed by Mijke de Jong. In the KK commercial Bashir throws his mobile phone away. When it comes back like a boomerang he catches it again – don’t ask us why, but it follows up a series of commercials released in September, last year. The dance app is very techy and smartly made, but we were also left wondering what Ben is trying to sell us here.

This week it is the national Book Week, an initiative of the ‘Collective Propaganda for the Dutch Book’ (CPNB). For this occasion CPNB asked Erik Kessels (KesselsKramer) and writer Christine Otten, to create an essay around this year’s theme ‘Written Portraits’. The result is Good Luck, a story based on a found photograph album of two unknown lovers. The two lovers were given a new life by Kessels and Otten; they became Betty and Pierre Vincent. Kessels is known for his fascination for lost photographs. He already created several books and exhibitions with pictures he bought or found on flea markets – e.g. the wonderful series In Almost Every Picture. Unique about this essay is the fact that it comes with a perfume, especially designed for the story. This makes it the most complete love story you can imagine; in words, images, and scent.

This is the concept of a new campaign by KesselsKramer for mobile phone provider Ben in a nutshell: if you are stuck to an extensive mobile phone contract and you can’t get rid off it, you might have an interesting story why you want to get rid of it. Tell your story through your webcam and if provider Ben likes it, it will buy off the contract and give you a flexible Ben contract instead. On top of that, you’re story will be ‘reconstructed’ by a bunch of actors. So the picture in this post is an example of the original versus the reconstructed story – here’s the ‘commercial’ (in Dutch) that comes with it. And just like the previous Ben ad, the takeout is of course that Ben is as flexible as a straw. Reconstructions remind us of missing persons and uninteresting television, but maybe it’ll work on the internet. In any case, it’s interesting too see how Ben adds production value to user generated content so that it becomes more interesting to watch.