INTERVIEW

 

 

Why did you choose to go into advertising?

 

It’s a bit of a long story, actually. But, my dad had a silk screen company, so he was always a creative person. He had his own “agency”— not with creative ideas, but making stickers for the vans, you know? Or like company vans and silk screen t-shirts. And I helped him out because I loved being creative. But, then, the funny thing was, people always came with the logo that they wanted to put on the shirts, or the logo they wanted on their van. And I was like, “That’s ugly! Look, I can do better.” But every time I tried to make something better, they were like “No no no, this is fine.” You know? They never wanted this cool graphic font with amazing creative or insights for their company. So that triggered me to go into concepting, because I wanted to do more. I wanted to come up with the idea instead of people just bringing me the things to put onto shirts or something. That’s why I studied concepting, art direction at the Junior Academie in Amsterdam. After that, I just like, rolled into advertising basically. That’s how it all started, but it started with my dad being a creative himself. He was an amazing artist; he was really good. That was back in the old days when you had no computers and you had to do everything by hand. I think it’s in the blood, no? In the family.

 

How do you both copywriter and art direct? I feel as if I traditionally hear it's one or the other. 

 

It is. But it’s become different. Back in the old days, you had art direction and copy. The art director would make the art and you’d make the long copy so you could create that ad in the newspaper. Nowadays, it’s all scattered, you have to come up with the core idea—the concept. You don’t have to be a writer or an art director to come up with the idea, you just need a team to bounce off ideas. fI you can be a good writer, you can go to a “copywriting school,” but there aren’t any, there are just “concepting schools.” Back in the day, you’d study English. You’d have an English masters and then if you had a creative mind, you would end up being a copywriter. Nowadays, at least in Holland, there are only art director schools. So that’s the school you go to, and it’s not that you want to be an art director, you want to be a creative. You want to come up with the idea. So that’s what I learned over there, and naturally, you become an “art director.” But, then when I started working with my partner back then, who was one of my best friends, he was an art director too. And sometimes you come up with the idea together, but then one has to write the copy and the other one has to do the design in Photoshop, for example. So I started writing, and I liked it. But it’s not that straightforward—copywriter or art director. Bart, my art director, he’s an amazing writer as well. Sometimes we just come up with the ideas, and because I’m half art director skills as well, I can do the comps and he writes the scripts. Or I write the copy and he does some comps. Nowadays, especially in big companies, the actual “art direction” or “copywriting” is really only happening 10% of the time. Because before you actually start making the ads, or going to an edit, or writing the radio commercial or the TV script, it’s going to take like 5, 6, 7 presentations. First, you come up with 20 ideas that you quickly write out. It’s not crafted yet. So the actual craft of copywriting or art direction takes up a small percentage of your time.  It’s all about coming up with that great insight, that great idea. So yes, I am a copywriter, but in the end, everything is about the idea.

 

Tell me about your creative process. 

 

Ooh, that’s a hard one. Because the creative process is always ongoing. I think as a creative, you just have a broad interest in everything. I can look at my daughter’s drawing, or read that book, or listen to that podcast—anything that helps me to combine or create an insight from a different perspective helps me in my creative process. But it’s easy to say “natural life” is the inspiration, because you’ve heard it a lot, but no one can actually give you the answer to why it is that makes you come up with that good idea. But the creative process is, when you’re getting a brief, it’s like walking circles. You know, around, how can we say the same message? What does the client want to say, and if we say it exactly like we want to say it, it’s super cheesy. How can we say it in a way that could be really interesting? What’s that insight? It’s all about how can we create that insight to come up with that creative idea. I think you have to have a nice example. What’s a good example? Snickers. I’m just coming up with this. It’s a bar. You can say, when you’re hungry, eat a Snickers. You can literally tell that, like, yes, someone is hungry, Oh, I can’t concentrate, someone eats a Snickers, then does his test, and we cut to a mom that’s really happy because he’s passed his exam. Great, that’s exactly what the client wants to hear, because yes, when you’re hungry, this is fulfilling. But that doesn’t spark anything, that’s not creative. But then you can try to come up with, ok, but, what happens when you’re hungry? You can’t concentrate, you become annoyed, you become angry, you become sleepy, and then you come up with the idea— you’re not you when you’re hungry. No, you’re not you. Sometimes you ’re tired, so you get cranky, ok, that’s an interesting insight. And then you come up with a creative translation. You’re still saying the same thing but in a creative way. You're just trying to find that insight that gives you the platform to come up with a lot of executions.

 

What is a campaign or project that you're most proud of—Cannes or otherwise?

 

Well Live Looper was our latest, from this year. It won like 8 lions. That was such a passionate and cool project. So Downtown Records is a client for BBDO and they reached out to us because they had this band called the Academics, who had just signed their US contract for a tour. They needed something to promote that. These guys were great. Bart and I came up with the idea.

You see a lot of people performing behind their computer, behind their webcams, in a safe environment. And they perform something, that’s really great. But doing it actually live, on stage, is another thing.

These guys are really great live performers. We saw them play, and we thought, "So can we do something with 'live'?"We live in an era where everything is Live. Facebook is live, Vimeo is live, Instagram—we stream everything. And we saw, going to Reddit, people love skills that are done for real. Pulling something off real is something everyone online really appreciates. So we just started playing around with Facebook. What can we do? Yes, we can do a live concert or play live, but that’s too straightforward. Would you care? Then we started messing around—how can we break it? How can we create Facebook live or Instagram, we didn’t know the idea yet, in a new way. Then we found out Facebook has a lag, so when I go live, it has to go through whatever satellites before it reaches your desktop—there’s a delay. So we knew that, and we were playing around with live, and then I filmed my own Facebook page, and there was a mirror, mirror, mirror-effect. I was like, wow, no idea what it is, but it became really interesting. So then we started thinking about it, and we came up with an “idea” that we didn’t know would work. We thought, well if there’s a delay, and if you play one loop that’s exactly the length of one delay, you could potentially build layers to create the whole song. Potentially. So we did some tests and we could pull it off. We talked to the guys, we rewrote the whole track, we created sketches for how to create the music video, and then went live. What’s really cool is that everything was real. We had one take. If there was one mistake, it would be repeated indefinitely. We put it up on Facebook, and then also on Youtube afterwards. Somebody, I still don’t know who it was, saw it, and the put it on Reddit, and it just blew up. So we had like, no money to push it. We just did something cool, hoping people would like it. And then within a couple of hours it was on the front page of Reddit and it had 2 million views within a couple of days. And the best thing was, people loved it. So they started asking, "How did they do it?" They started analyzing the track. We made something that people really liked. Advertising, it’s not a “bad word,” but yes we make something, and if the client has a lot of money they'll start airing it on TV all the time. It can—or bad advertising—can be annoying. I don’t want to make that. This is something people really appreciate. They got massive fans, tickets were sold out, the record ­­­­­sold, and that was like—yes! We love doing stuff that people will actually love watching. And it was a six-minute event, you know, everyone said, “It has to be one minute, two minutes max.” You know, we swipe. But if you actually do something, create something people want to watch—they will watch it. Make something that makes them love me, something that they’re analyzing. So that won obviously, everything. It’s crazy. I have to count them. Maybe a hundred awards or something? Webbys, Cannes, D&AD—everything. But I love telling this story because I think what is really cool, and Bart and I always make a joke about it, is that we can’t really claim it, because we had the idea, but they (The Academics) pulled it off. 

 

If you were to describe the Cannes Lion in one sentence, how would you describe it?

 

I always tell my mom (who has no clue what advertising is) it’s like the Oscars of advertising. I think that’s like how I would explain it to people not in advertising, I guess. Or like the ultimate creative award. The highest recognition in advertising to advertising people. For me, personally, the Cannes Lions, the Webbys, and D&AD, are the most challenging to win. I always looked up to those three. Cannes Lion is definitely, was always, the ultimate reward in Holland. There's a Dutch creative thing where young creatives reach out to big companies andfor 7K we’re given an assignment. Everyone works on it, everyone who’s willing to participate can participate. Juniors in advertising or students, and the client gets every idea, but the winners get 2 tickets to Cannes. By the end of the year, and they’d try to do it a couple times a year, they fill up a bus with young creatives and drive them to Cannes so they can just go visit, go sit in those rooms where they talk about advertising—discussions, panels, watching all the shortlists—trying to learn something about it. So I think I’ve been to Cannes six or seven times even from when I was 23. That was always the ultimate reward. You wanted to be there. You saw the awards, you were jealous, the guys walking with the golden Lions—that was the bar. That was something that I wanted. I still remember my first nomination. I think I was more, or as happy, with my first nomination than with my first golden Lion. 

 

If you could create your own Cannes Lion award, what would it be and what would be the judging criteria?

 

I think that’s the hardest question. Maybe something about disruption? A disruption Lion? What I mean with that is that it’s easy if you have a client like Snickers (I’m just coming up with a client that is known for creative work). In that case, you have to go through the long process of selling the idea, starting to get familiar with the platform and idea, pushing the client to buy more creative work, but once they’ve sold more creative work, they can keep up the level of creative work. But I think what’s really challenging is selling good creative work to a brand that isn’t famous for running good ads. If you can sell creative work to a client that has never bought any creative work and it's a campaign that wins everything? It should be awarded. We sell creativity at Cannes, and we work with good clients that are willing to buy creative work. But let’s put it this way— “Introducing new clients to Cannes.” A client who would never buy good creative work and suddenly has work good enough to enter into Cannes. The “Here I Am” Cannes Lion or maybe the “First Cannes Lion” something that talks about how agencies can bring new clients to Cannes who have never been there before. It could be a good category. 

 

How do the Cannes Lion impact the advertising industry?

 

In two ways. You can push your creatives and clients to sell good work. Being recognized. Selling good work, making good work. As a client and agency. I want to work at an agency that wants to make good work, and you’re at BBDO because you’ve found out that we’ve won a lot of Lions. And that means we push ourselves, we push our clients, to make the best work out there. It’s also recognition and attracting talent. If you attract great talent, you can win great business. It all adds up. That’s also one of the reasons for why we moved here. In Holland, you really only have Dutch award shows. DAAD, the Effies, but then only Dutch creatives are known by Dutch creatives. For me personally it’s like showing the world that I did a good job. That helps us as a creative team. When we have interviews with people in Amsterdam, with BBDO, they saw our portfolio, they obviously saw the list of awards so they knew, “These guys are solid. They can come up with a good idea.” So most of the interviews were only about—who are Bart and Pol as people? Are they nice to work with? Do they have big egos? Or are they just laid back guys you want to work with? It helps us a lot, also because we’re achieving our goals and living in New York. The Cannes Lion helps in that respect.

 

What do your Cannes Lion represent to you?

 

What do my Cannes Lions represent to me? I think it’s the recognition of success. Maybe not now, but maybe in twenty five years. Now, it’s just you want to be the best. Everything, every year. If I don’t win one award, I get annoyed. It pushes me to do better, great work, every year. I think it’s a hard question, but it sets the bar. I’m not saying Cannes Lion is the goal with every project, no it isn’t. But it’s good, creative, effective work which can also be really creative and award-winning. So for me, it’s recognition. That I was successful. Or maybe it’s how people look up to me. It helps us hire new people that want to work with us. We get lots of emails: “Hey do you have a job opening?” So without spreading the word, people are coming to us saying, “We want to work with you.” And I know they have the same ambition as me, so we can end up with a really good team.

 

Have you ever seen any work you didn't think deserved a Lion?

 

Oh yeah. It’s a bit of a weird thing, Bart calls me the walking dictionary. Because for some reason, I do remember ads. When we’re concepting and Bart comes up with an idea, I’m like yeah, but it’s been done before in 1983 in DDB in New Zealand. Don’t ask me why I know that, but for some reason, it’s a natural thing. When I watch an ad, I do remember it. That’s how I trained myself as a student. I would watch an ad, and ask, what was the problem? How did they come up with the solution? I’d analyze it. I do that with every ad still, I think it’s unconscious. But I also remember all the ads. So coming back to Cannes, I see a lot of ads, where I’m like, it’s been done before. By this and this agency, a couple of years ago. That’s why I think personally I’ve come up with a couple great ideas that unfortunately I had to kill, because it’s been done before. And obviously you can’t know every ad in the whole world, and that’s fine. But there are some that are obvious and you think, “Yeah, it’s been done before.” Do your homework. It’s still fine to do that campaign. You don’t have to kill it because it’s been done. If it’s still successful for the client, why can’t you do the same for an Amsterdam and New York client? Maybe it’s been done before in Singapore in 1985, but it at least helps your client. Don’t just think about yourselves, think about your client. Maybe you can tweak it, make it better. For obvious reasons, if you’re looking for Cannes Lions should always be about recognizing good work, new work and pushing creative work. 

 

What do you believe are key elements to a Cannes-winning campaign or idea?

 

I think it should always be about what is the idea? Is it new, is it flashy, is it a fresh insight? If you look at a Cannes Lions, (I'm not talking about a nomination or a Bronze, but a Silver or Gold) you can feel the passion and the craft. They thought about everything. Every detail is done right. They pushed themselves. Another example is a couple of years ago Bart and I won a Gold Lion with a campaign about an interactive music video with Phillips. It was all about hearing every detail with Philips headphones. It was an interactive music video and you could sing along by clicking in the orchestra and you’d hear every note. That was the core idea. We could’ve done that and it would’ve been it, but then we tried to push it as far as possible. I remember counting every note in that music orchestral piece, 10,179 or something. You know? It puts things in perspective. We interviewed every person. A long list of questions to figure out how much they practiced, for how long, so I could figure out how many hours they spent playing that instrument in their life. You don’t want to hear those details, but if that’s the concept, you want to see that detail, you want to have that orchestra. You want to know everything about that person. I tried to come up with every little detail about that person, music-wise. So in the end, it was rewarded for the craft and passion we put into it. The hours, the extra things, every aspect of that campaign made sense and it was done in the right way, if you know what I mean. So you could feel the passion.That’s what I think helps you win the ultimate award like a Gold Lion. You see the craft, the passion, you see they went for it and they did it well.

 

How do you define innovation?

 

Innovation is such a broad word. Innovation? I can look at robots being made, AI, but in advertising, innovation is combining elements. Combining communication with innovation. Almost like adding an idea to innovation. Drones, for example. I’m going on a road trip and I’m looking at drones, but it’s basically a helicopter that you can put in your backpack. You don’t have to rent a helicopter anymore to get that aerial shot. That’s innovation, but it’s not communication yet. A couple of years ago, we did an interactive beer bottle for Heineken that won two Lions. It was innovation, and back then it was super cool. But now, it’s become really standard. Because innovation keeps reinventing itself, keeps pushing further.

We have the technology and we can use it to innovate. Overall, I see innovation more about how can we use technology that’s surrounding us? VR, self driving cars, etc. How can we use those elements to create new communication tools? For example, when KLM brought their airlines to the US, we did a campaign. KLM isn’t well known in the US because they always fly from Delta gates. But KLM is really an innovative company, and their core is that they’re really helpful. They’re your friend. We wanted to create a campaign about that. We thought, yeah we could create a commercial telling people who we are. Or, we can let them experience it. So what we tried to do was find niche problems inside of airports. For example, if they’re flying to Amsterdam, from the US, you have to wait 3 hours ahead, carry hand luggage. Traveling with kids and both kids have their backpacks, you have strollers, bags, whatever. So we came up with a combination of innovation and concept into Carrie—who is a self driving trolself-drivinglows you around the airport, and also knows all the points of interest in the airport. So you can tell it, I want to go to a restaurant, or to a bar, or go shopping, and it takes you or leads you to the shopping mall or wherever you want to go. But it also knows, because you checked in with your ticket, when your flight is boarding. It can lead you to the gate, it can drop you off at the time, it’ll know if you have a gate change. We not only created this trolley and put some technology in there, we also wanted to highlight the personal aspect. So we created a really cute character that almost feels like a Pixar character. With eyes and a special voice that doesn’t really tell you something, but by it’s sound it has a personality. It hums, it falls asleep when you go to the bathroom because it’s bored. It becomes sad when it drops you off at the gate. You combine innovation with a piece of communication—a personality. And create something new that didn’t exist before. We created a campaign around that. Yes, it has the technology of a self driving car. It’s self driving, it avoids obstacles along the way, it can stop—it has all the elements. So yes, there’s so many innovations, but it’s not just about innovation, it’s about the character too that makes the innovation human.

 

What advice do you have for someone who aspires to win a Cannes Lion?

 

Don’t focus on winning a Cannes Lion. That should never be the goal. Yes, you can look at the Cannes Lion and aspire to make good work, but you’re never going to get the brief that is ready to win a Cannes Lion. It’ll never be like, yes we have two million, five million to create this campaign and it has to do something, we don’t care. It’s never so open to creating the most amazing work. You have to find the creative space within the brief. You have to approach a brief in such a creative way that it becomes something that people haven’t seen before. And if done right, you could eventually win a Cannes Lion.

You only need one good idea. Everybody can have one. My mom has a good idea, my sister, so it’s not about I have a great idea. It’s about getting that idea actually made. That’s 90% of your job almost. I can come up with a good idea every day, but that doesn’t mean I have 365 Lions. You have to be lucky. It’s almost as if winning Cannes Lions runs in two circles, there’s this little sweet hot spot. The left circle is what the client wants and buys and the right circle is what the creative wants. And they have to meet at the right time, you have to present the right work. Did you get that director you want to work with? The production company? Did we need to invest in that project? Maybe there wasn’t enough money to pull it off, but they see that it’s a good idea. Everything has to come together, but in the end, when you have a good idea, everyone starts winning. I believe that. I actually believe that if you have a good idea, there’s always a chance of getting it made. That would be my advice. Don’t give up. You have to hussle, you have to try and get it made.