Posts Tagged ‘Amsterdam’
The Awesome Slideshow. 20 Deeper Truths on Twitter.
April 28th, 2012 • Twitter, Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Funny, Gerald, PR, Presentation, theass, Twitter, Underway
Two days ago I had the pleasure to present during The Awesome Slideshow at Amsterdam’s Boom Chicago. Tom De Bruyne, co-founder of Sue Amsterdam, was so kind to ask me to present ‘something connected to twitter’. And the following little deck was the result.
The starting point for this presentation was a simple thought: Twitter is far more than a digital tool. It is a philosophy machine – a thing that creates realities. And the following selection of some of my 20 most favorite tweets proved that.
My Column. Now also featured in Adformatie.
April 27th, 2012 • News
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, adformatie, Amsterdam, Amsterdam Ad Blog, Column, Creativity, Listening, PR, Real time, Strategy
I am actually not a big fan of personal PR news flicks on my blog. But I was a bit proud of this one I have to admit: Adformatie – the biggest marketing/advertising/whatever magazine of the Netherlands has just published my column for Amsterdam Ad Blog for the first time.
It is just a short text and certainly not the reinvention of marketing. But hey: I am in adformatie. Thanks Amsterdam Ad Blog for the cooperation. Thanks Rindert for the scan.
Dutch Advertising FTW. Charlie Sheen goes 0% with Bavaria.
April 12th, 2012 • 1 comment Ads
Tags: Advertising, Agencies, Alcohol, Amsterdam, Brands, charlie sheen, commercial, Creativity, Food, Funny, Ideas, selmore, TV, We like
Just a couple of months after making Hugh Hefner drink Bavaria the Beer brand now promotes its alcohol-free range again…with known Alcoholics as testimonials.
First Don Johnson, then Mickey Rourke. And of course it is now Charlie Sheen to defend the freedom of drinking 0% beer. The campaign comes from Selmore Amsterdam.
Crazyness. In the Meantime in Amsterdam.
Februar 14th, 2012 • 1 comment Allgemein
Tags: Amsterdam, Gerald, personal
I have to admit I did a terrible job in blogging lately. I got 99 problems and pitches were three out of these 99 problems. So here we go with a traditional conflict between my life as a blogger and my life as an employee. But it will be better, I promise.
By the way: Here at Blast Radius Amsterdam we are currently looking for a Freelance Senior Strategist or Strategy Director that is not just strong in digital strategy – as for anyone that we would hire – but has specific skills and experience in (a) optimizing a brand’s eco–system, and (b) digital comms planning. Potentially this might become a full-time position in the future. Contact me for more info.
Oh…and if this isn’t enough. Blast Radius Amsterdam is located in the most beautiful city on Earth. Definitely. Beyond work this is what Amsterdam looked like last weekend. If this isn’t enough incentive…
Why I love Wikipedia. My Presentation at Amsterdam’s Pechakucha Night.
Januar 24th, 2012 • Tools, Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Funny, Gerald, Pechakucha, Pechakuchanight, Presentation, wikipedia
A little update: Last week I had the pleasure to hold a presentation at Amsterdam’s 20th Pechakucha Night. If you don’t know the concept: Pechakucha is an open presentation format where people can basically present whatever they want. But they need to present it on 20 slides and no slide will stay on the screen longer than 20 seconds.
I presented my love to Wikipedia. It was exactly on the 18th January that Wikipedia spearheaded the web’s strike against SOPA. In other words: An ideal day to present this small big courageous platform that we profit so much from and which we sometimes give so little back. Little hint: My 10 most WTF Wikipedia articles are just a small collection of what you could find on Wikipedia. Read them. They are hilarious.
Amsterdam DNA. City History Goes 3D.
Januar 5th, 2012 • Display, Events
Tags: 3D, Agencies, Amsterdam, Culture, Display, Events, history, museum, Netherlands, PlusOne, Presentation, World
As an Amsterdamer by choice I can hardly imagine anybody without a certain trace of local pride when it comes to this wonderful city. No matter if you live here for two weeks or your whole life: the citizens of Amsterdam know in what an exciting place rich in history they live.
Amsterdam DNA is a new exhibition in the Amsterdam Museum that takes the spectator on a three-dimensional 45-minute journey through the history of the City. The versatile story of the city is presented in seven intriguing films produced by PlusOne Amsterdam.
The first film is called Revolt. And it deals with the city’s struggle for freedom after the middle-ages. I am looking forward to the exhibition. Well done Guys.
Amsterdam DNA – Revolt from PlusOne on Vimeo.
Rolling with the Gnomies. One Week with Amsterdam’s Marketing Peeps.
November 21st, 2011 • Allgemein, Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Events, Gerald, Underway, World
I don’t particularly like marketing events. But my last week was full of these wonderful happenings with my favorite ad peeps in my hometown Amsterdam. And in the end I have to admit: It was actually rather great.
Monday – Event 1: Meeting John Hegarty
John Hegarty is a legend. He is one of the three founders of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and you 
can compare him with David Ogilvy or Leo Burnett – apart from the fact that he is still alive, lived a couple of years later then the two other guys, and his ideas are still really relevant for today’s business. Anyway: Mister Hegarty has written a book. Basically his advertising legacy. Hegarty on Advertising contains over ‘four decades of wisdom and insight from the man who put Nick Kamen into a laundrette for Levi Strauss and gave Audi the immortal Vorsprung durch Technik, amongst many, many other highly successful campaigns for major brands‘.
Hegarty came to Amsterdam last week as guest of the wonderful American Book Center here and presented himself as the cool, silverbacked Madmen that he is and (of course) presented his book. I haven’t started reading it yet – but if you are quick you can get your own copy here and that I have no clue what I am talking about.
Tuesday – Event 2: The Tomorrow Awards
Believe me: I passionately hate the concept of awards. Why? Because I reject them as a fair measure for creativity. Most awards are money-producing client-service tools for agencies (the Webbys have just founded the Lovie awards to generate more revenue). And no, I don’t really see the point why Amsterdam needs its own award show. But apparently since last week exactly this is the case. We now learn that: The Tomorrow Awards is the first international award show dedicated to discovering, showcasing and awarding advertising creativity that pushes new technological boundaries. Since the very best examples of such work are those that defy standard award show categories, the Tomorrow Awards is category-neutral; all entries are judged together, and only the very best ideas shine brightest.
Okay: Whatever this is. I had a brilliant evening with the marketing peeps from Amsterdam, watching people like Taxi’s Paul Lavoie, AKQA’s Nick Bailey, or Sid Lee’s JF Bouchard giving brilliant speeches. And I am truly, wholeheartedly a fan of Anomaly’s Carl Johnson. His blunt, bold and direct speech about what he perceives as creative made me constantly nod happily. Good that anomaly is in town now. Welcome guys.
Thursday – Event 3: Founding the APG Netherlands
We were planning it for a while already: The inauguration event of the Account Planning Group Netherlands.
So after a couple of months of preparing, me and my six colleagues Heather (Strawberry Frog), Laura (FHV/BBDO), Boris (THEY), Wouter (Boon Strategy) Laurence (AKQA) Simon (Blast Radius) launched our first for the new home for Marketing Strategists in the Netherlands: Inside Insights.
No Way Back. Why I still am a Convinced European.
November 7th, 2011 • 6 comments Politics
Tags: Amsterdam, Europe, Germany, personal, Politics
I spent my last weekend in England where one of my best friends celebrated his wedding. My friend is German (as I am) and he married his English girlfriend. While spending the weekend with my friends I had an interesting conversation with one of his English friends about Germany’s role in the European bailout process. He told me what other Brits had told me before: They expressed compassion for all the money that specifically Germany has to stake now (the last bail out sum was EUR 211 bn) to save the EU – while the UK’s share as a traditionally Euro-sceptic nation is much lower.
Upon returning to Amsterdam my girlfriend and I got to know five young Italians at Schiphol airport who needed support to find the right train to get to the city center. They were tourists and asked a lot of questions about living in Amsterdam and our reasons for moving here. And at one point one of them asked us: “How do you like Italy?’
It is difficult to answer something reasonable when being asked something like that. But I quickly realized what this young guy from Turin actually wanted to know. He wanted to find out about our German perception of the weak econonomic situation that Italy finds itself in these days. His personal explanation of the current Italo-German relations sounded almost exactly like this: “Italians like to live – they enjoy long lunch breaks but nobody really works. Germans on the other hand are ambitious and they have a good working attitude which is why Germany is the richest country in Europe nowadays. And they wanted to push the EU further so they can help out.”
No doubt, I had to disagree. I have heard similar stereotypes before. But neither is there an economic German success gene nor is there something like inexhaustible money well in Germany. Just 10 years ago Germany was considered as the Sick Man of Europe. To quote an article from 2002:
The German economy’s underperformance is a result of an economic structure built on social consensus rather than market forces. The Weimar republic and the following Nazi era led to Germans attaching a very high premium on domestic stability. (…) The structural rigidity of the German economy has meant that it could not react quickly and nimbly to changing circumstances. (…) Occasionally the FDP (Germany’s liberal party) might mumble something that would be a step in the right direction, but aside from their self-inflicted implosion, they would in any case not be a major force.
A decade later and FDP – aka the only German party that gets it – is on the brink of disintegration. Europe’s market squares have become camp sites for OccupyWallstreet protesters, even Harvard’s Business Review asks ‘Was Marx right?,’ and Germany has miraculously become Europe’s fit man. This is not the result of the aspirational German working attitude. It is the result of something completely else.
That’s why I had to contradict the young Italian guy from the train: What is happening right now has nothing to do with Germans being ambitious and Italians (or Greeks, or Portugese, …) being lazy. It has got something to do with a clear Political agenda of economic reforms that Germany conducted in the mid-2000s. Many Germans had to accept extreme cuts and much lower levels of social grants than before (oh…and it cost our former Chancellor Schroeder his job – but that’s a different story). Just pretending that this is a mix of good luck and the right attitude is simply not true.
The result was a stronger economic climate as you can see in the following diagram which shows the German unemployment rate since the reunification.
In fact: this wealth was paid for by many Germans since the mid 2000s – and luckily it paid off. But we are not talking about money that was heaven-sent.
Stuff We Like. Selfcontrolfreak’s Interactive Videos.
Oktober 20th, 2011 • Experimental, People, Tech, We like
Tags: Amsterdam, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Gaming, intelligent, Pechakuchanight, People, selfcontrolfreak, Tech, video, visual, We like
Last night I attended Amsterdam’s Pechakucha Night at Roest. Most of you probably know the concept: Random people present their business concept/idea/art theory/whatever on 20 slides and they only have 20 seconds for each page before a heartless Powerpoint algorithm switches to the next one. The one person that definitely stood out for me was Olivier Otten – a young Dutch Creative/Developer who tries to play with very playful ways to interact with video under the name Selfcontrolfreak.
I don’t want to say much more. Just one thing. Gamification is not about badges and check-ins. Traditional playful, interactive metaphors have been around since the 1990s. But even two decades later I know of few platforms which are as much fun as this one.
Check out his 22 simple, playful video examples and start playing with Selfcontrolfreak.
APG Netherlands. Shaping a new Home for Strategists.
Oktober 18th, 2011 • Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Amsterdam, APG, apgdigital, Article, Netherlands, new biz, Strategy, World
Most of you know that I live in Amsterdam for a while now – a city with many agencies, some Strategists but almost without connecting links between them.
A couple of months ago I wrote about an idea that some of my fellow Strategists and I carried around with us for a while: Founding an Account Planning Group in the Netherlands. I don’t want to go too much into detail here but all of us sensed that the small but very international Planner community in the Netherlands needed more exchange, progress, representation and also standardization. The result was one of the most pragmatic professional processes I have ever been part of. Yesterday we simply founded the Dutch franchise of the British (and Global) Account Planning Group – as guild of Planners here.
Our plan: to create a professional community for strategists that serves as forum for knowledge exchange, inspiration and networking for our little group of Strategists. We haven’t got many resources right now. But we are happy to welcome any brand and communications strategists in the Netherlands who want to help us shape this platform for the Strategists in the Netherlands (be they Dutch or not)
If you are one of them…
- sign up for our Linked-in group and spread the news
- join us for our opening event on Nov 17 at Strawberry Frog Amsterdam
- help us shape this group
A couple of weeks ago I have written an article for German magazine New-Business (which is closely connected with the German APG) about this process. I am looking forward to see us make the new APG NL become part of Europe’s Planner guilds.
The article (in German). Please click it to see it full size.
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