Amsterdam Focus: Small But Perfectly Formed

Amsterdam may be small but that’s its great attraction. It lures in creatives from around the world who then export equally international work on a par with anything out of London or New York. Its diversity means culturally conscious ads are second nature, and the intimacy of the industry inspires collaboration more than competition. The only gloom on the horizon is the weather…

Whoever said size matters hadn’t considered the Amsterdam ad industry. Less than a million people populate the city’s picturesque tangle of streets and canals, and geographically it’s so compact that you can cycle from one end to the other in under an hour, but when it comes to making creative, innovative and internationally-impactful work, this diminutive domain punches well above its weight.

Wieden+Kennedy may have put Amsterdam on the map in 2010 with Write the Future for Nike, but as Dinesh Sonak, managing director of local creative collective and awards body ADCN, points out, the city has been exporting creative ideas, art and products across the globe since its 17th century Golden Age. And looking back at 2016, Hans Brouwer, founder and CEO of Amsterdam-headquartered music agency, MassiveMusic, believes “the creative work coming from Amsterdam can still compete with anywhere in the world.”

72andSunny Amsterdam smashed laddish stereotypes and redefined the modern man with a new global campaign, Find Your Magic, for AXE; WE ARE Pi organised a rave in zero gravity (Desperados Bass Drop); DDB & Tribal Amsterdam designed a revolutionary Smart Jacket in collaboration with Vodafone, which allowed cyclists to use smartphone navigation hands-free; and Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam put out possibly the best branded music video of the year with Budweiser/Tomorrowland’s brilliantly bonkers Infected.

Plus there was a double-Grands Prix-winning experiment in AI art you might have heard of, courtesy of JWT Amsterdam. While not everyone shared the awards juries’ admiration for ING’s The Next Rembrandt (The Guardian’s verdict: “What a horrible, tasteless, insensitive and soulless travesty of all that is creative in human nature.”) it did spark a fascinating debate on the nature of creativity – one which rippled far beyond the adland echo-chamber.

The positive results of immigration

Pinpointing a characteristic tone or style is impossible – Amsterdam’s advertising is from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. “What makes Amsterdam unique is its huge diversity of advertising flavours,” comments DDB & Tribal’s creative director Bram Holzapfel. Carlo Cavallone, ECD at 72andSunny, observes that this is a recent phenomenon: “It’s become a lot more global, a lot more international – in a good way.”

That’s no surprise, given the melting pot of nationalities and talent here. “It’s the clash of cultures that defines the output,” says Wieden+Kennedy’s ECD Mark Bernath. “We produce mostly global work, so for something to get out the door a whole lot of people from a whole lot of different places have to agree.” For 72andSunny’s head of strategy Nic Owen, that means elevating your creative insights: “You can’t be lazy with cultural references – you have to take them to a higher level.”

The collaborative culture that springs from the city’s small size has also helped raise creative standards. It’s hard to imagine agencies in uber-competitive London or New York flinging open their doors to competitors, but that’s exactly what happens on Amsterdam’s annual agency open day. “You can have conversations with other agencies and troubleshoot to an extent that’s not the case elsewhere,” according to Ravi Amaratunga, head of content at Amsterdam indie agency WE ARE Pi. “It’s not a competition – we’re trying to put Amsterdam [as a whole] on the map.”

It’s not just ideas that are being exchanged: talent is also flowing between the two traditional tiers of Amsterdam’s advertising industry. Historically, notes Karlijn Paardekooper, EP at CZAR Amsterdam, the expat market (that is international agencies making global campaigns for international brands) and the local market (Dutch agencies making Dutch campaigns for domestic clients) have operated independently of each other, but the boundaries are starting to blur as expats move into local agencies or leave the big internationals to set up their own shops.

MassiveMusic’s Brouwer thinks aspiration is also a factor. “The international agencies push towards a very high global standard, which makes the locals strive to make better campaigns.” Look no further than Dawn , CODE D’AZUR or INDIE Amsterdam for proof that Dutch shops are producing work on a creative par with their international counterparts. On the production front, homegrown directors Sam de Jong, Paul Geusebroek and Mees Peijnenburg are leading what Roel Oude Nijhuis, EP at production company Halal, calls “the new Dutch wave – raw and energetic, with a colourful aesthetic and a slightly absurd, cynical sense of humour”.

From Netherlands to Neverleaveland

Attracting talent of all levels to Amsterdam is “delightfully easy” says Anomaly’s ECD Lars Jorgensen,. It’s not hard to see why: as well as being a creative and tech hub, you get to swap your long commute for a 10-minute cycle to work and enjoy a decent work-life balance. In an increasingly nationalistic, inward-looking and intolerant global climate, Amsterdam’s liberal, broad-minded vibe is even more appealing. But getting people to stick around is another matter, says 72andSunny’s Cavallone, one of the longer-serving expats. “It’s still a little village, and there isn’t loads [of work] here… It’s not a final destination like New York is for a lot of people.”

As a result, agencies are having to think laterally to retain their brightest stars – be that employing creatives on a freelance basis, supporting passion projects such as MENU, a photography series by a creative-chef duo at JWT Amsterdam or giving employees an authentic start-up experience, as 72andSunny did last year, creating cycling onesie, Raynsie.

Talking to insiders, there’s a sense of optimism about the future, particularly the opportunities in innovation, product development and VR. The Amsterdam HQ of creative digital production house MediaMonks has produced several global VR projects, including Samsung’s DISCOVR the World. Its head of film, Rogier Schalken, says they have “some really cool things in development right now – it [VR] is definitely going to be the next big step for us.”

And of course, it was a Dutch agency, JWT Amsterdam, that scooped Cannes Lions’ Innovation Agency of the Year in 2016 – though ECD Bas Korsten isn’t resting on his laurels. “If you want to be at the forefront of innovation as an agency, you’ve got to be experimenting and developing stuff yourself, because clients are moving fast as well. [At JWT] what we try and do is not wait for the question to be asked, but to be ahead of the question,” he says.

“There’s a big transition happening across many industries here – start-ups, technology, design… the whole environment is changing,” adds Korsten’s colleague, innovation director, Emmanuel Flores Elías. Amsterdam might not rival Silicon Valley just yet, but there is a healthy start-up scene and all the tech giants, from Uber to Tesla, Facebook and Google, have a base here. If the ad industry can learn to collaborate with those kinds of companies, says WE ARE Pi’s Amaratunga, rather than “trying to own it all”, creative solutions will flourish.

The (Hol)Land of opportunity

Brexit, too, is likely to prove a further boon for Amsterdam, points out W+K’s Bernath, being near the top of the relocation list for UK-based companies seeking a new European base. Coupled with the right strategy over the next two years, this tiny territory could yet topple London in the creative advertising stakes.