Global brands will be saved by the salty sailors of Amsterdam
The Brexit vote sent shockwaves through governments across the world. How could an entire political class in the UK, on both sides of the campaign, have failed to understand what real people are feeling? Meanwhile in the US, there is a generation of Republican politicians wondering how a reality TV star with no political experience captured the support of voters they believed they understood.
Global brands will be saved by the salty sailors of Amsterdam
Marketers need to be conscious of this too, as a brand that doesn’t pay attention to what its consumers want is likely to be disrupted by someone that does. Dollar Shave Club was a particularly dramatic example of someone realising the average person’s frustration with existing product offerings in the packaged goods industry and disrupting it.
Politicians and marketers today have access to huge amounts of data to help them make their decisions, and this data is only going to become richer and broader over time as business becomes more software enabled. However, the ability to read that data and apply it to what’s going on in people’s real lives requires an understanding of people, relationships, communities and how culture evolves.
In other words, you have to step out onto the street once in a while and have a real conversation if you want to know what’s going on in the real world.
Amsterdam’s creative agencies are probably the best equipped in the world to provide that service for brands.
Firstly, because Amsterdam represents such a broad cross-section of cultures, nationalities and languages. Amsterdam is not the only diverse city in the world, but the size of the city and the level of integration makes it a unique place to take the pulse of many different cultures in one location.
Secondly, because Amsterdam is not a megalopolis dominated by its business culture. The people living and working in Amsterdam proudly keep their feet on the ground and maintain a healthy perspective on life beyond work. This allows for a balanced view on how business ideas will work in the real world, and is perhaps why a successful online travel accommodation company like Booking.com was created here, and not in Silicon Valley.
Thirdly, because it’s social by design. Much of the city of Amsterdam was built in the 17th century to allow people of many different backgrounds to live and work together. While the ruling elites of Europe were at war with each other over their differences in religion and politics, Amsterdammers just wanted a city where they could live together and trade together. It’s one of the reasons that you find few palaces and cathedrals in Amsterdam, and instead find beautiful canal houses where people of different races, religions and nationalities have lived in side-by-side for hundreds of years.
The diversity and socially balanced nature of Amsterdam were a true asset to the global economy during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century as it competed with the maritime economies of Portugal and England. Today, in the interconnected and interdependent world we live in, I believe Amsterdam can play a unique role again.
With more profits going to fewer, bigger corporations in the world, anti-business sentiment is on the rise around the world, and this makes it more important than ever before to know what people around the world really think about your brand. You can measure this with any number of data analytics and sentiment tracking tools. But my advice would be to speak to someone that lives in Amsterdam over a beer in one of the city’s centuries-old brown bars (the Dutch answer to a pub), and get to the nub of what the world is thinking.
Blake Harrop, Managing Director, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam
Tel: +31 (0)20 712 6500
Email: xxx@wk.com
Web: wkams.com
Twitter: @WKAmsterdam
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Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam
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