Niko Herzeg Marketing

You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna lead you
Lester Freamon , The Wire

I have noticed something odd recently which, while discussing it with a few people, got me in some heated debates whether or not I was aware of how foolish what I was saying, made me look (thank Lord I have my looks, ha!)

Native Dutch (from Western/Dutch descent from a cultural point of view, thus excluding third/fourth gen from non West european descent) subliminal nationalism.

As is perhaps known, the largest political party (in the polling) is the populist party PVV, led by Geert Wilders. Yet the act of publicly acknowledging that you as a Dutch native (with the sterotypical label put on you by foreigners of tolerance) are sympathetic to these views is still (though declining) taboo.

Below a picture of a radio station advert on a billboard.

A radio station advertising with “100% NL”. Again as a statement, it means they play Dutch music. Yet against the backdrop of political and social unrest it gets interesting indeed.

Dutch speaking music has always been around, and popular. But it was never mainstream. Played on local and regional radio/tv and with performers playing in community centres, so to speak. But since around the rise of the late Fortuyn it has steadily become more mainstream.

From reality shows about singers to them being covered in the big dailys like the Telegraaf and filling football stadiums for days in a row, the liking of Dutch music seems to have taken on a subtext of more than entertainment.

Now of course chauvinism is not new, as with every world cup football every nation feels a surge of pride coming on, but this feels different, coming from a place of fear rather than joy.

And now this winter. Ice skating. The quintessential Dutch sport (We/they are regular world and Olympic champions in this sport).

Yet the sudden demand for ice skate rings is almost bigger than supply. This was before the weather made for natural ice and one could argue that after a decade of no natural ice we are all going out in drones to enjoy this rare opportunity.

Having visited several rings out of curiousity around the city I can not help but sense a sort of “fist bump” effect amongst the Native: we are the same, we are Dutch in a Holland that is “tanning” in its culture (though the argument can be made that Dutch culture never was pure to begin, but that is talking rationaly when, no pain felt is untrue in the world of the victim ).

Again the above radiostation may just have put a slogan thought up in a few seconds on a billboard, but in the conxtext of changing society, demographics and culture in Holland, I find it one of the more powerfull pieces of advertising I have seen in a while (even if it just one sentence, no more).

Now of course this is all speculative, but the point is not whether it is true or not. the point is, that we often (to often) look at we want (people to want), when we plan our actions.

Not enough at what keeps people from doing stuff we want or doing other stuff than we want, which (when looked at) could reveal a less pretty picture then we care to admit, far less rational behaviour then we (by now) should know and a reality often at odds with client views of their own customer, product, buying reason and company.

And in this there are many opportunities we miss to create positive (for I am not advocating fear mongering in output, merely in acknowledging it in more diverse research and development of strategy) powerfull ideas that drive both the needs of our clients and resonate within the context of the lives of their customers.

I was really struck by the rigidness of the views of the people i discussed this hypothesis with (the absence of evidence does not mean this is evidence of absence after all) and again reminded that if we are striving to create work that resonates in the real world we should start researching and thinking in 3D, wherever the evidence (or lack thereof) takes us.