It’s a cold Saturday morning in January and m⁠y body is tired from a two-week business trip, but my mind yearns for this. I park the car at Lake Meadow. Las Vegas does not make me appreciate humanity in the slightest, with its pursuit of idle pleasures. It’s a city made for tourists, not residents. […]

My parents usually buy a travel book or borrow one from the library, but I typically read up on Reddit and Google. While Google is all ‘pristine white beaches’, Reddit had me kinda pessimistic about going to Vietnam. Beaches were supposed be littered in plastic, some villages full of Korean or Russian tourists, and traffic […]

I never made a good foodie, because I feel memories of places or people last longer than those of any meal. When traveling to a new country, it feels like a waste of time to spend it on food — because food isn’t fully tied to a place: you can eat sushi in Shanghai — […]

Circe sits in front of a mirror and holds a cup to Odysseus. It’s a painting by J.W. Waterhouse, and also the background of a classical music playlist on YouTube. I clicked on it because I saw Circe on the thumbnail — about who I had just finished reading the book by Madeline Miller. When […]

Before departure, we had read about Cambodia’s mind-blowing temples and mystical sunrises, beaches with pristine sands and crystal-clear waters. Superlatives piled onto adverbs. But we also read about how dangerous the traffic would be. That even crossing the street would be difficult. Pickpocketing and bag snatching is common. Bus operators sell more tickets than they […]

Cycling with my brother from our hometown to Kampen and back, along the river the IJssel — which in this season has flooded the summer dikes and is held by the winter dikes. Such a long bicycle ride with my brother is always one of my favorite things to do when back home. 46 kilometers […]

The forest around my hometown. Soft ground under your feet, a hundred shades of green, leaves rustling in the wind, and paths that go on and on. Not a single path is the same. Nature has left dozens of markers to let you know exactly where you are, or how to get back. There’s a […]

After attending the world’s biggest tech event, it’s nice to go to a place without any cell phone signal: Calico Basin of the Red Rock Canyon, near Las Vegas. ‘No cell phone signal’ isn’t a metaphor or anything. Having my Uber drop me off here wasn’t an issue, but when I finished the trail, I […]

Just watched “Farewell My Concubine” (霸王别姬). It’s not really a love drama, nor a historical film. It touches on several genres (It’s even a coming-of-age movie). It’s just incredibly poetic, and right away, I just want to watch it again from start to finish. What a masterpiece from 1993.

This is my first time in the United States. It’s just a business trip and we don’t really go anywhere, but I’m super excited. Despite being from the Netherlands, I’ve grown up with the USA around me. Movies, TV series, music, brands, video games. Names of states and cities that I’ve never been to feel […]

Two weeks in the Netherlands. We’re not that known for any 美食 (great food), and compared to Chinese food I’m sure it looks crude, but for me, it’s all real comfort food: 1. Real bread and real cheese 👌 2. Battered chunks of fish and tartar, and 3. My mom’s tomato soup 4. Fries with […]

I’m cycling through my hometown and the places of my youth, and it’s impossible not to get romantic. The pond we used to feed the ducks with our mom and later fish on our own, the field where we played football but had to watch out for dog poo, and the outdoor swimming pool that […]

I’m in my hometown in the Netherlands, a small city of around ten thousand people. And yet these words are still very much about China. Normally in this space, you’ll find me looking at China through foreign eyes, but like many people who have lived abroad for a long time, I now also feel a […]

So after Tai’an (泰安) our next stop is the city Zibo (淄博), although more by name rather than perimeter.  Luziyu (鲁子峪) is a small town on its own, made up of several villages. From Tai’an we choose to take the taxi instead of the high-speed train. It’s slower and pricier, but the scenery is a […]

I loved plenty of crime novels — Devotion of Suspect X, Journey under the Midnight Sun, In the Woods by Tana French, and several Agatha Christie stories as well as Lee Child, some Stephen King — and I’m now reading The Chestnut Man. The main thing I noticed, though, is that even when I absolutely […]

We’ve lived 2021. In the future, you’ll remember the big accomplishments from 2021, but will you remember how they felt? The worries you felt were significant, the little joys that found their way, the hopes you had. Historic events will be reduced to paragraphs on Wikipedia, your feelings dulled by time. Write them down before […]

I work in advertising, marketing — and what I love most about developing creative campaigns is that it’s such a joyous and all-absorbing mental challenge. It’s a competition against other agencies and brands — trying to outfox them — combining both thinking and intuition. The creative process is surrounded by data. We can test advertisements […]

There’s a parallel that when you sport and you get bruised, it won’t hurt until after the football match, or the day after the run. There are stories of motorcycles losing a foot on a bend armco, and they won’t notice it until they stop riding and want to use that foot to stand on. […]

This summer, I joined GoEast Mandarin‘s summer intensive course intended for students who finished HSK4. Here’s my brief recap and whether you should do it too. Why Spoken Chinese and not HSK5? Several reasons. First, I live in China, but I don’t need the HSK exam for my visa, nor am I studying at a […]

爽Shuǎng in Chinese means ‘feel good’, and since the new GoEast Mandarin campus is on Shanghai’s 长乐路 (Road of Eternal Happiness), I replaced the four X’s with four infinity signs (∞), so it’s like `infinite feel good` (无限爽). Scary to paint on a wall though!

I was born four months before the Berlin Wall fell, two days before the B-2 Stealth Bomber made its first flight, and a month after the wreckage of Germany’s Second World War battleship the Bismarck was found, 650 kilometers west of France and 4791 meters deep into the Atlantic. That same year the World Wide […]

GoEast Mandarin is a top Chinese language school, online and in Shanghai — with effective and fun teaching. I studied there, but felt that their communication lacked behind the quality of their teaching, and looked all the same as all language schools in Shanghai. My time was primarily spend on three things: Optimizing existing assets […]

In ‘The Nurture Assumption‘, Judith Rich Harris challenges the idea that children are mainly formed by their parents. In 462 pages, Harris goes over many ideas, the main one being that the environment in which children grow up has a much bigger influence on children’s future than their parents. It’s an appealing idea that should […]

Why do we produce luxury cars while people are dying in poor countries? Why do we work on missions to Mars while our own planet has problems? Why is Starbuck’s revenue is 26,5 billion dollars, while malaria would cost 8.5 billion dollars to eradicate? Why do we worry about climate change if nuclear weapons are […]

We can improve the way we love when we stop looking at love like a kind of work, the way we may look at careers: how to mold the perfect child, how to have the perfect partner. Modern lovers search for their perfect romance and *the one*. Young girls try to live up to the […]

For GoEast Mandarin I planned, shot, edited & subtitled a mini-documentary about working in China using the Chinese language, interviewing several foreigners with intermediate+ Chinese language schools, and one Chinese native.

Kids from rich parents spend their weekends doing extra classes, like maths and English and public speaking, while kids from poorer parents spend their weekends watching videos in the store or restaurant while their parents work. All-day. It’s the same all over the world. Poor people spend more time behind the television, less time with […]

I have this recurring daydream, usually when I’m doing low-focus work like Photoshopping, or like now — sitting in the high-speed way train from Shanghai to Suzhou. It’s this moment from my high school. We need to run three kilometers or some distance like that. Too far to sprint, but close enough to just sort […]

A bit of context: I studied the major advertising from 2010 to 2014 at the Willem de Kooning Academy (WDKA) in Rotterdam, and since 2019 I teach Branding at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA). Despite the distance, both schools are actually very similar: The student’s age is the same and they have similar […]

From my childhood, I strongly recall the strange but pleasant smell of our sofa, the engine sound of my mom’s of Citroën AX, and the songs on the radio such as Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’ and Henk Westbroek’s ‘Zelfs je naam is mooi’. And when I go back to that time, the worries of today […]

I never realized how important idioms, proverbs, and expressions are to language. I never had to. Not only did I always live in a Western culture, also English and Dutch are pretty close to each other. So close in fact, that we often just translate idioms (Rubbing salt in a wound / Zout in wond […]

Marketing theory comes down to how you think marketing works. Imagine 全家FamilyMart would open up a 5-star restaurant in downtown Shanghai. Candles on the table, waiters suited up, silver cutlery. And FamilyMart would serve their microwave meals, touting their high-quality taste. It’d be fun, they’d invite 网红wanghong to magazines, and they’d get some serious PR. […]

My New Year’s Resolution is to look for the good in people — as daft as it sounds. Because you see and feel what you look for. You can focus on bad shit and be totally right. But it’ll grow and grow until it becomes all of who you are. You can only be happy […]

An asset or resource is something you dig up (like coal), or someone you hire like a great CEO (yes, that’s why they call it ‘human resources’). When you’re a car company, you use resources like steel and rubber and leather to make engines and wheels and seats, and in the end; cars. You can […]

The internet was supposed to unite everyone in the world, but algorithms and nuance-free formats have made us more divided than ever. The U.S. election is a perfect example, with people on both sides appalled by the way people vote. Any nuance is gone from the debate: You want poor people not to go hungry? […]

People rarely mistake strategy for tactics, but one of the most common mistakes in marketing strategy (or any kind of strategy) is confusing tactics for strategy. When prompted, most people can’t really tell the difference — but knowing the distinct difference between the two makes your strategy (and following tactics) infinitely better. Creativity without strategy is […]

I’ve now been studying Chinese for almost two years — and it has taught me not just how to speak and read and listen and write, but also how to learn. For instance, I’ve found there are many ways to learn Chinese characters. You can read sentences, recite words, write characters, or write the radicals […]

So much negativity on the internet, and even Reddit has it’s subreddits that mock negativity, like awfuleverything, wewantplates, antiMLM, facepalm, menwritingwomen, idiotsincars and insanepeoplefacebook. Even interesting subs like relationships or stepparents are full of stories of how ungodly life is. It’s momentarily fun to browse these, but they do eat your brain, until negativity is […]

Today’s the first day of the new semester today at Shanghai Institute of Visual Art. I’m glad we’re back to offline teaching (despite overcoming challenges to teach online), because the quality is just higher and we — students and me — can handle more content together. We started Marketing Strategy with a class about writing, […]

Ah, many times I started writing a paragraph to someone about how strongly I remembered this single thing they said years ago, and how I made that a part of my own, and how much a difference it had made to my life. How fondly I remember my time with them as classmates, colleagues, or […]

After 43 years in Formula 1 — and 23  years since its last World Championships — the Williams F1 team was sold to a new owner, who ousted both Frank and Claire Williams from the team’s management. Sure, there are a lot of factors to blame for the downfall of Williams; the two biggest being […]

If you’re worried about your job isn’t cool enough, you’re perhaps in it for what it contributes to your identity. Perhaps you’re worried by your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriends and think you’re a lesser man because of it. Maybe you’re stressed about your kid’s grades in school, or annoyed by your neighbor who has a bigger car […]

One of the hardest things to understand in marketing is the difference between differentiation (how different you are) and distinctiveness (how recognizable you are) — and which one is most important. It’s also where marketing’s biggest irony lies. There are plenty of guru’s like Simon Sinek who say people don’t buy what you sell, but […]

Here’s a Dutch word. Heem. Similar to home, referring to the town or country you grew up in. Your dad’s music, the books your mom used to read to you. The trees under which you played, the streets and bridges you cycled on, your native language — the place you come to hide, the place […]

To teach marketing, and at the same time work in marketing, is something I’ve struggled with. In my marketing classes at SIVA (上海视觉艺术学院), everything I tell is simple, structured, and proven: Step A, B, C — a tidy, bullet-point reality. But when I look at what I do at my full-time job at GoEast, I’m […]

Here’s just a reminder that media are entirely funded by clicks, and that outrage and fear are most profitable. Many outlets simply list all the horrible things happening in the world or horrible things that could happen. And any time we calm down, the media will need to get more extreme: more dividing, more fearful. […]

Here are the last four months of teaching branding at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art summarized into two verbs. SPECIFY: The market isn’t homogenous. Which clusters of people do you see of people that are similar to each other, and meaningfully different to people in other clusters? Don’t segment based on age: people aged the same aren’t […]

This is the sort of trick question that typically raises the dogma of “3 to 6 percent of revenue”. But all that does is make you approach your marketing backward, by starting your strategy with the budget. A strategy is a response to a challenge, so why start with the budget? Instead, plot a business […]

(Published on Shanghai’s non-profit HerCentury) I’ve been checking old places I went to on Google Street View, trying to remember names of classmates, looking up old cartoon movies we watched, and Lego sets we owned & other toys. I grew up in such wealth of love and space for creativity, even though we were just […]

Imagine being the doctor of a professional football team. You studied at a medical school for years, and now you sit on the bench — match after match — while nothing happens. Of course, because professional football players rank among the world’s fittest people. You watch every game from the sidelines, but you’re bored out […]

Cats miaow, dogs bark, and frogs croak. Other animals riffle their feathers (peacocks), glow (fireflies), or release scents (skunks). Or they write poetry and buy flowers and paint (humans). All to create responses from others, in order to survive or make life more pleasant. Well. Herring gulls are mostly auditory (cawing) and physical: they have […]

It’s now almost seven weeks since Chinese New Year’s eve, which for us marked the start of suddenly being forced to work from home. A big change from seeing each other at the campus every day. Here are three things on how we’ve coped, maintaining our sense of sanity and sense of togetherness. 1) Sharing […]

I can count on one hand the times I’ve cooked the last year, living in Shanghai. Thanks to coupons on food delivery APP’s, not only is it often cheaper to have food delivered than to eat it at a restaurant, it’s difficult to make dishes yourself in your own kitchen and compete on price with […]

Arne was the 17-year-old who we all looked up to, always seen in our street wearing white sport clothes, black shades, and headphones attached to his MP3 player. You know, the ones that go behind your head, instead of two loose cables. Arne was taller, faster, stronger — cooler than us. We were still mere […]

Virtue signaling is just as offensive as what it calls out, empathy is often narcissism in disguise, and nostalgia isn’t different than fear of future. Freedom means you can be hateful as well as happy, and positive thinking can be just as dangerous as negative thinking. Humility is no different than arrogance, for the man […]

Nearly two weeks ago, 1.4 million students in Shanghai started online classes, including the 30 that I teach branding at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. We had three weeks in February to prepare, which was plenty, but my real learning (as a teacher) started when the classes did. Maybe this can help other teachers […]

At KesselsKramer I worked with Timberland for the global rollout of a new slip-on shoe, which was named Project Better. KesselsKramer was involved right from the start when the prototype wasn’t finished yet, and was involved with everything from naming to concept testing with consumer research across multiple countries. Project Better: Striking in its simplicity, […]

The simplified narrative often goes like “Younger generations have trouble buying houses because they spend money on coffee”, instead of “… because salaries haven’t kept up with housing prices”. Too often, ordinary people are being guilt-tripped by *facts* like that you need 7600 liters of water to make one pair of jeans — or that […]

The city of Zwolle is the juncture for all kinds of villages in the East of the Netherlands, all the villagers drawn to what the big city has and the villages do not: offices, high school, shopping malls, and cinemas. Nine long years I went to what is spoken of as Zwolle’s drain: Holterbroek. The […]

My world is larger than the tight borders of my country — but for long I thought I had an open and unbiased view across them, proudly seeing myself as a world citizen. Yet now I see that term for what it really is: impossible — and I see that the lens I thought to […]

I wanted to see how Deniz was doing, the way Facebook quickly allows that. Type in a name, *poof*. But instead, Facebook showed “Remembering Deniz Üzüm”. It was early in the office and the message was abrupt, the way you remove bandage from a wound. Messages of love and goodbye on his profile were over […]

Biologists name it the edge effect; the place where two or more environments meet. Where forest and meadow crossover — where desert and rainforest turn into savanna — where rivers become reeds. These are the areas teeming with life and biodiversity. And this edge effect is found everywhere, where hip-hop and classical music mix, where […]

My dad always had these vinyl records and I never understood why. CD’s were long out and in comparison vinyl records are big and every four songs you have to turn them around. The sound quality isn’t that good either; they’re riddled with cracking noises. Also, I didn’t like his music, because what was popular […]

Maybe in a normal marketing career you’d want a high office you’d never have to leave because you’d have specialists all around you. You use consumer research or trend reports, and once a year go on a *consumer safari*. From your high office you never have to talk to *real people* (whatever that means). But […]

Wherever you are in the world and whatever you want to do, you’re only a search entry away from learning how to do it. Write a novel? Here in five steps. Start a social media campaign? Forbes explains. Make a professional photo? Download an app. And all the apps and advice you’ll find on the […]

The Forbidden City shows its size when looked upon from the hill Jingshan. Several large squares, many temples, and nearly ten thousand rooms, all neatly decorated. It’s the sheer size — built and maintained for hundreds of years — that makes travel bloggers searching for words to describe this complex. There’s a tiny well too, […]

30 years today. And I always thought life would be downhill after reaching an age like 27. Now I know many things just gets less bad. The opinion from myself, the opinions from others, the fear of missing out, feelings of guilt or shame. There are so many details that don’t make a difference, yet […]

Vegans have grown a bad reputation because (or so the stereotype goes) they’d call out anyone eating meat — citing that meat is bad for animal welfare or climate reasons. They’re right, of course, but nobody wants to hear it. Yet like-minded businesses have sought to sell soy burgers or start ecological supermarkets, to take […]

This morning I read Arthur C. Brooks’ article “Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think” on The Atlantic. It’s packed with way more than you’d expect from a long article, and since I wish to absorb it all, I’ll leave a summary below here. — Memories of accomplishments don’t bring nearly as […]

Philip Morris launched Mission Winnow for a smoke free world, even though it’s nothing but a sloppy website with pointless terms like ‘passion’ and ‘innovation’. The Dutch Royal Airlines is going to make (a tiny bit) of kerosine from bio waste. Starbucks will ban straws (even though had already promised us a recycled cup for […]

Last Saturday we found a new apartment in Shanghai through ZiRoom (自如). The app has zero flair and is pure efficiency. Through filters we narrowed down our options, listed on a map in north Shanghai (screenshots are just examples). Most apartments have 360° photographs. We got an appointment in 10 minutes, and later that evening […]

Can we increase appeal for plant-based foods by simply renaming the dishes? The World Resource Institute, which works together with multinationals like Unilever, NASA and Google, approached Seventy Agency to mitigate the rising trend of meat consumption in China, as beef is very polluting to the climate. Together, we formed the tasks of generating new […]

Increasing Hershey’s share in wedding candy market on top of a brand image facelift Hershey’s wanted to increase its share in the wedding candy market in China (a huge market). Both online and offline sales, plus PR where an integral part of the campaign. KISSES ON THE BUND Couples where to showcase their love and […]

Greybox is a coffee chain with fifty locations, trying to beat coffee giants in China such as Starbucks (3000 stores) Luckin (500 stores) and Costa (500). Each of these chains says they’ve got the best beans and machines, but only Greybox goes so far that they make extreme HR investments. So why not treat baristas […]

Branding started a long time ago. We know that pots, two thousand years ago had their marker’s mark on it. That then, in time, became a mark of quality. If anyone wanted a good pot (see example), they had to go to MNOVIVS, obviously. The whole village knew that. The word branding originated much later, […]

My mom often told me about me handing out candy on my birthday in kindergarten: hands and plate stretched far out, and my head turned around because I was afraid to look at people. Being the center of attention frightens me. It’s an irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless. The fear isn’t gone, but what […]

So today I gave this talk at the Inbound Marketing Forum in Shanghai — and I started off by saying I’m from this small town in the Netherlands and I don’t really understand many things in marketing. Like, how I don’t understand why my Dutch telecom provider is so keen to interact with me on […]

There is a difference between probability and possibility, between rationality and reason, empathy and sympathy, between dogma and ideal, strategy and tactics, resolution and aspiration, differentiation and distinctiveness, supplement and replacement, money and wealth, and efficiency and effectiveness. To some, even the difference between whiskey or whisky matters — as with butter and margarine, or […]

It helps my job to see advertising as a language. Even if it’s not literally a dialogue, you are communicating to someone’s mind, tapping into what they already know, feel or do. If any message wants to stand a chance to be understood or felt, it must relate to someone. And the process to get […]

We closed our suitcases and did one final check in the house in which we had lived for a long year, to switch off the lights, lock the door and take the plane to Shanghai. And then we found one bowl with a cat printed on it, left in the sink. “Just throw it away”, […]

In less than a month it’s ten years ago that I visited Melbourne for 2009 Australian Grand Prix. Meeting Lewis Hamilton and a Parisian fan was one story from that weekend, but another took place a week ahead of the race. The race always takes place in the middle of the city in Albert Park — […]

Sunday morning, March 4th, 1990. A violent accident takes place on the streets of Imola, right in front of the hospital. An 18 year old man is thrown off the back of his friend’s moped. His name is Massimo and he makes an awful fall. Massimo is brought to the hospital, his spine injured, his […]

Today’s wellbeing increasingly comes from abstinence rather than indulgence. Smartphones halt day dreaming. Social media causes depressions. Commitments and emotional baggage stop us from developing deeper understandings. More people die from eating too much than starve. Yuval Noah Harari writes: “Sugar is now a greater danger than gunpowder. You are more likely to die from […]

A trip to Bangkok and its surroundings in 2019. Only to be back in China again with snow.  

Racing is life under high pressure, and I think advertising (or any industry) can learn a lot from how racing cars are designed. The car In the book ‘How to build a car‘, famed Formula One engineer Adrian Newey talks about cars he designed and the philosophy behind them. I think it’s interesting, because cars, […]

In a multi-year campaign approach for the National Committee 4 and 5 May (Memorial and Liberation Day in the Netherlands), the theme of freedom was put central; on how valuable it is that we live in freedom in the Netherlands since the end of the Second World War. But also how we must together support […]

This is one of the many paragraphs from ‘H is for Hawk‘ by Helen Macdonald that stood out for me and still lingers in my mind weeks after reading it: “I think of what wild animals are in our imagination. And how they are disappearing — not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday […]

This morning I watched Michael Palin visiting Shanghai in 1988. He just walks around the city of 12 million people and it’s fascinating. At three minutes there’s a car trying to get through a narrow street. At five minutes, a Chinese medicine store. At six, a Chinese duo spoke English and told Palin they liked […]

2018 Kinderboekenweek (children’s book week) themed around friendship, with a new identity to make sure the whole identity doesn’t change completely every year.

I’m a simple guy and I like simple things. I like books that are easy to read, wine that is easy to drink, and insights that I instinctively know are true. I grew up in a small town and never went to university, so maybe I’m just too dumb to understand why some advertising proposals […]

This is just for fun, ok? A big part of my job in Shanghai revolves around e-commerce, especially Tmall — which owns over half of the online retail market in sales volume. So browsing through Tmall on a daily basis, I couldn’t help but notice the vivid colours, and how they’d create interesting swatches. It started […]

Originally written in Dutch on Marketingfacts. I’d like to talk about telecom providers who work with influencers, but communicate from a noreply email address, or have a ten minute telephone queue. About how every energy provider wants an app. About how the internet is about to burst with well-meant selfie campaigns and Facebook live-sessions and blogs that […]

The Bowery is a lively neighbourhood in New York, thanks to a close-knit community. For a hotel that’s about citizens of the world, it made sense to highlight the citizens of the Bowery — and so KesselsKramer teamed up with photographer Christelle de Castro to honour the locals on the new 22-floor hotel: “Welcome to […]

Since the beginning of 2018 I’ve been collecting quotes, articles and reports from many tweeps and organisations like BBH Labs, the IPA and Thinkbox, who — to me — are a valuable goldmine of information. Here’s a list of most of what I found useful (work in progress). Resources

To all that has been said about content marketing, I’m going to add one sentence, fifteen examples, and one paragraph. In essence Content marketing is simply the function of your product or service, put into a media format that you can share. Ten examples 1) RevZilla — Helps you to buy the perfect motorcycle clothing Product: A […]

(Written for Virtual Racing School.) “If only I had more time to practise. If only I had a good setup. If only I had nailed that last corner. If only I was within a top team. If only I had more experience. If only that idiot had not bumped into me. If only I had […]

(Written for Virtual Racing School.) In the book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes how our brains work. Two points in particular make interesting lessons for simracing practice (or any practice, for that matter), namely the two systems that take care for our thinking, as well as the energy they need. Daniel […]

In the 1980 science book Cosmos, Carl Sagan wrote about how a newspaper asked an astronomer to write a five hundred word article on whether there was life on Mars. The astronomer dutifully replied through telegram: “NOBODY KNOWS”, repeated two hundred and fifty times. It was the most honest answer possible, but people wanted answers nonetheless, […]

Online marketing is more simple than ‘experts’ make people believe, and to demonstrate that I’ve showed a simple campaign from Virtual Racing School on the biggest marketing blog from the Netherlands; Marketingfacts. With this article you do a campaign yourself within an hour, so you’ll learn how online advertising works, and what you can measure with […]

Since 1983, Provamel has been a pioneer of turning plants into delicious plant-based drinks and yogurt alternatives. All its products are organic and thus GMO free, produced in a CO2-neutral way, and all of Provamel’s soya, almonds, oats, rice and hazelnuts are sourced in Europe. In short – it’s tasty, good for you and the […]

The first commercial computer sold in the United States was the UNIVAC in 1951. Supplied with 125 kilowatt, it could do 1,905 operations per second, which translated into 0.015 operations per watt-second. That last metric wasn’t very important for the UNIVAC, since power wasn’t a bottleneck as much as performance or weight was. With 5,000 […]

There’s a sport that’s more popular than football, that has more participants than basketball, and that can be more beneficial than going to the gym. It doesn’t feature in the Olympics, and it doesn’t need medals. Lotto, the leading Italian company in footwear and clothing for sports and leisure, believes it’s time to embrace the […]

Yesterday, plenty of brands jumped onto the International Women’s Day bandwagon, and among the worst I’ve seen are McDonald’s, which turned it’s golden arches upside down, and BrewDog, which released a pink label for their beer. If only equality was that easy. While these are extremely superficial attempts to grab some retweets and likes, they […]

Apart from a few (looking at you, CO2-levels), all statistic show an insane progress in the world. Extreme poverty fell from 37% in 1990 and is well under 10% now; illiteracy fell from 65% in 1950 to just 15% now; and average life expectancy upon birth went up from 31 years in 1900 to 71.5 […]

Dutch train travel is fantastic. It’s affordable, pretty much always on time (despite what the naysayers say), and it has nearly four hundred stations in our tiny country. Here are just three simple suggestions that can make it even better. 1) Make the screens of entrance gates flicker when you swipe your card During rush hour, […]

Nowadays every generic brand video wants to remind us that ‘we live in times of change’, and startups love to tell us about Moore’s law and exponential growth, and how the smartphones we have now are a million times more powerful than NASA’s computers with which it landed Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969, […]

For Virtual Racing School, I wrote over fifty articles and interviews, with successful simracers and professional racing drivers. Together with the other staff, we started an online knowledge database labelled ‘the academy‘. I helped VRS to built its online presence and promoting its telemetry and collaboration software for iRacing. In two years, VRS grew to […]

Next March in the Netherlands, there’s an offline and online event called ‘The National Week Without Meat’, with 43 brands participating. Most of those brands produce or sell meat substitutes, and aim to sell those through the week-long PR machine. The most visible absentee is the brand ‘De Vegetarische Slager’ (‘The Vegetarian Butcher’), yet it […]

The Netherlands is one of the richest countries in the world. So it comes as no surprise that the answer to the question ‘what do you want for Christmas’ is nine out of ten times: ‘nothing’ (‘Niks’). That’s why KesselsKramer came up with a solution for this problem. For Greenpeace we designed the ideal gift […]

School, sports, piano lessons, homework, career, a bigger house, new smartphone, like, share, tag, share. Kids need to do more and more, and we play less and less. But playing is not only fun, it’s also very important. Jantje Beton thinks it’s time to wake up the Netherlands with a message to both young and […]

With five others, I founded the International Sim Racing Federation, basically a FIFA for simracing, to organise racing across all simulators and all countries. Aside from nearly two years as interim board member, I’ve designed the identity, built the online channels (Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp (used as a CRM system) and the Discord server), as well […]

I sat down with Irishman Graham Quinn, who’s the lead engineer of Andretti Autosport’s Global Rallycross team; the team that has won the title three times in a row now. Graham was also part of iRacing’s Rallycross team, and an avid Virtual Racing School user. https://virtualracingschool.com/academy/further-reading/stories/interview-andrettis-lead-engineer-graham-quinn-winning-global-rallycross-title-role-iracings-rallycross/

At the end of 2008, the regulations of Formula One were overhauled to simplify cars — especially the aerodynamics — to reduce costs and aerodynamic grip. Less grip would result in lower cornering speeds and improve overtaking. These new regulations included a component called the diffuser. This device sits at the rear of the car and produces […]

I’m pretty honoured to have done this interview, as I watched Scott on television some ten years ago when he was racing in Formula 1. Plus, he’s an inspirational guy. https://virtualracingschool.com/academy/further-reading/stories/scott-speed-iracing-rallycross/

Monday morning, December 23rd, 1985. The underground train travelling from Hammersmith to Baron’s Court is filled with people setting out for work or Christmas shopping. Among the latter is an old man of Asian origin. He’s wearing a suit jacket, gilet, tie and polished black shoes. The carts rumble through the humid and warm tunnels […]

As an individual, we’re never certain whether others have thoughts and inner workings like our own, simply because we can never look into someone else’s mind. The most we can do is to figure that if others have normal human interactions, they’re probably conscious like ourselves. Alan Turing proposed that we test computers the same […]

Taken for the then start-up — now scale-up — Vandebron, from early 2014 to mid 2016. Shot on a budget Canon DSRL camera in automatic mode, because that’s all I could get it to do.

If the sixteen-year-old me choose to pursue mathematics instead of graphic design, I could now have been a climate scientist by now, or an astronomer. If I’d stuck with graphic design, I might have had a top-notch portfolio, work that is featured in one of those glossy print magazines. And if I’d taken hockey or […]

There’s this story about a Russian astronaut, the first man to ever go into space. After launching, he’s totally alone in his huge spaceship, of which only a very tiny cabine is habitable. He’s looking at the curvature of Earth, the first ever to look at his home planet. He’s lost in that moment, thinking […]

I wrote 22 articles for BadgerGP, some of them up to 3,000 words. Most of them on historical driver profiles. See all of them here: https://badgergp.com/author/jaapgrolleman/

I’ve been writing for Virtual Racing School since the summer of 2016, and the fifty articles I wrote have covered many areas of simracing, namely concentration and ergonomics, vehicle dynamics and race preparation. But today’s article I find most honourable, because it covers culture in a way that’s much bigger than just simracing. I interviewed Dr. […]

China’s population of 1.4 billion people uses roughly 80 billion chopsticks per year, for which twenty million trees are cut down. Trees have value because they produce chopsticks, and chopsticks are valued as tools for eating food. Like trees, they’re a means to an end, and are valued instrumentally. When a disposable chopstick is used, […]

The Japanese satellite Kaguya orbited the Moon for twenty months, from 2007 to 2009. I opened some of its footage on YouTube and randomly clicked halfway the video. The lunar surface was whitely brightened by the Sun, which was in full behind the viewpoint of the camera. Then suddenly the blue sphere of Earth rose […]

To recruit new donors (and thank old ones), the Dutch digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom launched their @freedom.nl email service: totally private and untrackable, unlike free email services. Around this introduction, KesselsKramer developed the ’Web-in’, a twelve hour livestream ’protest’, just like the original Bed-In by John Lennon and Yoko On, along with dozens […]

I helped top simracing (esports) team Coanda Simsport with their online presence, mainly website, Facebook, Twitter & livestreams, helping them increase their fanbase and sponsor value. 2016 year review video: One of many articles: One of many Facebook posts: One of many tweets:

With Mack Bakkum winning the 2016-2017 iRacing Road Pro Series and feeding into the existing rostrum of Martti Pietilä, Mitchell deJong, and reigning champion Martin Krönke, Coanda’s iRacing World Championship Series season has four cars for the 2017 season. The season start March 4th at Interlagos, and after twelve races the season ends October 7th, […]

The most difficult problem to solve is one that’s invisible or indescribable, a problem in which not everybody believes. It doesn’t have a single cause, but is rather an accumulation of many problems. Such a problem only becomes worse when left alone, and even worse; time is running out. What makes the most difficult kind […]

Two of my interests merged (advertising and autosport) in a topic on the British Autosport forums — whilst also providing an interest on how layman (or in this case, motorsport fans) explain how much they think advertising influences them. The answer: not by much. A user asked fellow forummers whether they bought products which their […]

Late 2016, the nine Dutch heritage locations joined together to start a collaborative promotion campaign, aimed at raising Dutch visitors to their locations. Problematic was that more than two-thirds of all Dutch citizens have never visited a UNESCO heritage location in the Netherlands. Take for example the windmills of Kinderdijk. Over 80% of the visitors […]

Shot during a schooltrip in 2003, rediscovered in 2017.

This week, a political party in Catalunya, Spain, labelled grid girls as the reducing of woman to lust objects, and announced its intention to ban these girls from the MotoGP and Formula One events that are held in Catalunya each year. In a discussion on Reddit, the common reaction was that the girls have to […]

Does the quality of your life come from the quality of your decisions? Or, does the quality of your decisions come from the quality of your life? At first this seems like a chicken-and-egg kind of dilemma, a search for causality. But the present day mantra lays heavily on the former; decision making is the ultimate solution to […]

When we’re young, we understand that insects eat plants, that small predators eat insects, that big predators eat small predators. We understand that all of life is connected, that tadpoles become frogs, that rain turns to clouds to become rain again. When we’re young, we think about ourselves in unlimited impossibilities, how we’ll become fire fighters, […]

“After Oswald, men in America were no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is […]

One of VRS Coanda Simsport’s latest recruits, Mack Bakkum, is competing in the 2016-17 iRacing Road Pro Series. The Dutchman started with DNF at Interlagos, but reclaimed momentum with a dominant win at Montreal, hoping to qualify for the 2017 iRacing World Championship Grand Prix Series, to build on the team’s succes in the top […]

We often think of quantities in a linear way. We know that a thousand millimetres go into a metre, and that a thousand kilograms go into a single ton. We know that a ten-by-ten centimetre square equals one hundred square centimetres, and that when we add ten centimetres of height, you get one thousand cubic centimetres, or one […]

November 2016  

We turn our focus to the new year, with many new challenges in prospect, most notably defending our titles in the 2017 iRacing Blancpain GT Series World Championship, and the 2017 iRacing World Championship Grand Prix Series. Our partner- and sponsorship continues with Virtual Racing School continues into its second year. Virtual Racing School is […]

The winner of January's iRacing screenshot contest is… "Subtle Differences" by @jaapgrolleman! pic.twitter.com/EX8m7kpHrS — iRacing (@iRacing) January 23, 2017

In the first two weeks of this year, I’ve often looked back on my life in a very practical, non-philosophical way. I revisited my former schools in Google Streetview, I went through designs made years ago, I played a video game which the teenage-me also played, and I read emails sent a decade ago. Perhaps what triggered […]

In 2009, I was doing a six-month internship in Sydney, Australia, at Marketing Mechanics. Since Melbourne was really close, I bought tickets to the Australian Grand Prix. I arrived in a dirty and cheap hostel, and had a roommate from France, who was a huge Lewis Hamilton fan. I was reading a book from 2001 by […]

Here’s a look at Coanda Simsport’s last year. Hours of sim racing compiled into three and a half minutes, with victories in the iRacing 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the titles in the NEO Endurance Series, the World Championship GP Series, and the Blancpain GT Series.

The man next to me took his phone from his shirt pocket and aimed it at the sun, which was setting into Mumbai’s bay. It was of no use; the sun, red and bright in front of our faces, was barely noticeable on his phone’s screen, reduced to a mere pixel. He threw his hands in […]

Ahead of the 1958 season, the team of Ferrari fielded three young and talented drivers, causing the Italian press to call them ‘La Squadra Primavera’ – The Spring Team. They were Luigi Musso from Italy, and Mike Hawtorn and Peter Collins from the United Kingdom. Yet, in less than 12 months, all three would have […]

Last weekend, eleven time Grand Prix winner Rubens Barrichello logged in on his computer from Brazil to compete in a simulator version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, sharing the car with other drivers across the internet. In Argentina, reigning WTCC champion José María López did so too — together with almost two thousand […]

When I started blogging for Coanda Simsport, earlier this year, they where already one of the top simracing teams in the world, but yesterday, thanks to Martin Krönke, the world championship was clinched. I’m immensely proud to be a part of this team. To celebrate, here’s 937 laps from 16 races compiled into a season review!

There’s an increasing amount of stuff that makes our lives easier, all of it increasingly within hands reach. We get taught how to write essays, how to use hashtags, how to get your crush to like you. All within minutes and digestible steps. The risk of this is that we tend to focus on the easy […]

An answer to this question on Reddit. This was twenty years ago, I was seven. At school, the teacher asked whether any of us knew someone with an email address, I was the only kid in class who did. The next day I brought my dad’s email address on a piece of paper, and the […]

(Written on Quora). My best decision was to leave the advertising industry, back in 2014. I worked at an international agency back then, and it struck me how weird the industry was when our first television campaign went live on national television, for vitamin supplements. Instead of feeling proud, I felt confused: “Are this pills […]

August 2016  

An answer to this question on Quora. What I would like to see is more positivity. Right now, we see melting ice caps, drowning polar bears, factories blowing plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. And the more you read about the climate problem, the more distressful you get. We hear that the economy must shrink, […]

Christianity, Islam and Hinduism occupy the minds of nearly two thirds of the world population. It’s easy to bash them, but are vegans, motorcyclists or foodies — in all their fanaticism and fantasy— any different? Atheists’ preaches are no different than the proverbial Jehovah’s foot in the door. Merriam-Webster defines religion as ‘an organised system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used […]

There is such a video from 1999, in which people are asked if they would like a mobile phone: “No, I don’t see the point,” says a gentleman, and a lady replies: “I have a paper, that’s enough.” We were all there and yet it happened: in 2005, 91% of Dutch households had a mobile […]

The popularity of Max Verstappen has seen merchandise sales and viewing numbers spike, and loads of new Dutch Formula 1 fans coming into the sport. One of his biggest followers, Bas van Bodegraven, started the the ‘Max Verstappen Racecar driver latest news‘ fan club, before the Dutch wonderkid had ever completed a single car race. […]

“One day, a Dutch driver should claim success in Formula One, and I want to be that one”, said a boy full of dreams. And just when the boy, then a grown man, looked to fulfil that promise, rivalling those who went on to do just that, all that promise and all that future was […]

A quarter of a century ago, one driver’s mistake opened the door for the beginning of a legend.Jaap Grolleman explains the story of Bertrand Gachot, Michael Schumacher and the 1991 Belgian Grand Prix. Twenty five years ago, the paths of two promising talents intertwined. The career of the one who seemed destined for greatness halted, […]

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“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” was the slogan used by the Clinton presidency in 1994, to resolve the issue of gay acceptance in the United States military. It seemingly solved the problem, precisely by leaving it unresolved. It’s exemplary for the past decades. In an unprecedented way we’ve seen social, environmental and political problems succeed each other in rapid succession, as […]

This was written two years ago as a answer to the question, ‘What is your favorite scent?’, on Quora, and it still rings true to this day. My favorite smell is that of the Veluwe, the area which I think of as my home ground. I don’t live there anymore now, but every time I […]

Murray Walker famously said: “If is a very long word in Formula One. In fact, if is F1 spelled backwards,” while David Coulthard put it as following: “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.” F1’s record books are littered with events that hinge on circumstance, down to luck, or lack of it. And […]

The year I was born, my dad passed his motorcycle license, and for as long as I have memories, my dad — wearing a distinctive grey with blue and red jacket — rode a Yamaha FZR400: a lightweight race bike, which screamed loudly as he revved it on our driveway. Recently, my dad got onto […]

One of the things I learned at Vandebron is that nearly all people are willing to help, but barely know how. Whether it’s big subjects like climate change, or slightly, like offering a stranger a ride home, there’s often something holding people back — but there’s definitely a powerless hero hiding in all of us. Once you understand […]

On the Blaak in Rotterdam — dwarfed by modern offices — stands an old bank building. The brick walls carry a red tile roof, under which an art academy nests. In its front two plane trees stand, and there’s a quote above the door that reads: “I have to change to stay the same.” Four years I went […]

Originally on Quora. This is sort of a trick question, as they technically didn’t wear “helmets,” but leather “flight caps” that covered the head and ears. These kept the pilots from getting too cold or going deaf while flying with their cockpit canopies open, which they sometimes did to get a better view when taking […]

David Coulthard labelled it the sporting story of the year, but citizens of the Netherlands went even crazier when Max Verstappen crossed the finish line on lap 66, to win a Grand Prix at 18 years old. Yesterday, grown-ups cheered and cried, newsbreaks hit the television, and timelines were flooded by celebrations as if we’d […]

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya delivered a stunning Spanish Grand Prix. After Rosberg and Hamilton collided on the opening lap, the Red Bulls and the Ferrari duo fought over who would take the first non-Mercedes victory since September 2015. Max Verstappen prevailed, winning on his Red Bull Racing debut, not only becoming the first Dutch Grand Prix […]

All of the universe’s infinite beauty, is created from only three primary colours on the palette, from only twelve notes on the musical scale, from only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and from only one-hundred-and-eighteen chemical elements. The point is that creativity doesn’t stifle from basic structures: it thrives from a set of parameters in which […]

From what rises ambition? Or love? Why can’t some of us be content with the lives we’ve been given? Why do some yearn for so much more? Tom Pryce wanted to drive cars, fast, and couldn’t be stopped by the perils of the sport. He was on a seemingly impossible quest for greatness, yet by […]

Not doing what everyone would do, not taking what everybody would take. That’s strategy at heart, and there’s a Chinese tale that tells with surprising truth about a Mandarin who spent years fishing on the riverbanks, using a straight needle instead of a hook. People looked and wondered, and told everyone about that remarkable way […]

Working in the ad industry can be weird, at times. It struck me when our first television campaign went live on national television, for Supradyn, those vitamin supplements. Instead of feeling proud, I felt confused: “Are this pills even working?”, and “Who am I helping here?”. From then on, I saw the ad industry in […]

Some days ago, Vandebron won the Launch of the Year award, from the Dutch Marketing Award. Especially for the marketing team, it’s great — because after all the awards Vandebron received for social and renewable impact, this is also a nod that our marketing is sound. Also, it’s special because what we do, doesn’t per […]

Dutch marketing & advertising websites Adformatie & Pim Online interviewed me about Vandebron, about our lack of experience in the energy market and the way we do marketing. You can read the interview (in Dutch) here: Vandebron profiteert van gebrek aan ervaring in energiemarkt  

56 years ago today, Ayrton Senna was born. If you ever watched the 2010 documentary ‘Senna‘, you might realise how inspirational the man was. One example. When Ayrton Senna collided with Alain Prost at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix in 1990, both retired from the race, ensuring Senna his second title in Formula 1. Afterwards, three-time […]

‘Nice day to shake up the energy market.’ In all its irony, perhaps the first thing I ever wrote for Vandebron, was the best thing I ever wrote for it. It cut clear the let’s-do-this tone of the company, the go-green mission and the joie-de-vivre spirit. All after has been built upon that sunny day in March. And today, that […]

As I wrote earlier, I’m now writing for Coanda Simsport, a simracing team competing in iRacing’s World Championship Grand Prix Series. The firs two race reports are now done, you can read them via these two links: Land down under: Phillip Island race report Start me up: Interlagos race report  

“How many moves ahead do you think?”, a journalist once asked legendary chess player Garry Kasparov. Many in the room thought he’d come up with a ridiculously high number, which would make us all understand what made Kasparov such a great chess player, yet Kasparov simply replied: “There is no answer”, and continued: “The main thing […]

What goes on in the mind of another? We can see actions, hear words — but one’s thoughts are always one’s own. Didier Pironi’s first victory for Ferrari deemed it likely that he would be France’s first world champion, yet it ended his friendship with Gilles Villeneuve, for the victory had come in an inexplicable […]

After my BadgerGP article on simracing, here, Coanda Simsport approached me with the question if I wanted to blog for them. I’ve written a lot about ‘offline’ racing, so now it’s a really nice opportunity to write about some online racing as well! Here’s the first article of many, on Coanda’s new livery. On iRacing’s […]

With the Formula One teams showing and testing their new cars in Spain, their virtual equivalent — the iRacing’s World Championship Grand Prix Series — is set to start next Saturday. Driving Coanda’s McLaren MP4-30 are Mitchell deJong, Martin Krönke, André Bötcher, Martti Pietilä, Hugo Luis Calmon, and Rocco Barone. We catch up with them […]

The first time I drove Suzuka, virtually, was probably on EA Games’ F1 2000, manoeuvring a pixelated car around with the left and right buttons of the PS1 controller. Through the next decade, I raced the Japanese track in games like Grand Prix 4, Codemasters’ F1 series, and Gran Turismo 5, so I felt I […]

Last October, Above Average uploaded a video titled ‘First Person To Run A Marathon Without Talking About It’, in which a guy says: “The whole point of running a marathon is to tell people you’re going to run a marathon. Otherwise, who’s going for a long run?” It’s a parody on today’s society, about the goals we set […]

A bet is what got Maria Teresa de Filippis into motor racing, but her legacy she crafted herself. During her racing career her biggest competition didn’t come from the greats like Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham or Juan Manuel Fangio, but the prejudice that women weren’t supposed to race. Maria was born and raised in 1926 […]

New article on BadgerGP, on the F1-equivelant of scoring an own goal: colliding with your teammate, in ‘When teammates collide‘ It is motorsport’s ultimate sin and the equivalent of scoring an own goal during football: colliding with your teammate. It’s something that has left many drivers red faced and many cars beyond repair. Here’s a […]

When I started my internship at JWT Amsterdam, early 2013, I saw advertising as a sport (I even wrote an article titled as such, back then). There wasn’t any morale for me, my motivation was just to sell as many products as possible. For the internship, I only had one goal: producing a television commercial. […]

Stirling and Behra, 1956 – Photo: f1-photo.com As one of the greatest drivers never to win an official Grand Prix, Jean Behra lived and drove full of courage and bravery. To his love of racing, he lost part of his nose, an ear and ultimately, his life. Behra was born in Nice, France in 1921. […]

Last summer, in the French town of Le Mans, the famous twenty-four hour race started. In the front of the field, the hybrids from Porsche, Audi and Toyota shot away into a big lead. After twenty minutes, the backmarkers, Ferrari’s and Chevrolet’s, were lapped, which means a disadvantage of 14 kilometers. Porsche went on to win, while […]

Originally an answer on Quora to the question: What do you see as the future for F1 Grand Prix? I’m pretty sure that — despite the public disliking the new V6 engines and their sound — Formula 1 will go all-electric within the decade. Maybe at first there will be only an electric final drive, […]

On a Saturday in July 1891, in Paris, France, the American Luther Cary ran and won the 100 meter sprint final, setting the first documented record at 10.8 seconds. Fifteen years later, in 1906, Knut Lindberg from Sweden ran the distance in 10.6 seconds, and come 1956, Willie Williams from the United States, knocked off another […]

Bellof, 1984 Monaco Grand Prix – Copyright © The Cahier Archive The timid Stefan Bellof played tennis, squash, sailed and skied. Yet most of all, he excelled at racing. Images of him in the nimble black Tyrrell remain of his F1 legacy, along with the thought of what could have been. Stefan Bellof was born […]

De Portago at Monza, 1956 – Copyright © The Cahier As one of the most remarkable Formula One drivers of yore, Alfonso de Portago’s short life ended as abruptly as it bloomed, and featured a series of highlights that went way beyond motor racing. Alfonso de Portago’s father was a Spanish marquess, his mother a […]

In response to Medium’s What’s the Best Writing Advice You‘ve Ever Received? Writing advice: You’re the best writer This advice, from a YouTube video from Chiron Holwijn, goes beyond the obvious writing advice that’s out there. It’s simple advice, arrogant even, but believing that you’re the best writer in the world’ is liberating. This belief tackles the […]

Although I don’t admire it, I am amazed by the one euro hamburger; how does someone manage to turn a profit on this? There’s a gherkin (albeit small), bread (two pieces of them, with grains on top), ketchup and mayonaise (which in itself consist of many ingredients, too), and there’s the burger itself. There’s also […]

The dark weekend in May of 1994, when the world lost Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna, wasn’t the first time Damon Hill lost his teammate. That happened eight years earlier, on an ice-cold day at Goodwood. Here’s the tragic tale of Canada’s Bertrand Fabi, an enigmatic case of ‘what might have been’. Bertrand Fabi, all-out […]

“I’ve lost the race, haven’t I?”. Lewis Hamilton was always going to win the Monaco Grand Prix, until he wasn’t. After signing a new contract with Mercedes, Lewis led both sessions on Thursday. On Saturday, he took pole position, and on Sunday, Lewis charged away from the field and into a seven second lead that […]

1976 Germany German Grand Prix – Copyright © The Cahier Archive “Car good, Vittorio good.” Vittorio Brambilla spoke Italian and French, but little English. At the age of thirty-six he was a former mechanic and brought to Formula 1 as a driver by sponsor Beta. Nobody expected anything of him, but days would come where […]

I helped built Vandebron’s brand, voice and identity. Initially through copywriting, graphic design, photography, PR, event management and social media — later on leading a small team that did this, producing and publishing content like videos and photos on a weekly basis. In these two-and-a-half years, Vandebron grew from 0 to 100.000+ customers. “Vandebron has hands […]

I helped out a game called iGP Manager with their social media and on-website content, creating dozens of Facebook and Twitter posts, but also competitions such as the livery contest, which used the in-game mechanics.

The evening before the Italian Grand Prix of 1961, Wolfgang von Trips, speaking on the dangers of racing, replied to a journalist: “It could happen tomorrow. That’s the thing about this business, you never know.” Von Trips was always going to be Germany’s first World Champion, until that promise, along with the lives of fifteen […]

In the night of 29th to 30th October, 2012, Hurricane Sandy reached the isle of Manhattan in New York. Due to flooding, a transformer of Con Edison exploded on 14th Street, causing a huge power loss in Lower Manhattan. More than one million New Yorkers were left without power, some over eleven days long. For […]

There’s a mantra for writers that says one can only be a good writer if he or she writes lots, but reads even more. Some Japanse painters observe for hours, only to paint the object in mere minutes. Others, argue you can only become good by doing, whatever the skill. Whatever the balance, or theory, you […]

On my first day at Vandebron — or Republiq, as it was then called — I had to construct a password that contained numbers, for which part I picked the date, ’10_2’, which is today. Working here, as a writer, blogger, brand journalist — or whatever you would could call what I do — is […]

When the clutch of his Ferrari 250 GT failed, Ferruccio Lamborghini had enough. The Italian, rich from building tractors, had already returned four times that same year to the factory in Maranello. With his fifth return, he stepped to the office of the twenty year older Enzo Ferrari, to tell about the woes of the […]

The past five years I’ve spent a lot of time blogging. Yesterday, during the fourteenth edition of Pancart, I got to share some of the things I’ve learned from that, with an momentous bunch of people, from Switzerland, Namibia, South-Africa, India, Hungary and France. In Amsterdam. This is my presentation from yesterday, in, obviously, a blog post. […]

Mid­-February this year, I joined the startup Vandebron as a copywriter, two months before its launch. The small team was working at full speed to meet the deadline for launching the world’s first online peer­2­peer energy marketplace. In joining I had little time to learn, so I figured out the things I didn’t fully understand […]

In the night of August 3, 1914, German troops invaded Belgium, bringing an end to the first era of motor racing that had started in 1894. An epoch of ‘horseless carriages’ powered by petrol, kerosene, steam or electricity. Experimental cars balancing on thin and flimsy tyres, lacking suspension, stopping power or protection against the elements. […]

Last Sunday I was at the People’s Climate March, in Amsterdam. I really enjoyed the songs, the insights, the jokes, and it was fantastic to see so many people committed for a better climate. I’m committed as well, although I don’t bring banners. Saving the world should be fun, otherwise it’s not going to happen. Calling […]

I’m not religious. I don’t go to clubs. I don’t like patriotism and I don’t like people who are lazy or inconsiderate. I don’t smoke and I think watching television is a waste of time. Yet of all things, most often I need to explain why I don’t eat meat. There’s a stigma on vegetarianism, as if – […]

I’ve done two holidays alone. I always wanted to go on a cycling holiday, but I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to come with me.. In 2009 I got on my bike alone, after which I cycled a thousand kilometers in five days, to the middle of France (Dijon, the mustard city). I noticed so […]

Whether spoken out or written down, I love words to a great deal. Put in form like the 1843’s tale The Ugly Duckling, the video-game Heavy Rain or the movie Zodiac, words tell us so much. And stories entice me. I love reading about the Black Dahlia murder, the life of Vasily Zaytsev or the […]

This is a produced concept and execution for Greenpeace at the festival of Lowlands. Greenpeace wanted an activation that was both nice to compete in, as well as nice to watch. As they were campaigning with “Save the Arctic”, we turned Lake Lowlands into icebergs with oil rigs, which visitors had to ‘steal’. They repeated […]

Together with a Jonas Kamber, I ran Lookslikegooddesign, which later moved to LLGD.NET. Jonas did most in the founding years, I from 2012 to 2014. I’d select designs from submissions but also the likes of Behance, crop them onto the right size and have three posts per day, catering to around 15.000 visitors per day, or […]

Are junior talent programmes a dump? Directly after the surprise announcement of Daniil Kvyat landing a Toro Rosso seat for 2014, my Twitter feed was filled with remarks about the young Russian; good, bad and others just stating the facts. Will Buxton GP2 and GP3 commentator, tweeted; ‘First reaction? Yet another Red Bull decision that […]

If not for the essential difference that it is a lot smarter, strategic lawn would be a lot like normal lawn mowing. With strategic lawn moving, instead of mindlessly mowing the closest patch of grass available, you would pause for a moment to look over the about-to-be-cut lawn to analyse your battlefield. Think about the […]

Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2 billion and Skype for $8.5 billion. Google spent on $3.2 billion on Nest and $12.5 billion on Motorola. Facebook splashed $1 billion on Instagram, $2 billion on Oculus and $19 billion on Whatsapp.  Brands like Starbucks, Red Bull and Oreo have well beyond 35 million followers on Facebook each, a […]

Yesterday was the warmest 8th March ever in the Netherlands, and today the temperature rose even further. Fluctuation happens every year, but thirteen of the fourteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century, and we’re only fourteen years in. If you want to show your ignorance, there’s no better way to […]

Originally posted on Quora, in an answer to Does anyone else in their 30/40s still have the hope of becoming a big shot in the future? Dreams come without an expiry date, and you should never accept the notion that you can’t do what you’d like to do. Here are some examples of people who didn’t. Sylvester […]

Here’s a close-up of the newspaper I found in an antique shop in Leiden. It’s from the Tenth of January, 1840, and printed with movable type, so you can really feel the words pressed into the paper. A lot of manual labour was put into making this newspaper, without all the eases of publishing we […]

India’s population of more than 1.2 billion people speaks a few hundred different languages. 112 of those languages are spoken by more than 10,000 people, and 30 languages in India have over a million speakers. Then, just take in consideration that more than a quarter of the population is illiterate. So, if you’re an advertising […]

Ideally, a novel is just one idea long. Which is also the perfect length for movies, dinners, albums, advertising campaigns and blogs. Anything. And the perfect chapter, scene, dish, song, advertisement or post, is one idea as well. On a smaller scale; the perfect sentence adds one idea to the paragraph. In its turn, the paragraph […]

‘Natural’ on the left, vs ‘Beneficial’ on the right.

As sad at the passing of Paul Walker and Roger Rodas is, I’d like to use this as an opportunity for sense. People who drive like idiots on public roads cause pain and  suffering. Both Paul Walker and Roger Rodas leave behind a wife and kids. I’m glad they didn’t take any innocent bystanders with […]

I love reading. When a percipient writer penned down his words with perfection, I love reading. Writing in its good form is thinking on paper, and speaks directly to me in beautiful words. I love that. I love it when I read intelligence, expressed in a clear, simple, brief and human way. Reading good writing […]

Quake 3 is a first-person shooter video game – launched back in 1999 – that came with the innovation that the bot AI (artificial intelligence) could learn and adapt new scenarios and situations, based on tactics that worked and didn’t work. Basically; the longer you played, the more it would learn about you. Matches usually […]

The five biggest supermarkets in the Netherlands – with a 70% market share – are all saying they’re the cheapest. If such a thing could be measured, clearly four of them would be wrong. But I must agree with them; they’re cheap. The cheapest thing they’re selling is their brand image. So, I’m glad the […]

Going into my last year of adschool, I’m pondering which direction I wish to go after I have my diploma signed. Advertising, writing, something editorial? I don’t know yet. Yet whichever I choose, I’m free to change it, or do the other things in my spare time. ‘Am I not too old for that?’ is […]

Originally posted on Quora. A glass vase of  €0.50. I bought it, had to carry it with me the whole day while shopping, then – when I got home I quickly filled it with water and put in the flowers, to leave for the weekend. When I got home, I found out it was leaking […]

Originally posted on Quora. I’m rather disappointed by Apple’s case for the iPhone 5C they announced moments ago. It looks like a cross between connect four, a cheese grater and Crocs, and clearly shows a design fault. For a company that’s all about design, that’s pretty bad. Steve Jobs would have fired the entire design […]

When Ben Affleck was announced as the new Batman, the internet exploded. Tweets, memes, and even a petition to remove him from the movie, which was signed over 66,000 times. Damn, I didn’t knew this much people actually cared about who would play a fictional superhero. Perhaps we could just wait until we actually see […]

Today is the day in the year when humans consumed more than the Earth can produce in one whole year. Known as Earth Overshoot Day, it shows that in 8 months, we exhausted our planet’s ecological budget for the year. Like a bank account shows the deficit of income against expenditures, our planet’s account is […]

Over a year ago, I picked internet-provider UPC, despite knowing that they had some bad reviews on the internet, but I choose them anyway for they where the cheapest. Clearly, in hindsight, this was a mistake for soon my share was slow internet, or no internet at all, and terrible helpdesk assistance. For a low […]

You’re a human being, and that puts you ahead of brands in some ways. In the end, brands are just companies, and companies can never match human authenticity. In this age of social media, authenticity is becoming evermore important, with trust becoming a currency. And while the top five brands spend more money on innovation […]

If I asked you ‘what’s the colour of the sky?’ how would you answer? You’d probably say ‘blue’ without looking – but you’d be wrong in many cases.

An ode to childish The image above is a rendering by BMW, made after an idea by Eli, a four year old kid. It was his idea to have a BMW with 42 wheels, all-wheel drive, powered by no less than 19 Porsche engines, and comes with a trunk full of toys in which you […]

The past fourteen days I’ve spend my time in one of the craziest cities on the planet. India is a mesmerising country with beautiful traditions that I wanted to visit for long time, and with Mumbai modernising rather rapidly I thought now was a good time. The city carries a huge enigma with the ability to […]

Having hundreds of connections of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook is a bit like having a huge pile of businesscards: It’s irrelevant. Do you really know these people? Do they really know you? We often believe that these numbers tell us the score on how social we are, but more often than not they’re misleading. Starbucks […]

One of the guys behind Volta Ferrorama – a campaign which won a gold Lion in 2011. Leo Ehrlich was born in Brazil and studied Visual Communication in Rio, where he also worked at several agencies, including DDB Brasil, before moving to Grupo W in Mexico. Now, he works in yet another continent as a […]

I’ve been writing articles since studying graphic design, now some six years ago. Most of my articles are rubbish, boring, and by now, outdated. These items never see daylight though and are put in a folder called ‘articles’ on my desktop. But the thing is; I don’t necessarily write them to be proper, up to […]

The notion that content is king is a myth, because it’s based on a fallacy, namely the following: ‘If you build something good, the customers will come themselves’. If that would be true, marketing wouldn’t be necessary. Content is important, but it’s not everything. Some people believe the consumer is king while others believe that […]

For anyone working in a creative team, collaboration is key, so that’s why I wanted to interview a photo retoucher, as they’re very essential in nearly every project. Thiago Christo, from Brazil, is one of the friendliest I know, plus he makes amazing stuff. He’s doing it for over 10 years, so enough reason to […]

‘Service’, seems to be a pretty big buzzword nowadays. Quotes like ‘serve, don’t sell’ make sense – but there’s a thing like over-servicing too, to a point where it might become anti-servicing. It first crossed my mind years ago, when I was taking back the bus in Sydney, Australia. This bus was old! Fine, but […]

The creative revolution The sixties are long gone now, but a few things have survived remarkably well. The music of the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors is still played today (in fact, these bands share an accumulated 60 million likes on Facebook), and there’s also the hipster subculture which keeps […]

A thinker, blogger and a junior – who always seems to carry a smile wherever she goes. She’s from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and now studying advertising and information technology in Syracuse, New York. Writing for The Social Sip (her own personal blog) she expresses her affection and wittiness for social media in this digital age. Could […]

Father, speaker, writer and founding partner of Valuebridge; an Amsterdam based consulting company that supports companies on strategic identity issues. His personal expertise lies in strategic decision making on positioning, brand portfolio strategy and the resulting organizational change. He helped answering this Q&A. Could you tell us a bit about yourself? I grew-up in and […]

Last week the city of Cannes in the French Rivera was the week-long epicenter of advertising, as it hosted the 59th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. For me it was the 2nd time of going there. Last year was was overwhelming for me, as a tsunami of experiences and knowledge made a lasting impression […]

She worked at Publicis Graphics, but now – as a cheerful lady from Beirut, Fidele Hage directs a team of youngsters and works with people from multinational backgrounds, who come from agencies like FP7, Impact BBDO, TWBA, Publicis and Leo Burnett. She does this at a boutique agency called PEOPLE. Could you tell us a bit […]

She reigns her sharp pencil all the way from Mumbai, India, where she works as a copywriter at an advertising agency. In addition, she holds the self proclaimed title of ‘wannabe professional nitpicker’ and has her own view at life. She expresses that view in her spontaneous way of writing, as she, with tongue firmly […]

UPC Wi-fi names are just advertising spaces which internet providers don’t use. Our idea, as proposed to UPC, is to change standard wi-fi names like ‘UPC24408’ to names like ‘Blistering Fast UPC’, for all your neighbours to see. Since those same neighbour might be on UPC as well, we’ve made a list of network name […]

A great many interests pop up in his career, so Bruno Setola simply calls himself ‘Head of Applied Imagination’. Having previously worked for twelve years in various creative studios, Setola now finds himself developing a curriculum for Cross-Media Advertising at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. He also investigates new directions in communication technology, […]

‘Sssh.’ Poster for the library, where a catechistic absence of sound is cherished. Font design Working iPad app based on classic playing carpet (view video) Poster on the font Klavika Serpentalis t-shirt design Kingfisher Barcelona Website for Hospice Eesinge Laptop School of Rock, Sydney, Australia Poster for North Sea Jazz Poster for Spartan Logo’s Eve […]

My dad is a radio hobbyist, and when HAM radio amateurs make a connection, they send each other a QSL card. I made a dozen of designs for him and his fellow club members.  

India is a mesmerising country with beautiful traditions that I wanted to visit for long time, and with Mumbai modernising rather rapidly I thought now was a great time, so the past fourteen days I’ve spend my time in one of the craziest cities on the planet. The city carries a huge enigma with the ability […]

Have you ever heard about strategic lawn mowing before? It’s like normal lawn mowing – but smarter. You see, instead of just rolling out your lawn mower and mindlessly rushing to the closest patch of grass available, you stop and look over the about-to-be-cut lawn and analyse your battlefield. Think about the path you’re going […]

There have been an abundant amount of researches to human behaviour; about which colours stimulates purchases and what kind of spontaneous humor works best – and a lot about why people share online. Yet, most of these researches presume that participants consciously know why they share, resulting in ‘sharing motives’, such as; ‘to build relationships’ […]

Do new things Go wine tastings, go diving, I don’t know. Do something new. Don’t make life a time-serving routine. Sleep well Have at least 8 hours of sleep a day. It’s difficult but c’mon, get some discipline. Too many studies have shown that sleep is important. Do sport A bit obvious, though many people […]

On February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashed in Iowa, with on board Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. They did not survive, and Don McLean sang about “the day the music died.” A year earlier Elvis was forced into the army. Rock’n’roll seemed dead. It was 1963 when Don McLean got […]

After being Marketing Manager at Zomba Record Holdings from 1989 to 2002, Florent Luyckx moved to the Dutch radio station 3FM as Station Manager. In 6 years time he transformed the station into the success it is now. In 2009 he started as CEO at the Dutch Young & Rubicam office, Y&R Not Just Film, […]

My first article of the year and already I have this itching urge to clarifying something, namely: I consider my life one big experiment, and ‘collecting’ many experiences is key. To achieve that, it means I sometimes do things which are considered morally wrong, leastwise according to the conventional system. That ‘urge for experimenting’ however […]

Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Sonic. All game-characters from way back. But all made for kid’s games. Even Link from Zelda wasn’t exactly a badass. And let’s not even speak about Kirby. Games used to be cute. We’d rescue princesses from castles or return baby monkies to their mommies. Well, thanks to Playstation, that changed. […]

It’s difficult to briefly describe Jack Trout. He is president of Trout & Partners, one of the most prestigious marketing firms with offices in 23 countries. The firm has done work for AT&T, IBM, Burger King, Xerox, Lotus, Ericsson, Tetra Pak, Repsol, Hewlett-Packard and other Fortune 500 companies. Trout is one of the founders and […]

Creative director and co-founder at Tonic, where he is called the “chief creative guru”. Raffray started his career in his native South Africa before he went to Dubai in 2003 – a decision that most told him was “creative suicide”. It did work out though, as Vincent worked for Y&R and Impact BBDO before starting […]

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.” That was said by Vince Lombardi. He was talking about American football, but the meaning of the quote could go way beyond that. Sport is many things; competition, business, […]

Justin Bieber – the kid with a whole legion of teenage girls behind him and an even bigger army of grownup misanthropes who hate him with a passion. Bieber makes an excellent target to bully, specially because of his elated fans. Though in a sense, his popularity is a form of democracy. Saying Bieber is […]

Often, the first think people shoot at you when at ad-contest is finished is the peculiar question “Did you win?”. And whilst it is questionable whether winning is key to a competition, it sort of makes the rest look less valuable. Besides, it kinda leaves a bad taste in your mouth to say you didn’t […]

Sunday, the 19th of June, 2011: The Cannes Film Festival was over. The celebrities where flown back to Beverly Hills. Their trash was removed, the red carpet was vacuumed and the champagne glasses where cleaned. It was time, for the Advertising Festival. Roughly 9000 people with jobs in advertising came to Cannes and collected their […]

Hans van Dijk started his career in 1976 at Ogilvy & Mather in Amsterdam, to join Kuiper & Schouten in 1985. He (and others) started Low Digital in 1997 and in 2001 the Amsterdam based Skipintro, where he still works as CD today. Hans did heaps of work in the Netherlands, making him one of […]

Diane Costa has over fourteen years of experience in advertising & branding of all types of business. She’s owner and MD at Marketing Mechanics in Sydney, Australia and worked with blue-chip companies like Vodafone, McDonald’s and Cadbury. On top of that, she’s an associate member of the Australian Marketing Institute and owns an internet store […]

Osama bin Laden, also known as Usama bin Laden, Usama bin Ladin, Ussamah Bin Ladin and Oussama Ben Laden, is no more. But like many notorious people, OBL was used in many ads and will probably continue to do so. He often functions as a metaphor for something that’s evil or someone that’s incredibly hard […]

He’s a very talented illustrator with great passion for what he does. Peterson Joseph, also known as ‘Leaky Penny’, was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and went to study Illustration and Design at Dawson College there. He now lives in Toronto, where makes fantastic energetic illustrations, inspired by music such as jazz and hip […]

I suppose April 2 is a good day to look back on the ‘not-so-serious’ announcements made yesterday, although most of them where made pretty seriously. ` LinkedIn The business-oriented social networking site filled the usual ‘People You May Know’ with some rather unusual names. Playmobile Apple Store This might actually have a chance of succeeding, […]

Listening to the old internet dail-up sound definitely takes me back to a time, not so long ago (10 years?) where I had to ask my parents every time if I could go on the internet. The computer would use the telephone line, so we couldn’t receive any phonecalls (and to be honest, I for one […]

Meet Luke Sullivan. Ad geek and an award-winning copywriter. Luke has been writing since about 6th grade and worked for agencies like Fallon McElligott and The Martin Agency. He is now CD at GSDM in ‘good ol’ Austin’. He wrote the bestselling advertising guide ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This’ back in 1998, a book now in third […]

Maybe I’m just being grumpy here but I can use a good rant since I’m getting really really tired from seeing the same faded faux Polaroid aesthetics all over again. All I see is old timey photoshopped images. I can understand people are trying to be cute but just because it looks ‘vintage’ and ‘antique’ […]

Most ideas jump into our brains at unexpected times, at unexpected places. (Having dinner at 6′ is an idea, and it’s one that occurs at an expected time and expected place but that’s not the kind of idea I mean. I’m talking big, honkin’ ideas.) The point is, creative ideas can’t be forced out (or […]

Sharp is his pencil and modest are his words: ‘I don’t brag unless it’s mandatory.’ With his head in the clouds, Chandra Wijaya Tan is about to graduate in Advertising at the London School of Public Relations in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has work experience at Y&R Jakarta and does freelancing (although he says this is […]

Despite having left advertising school only this year, Stefan van den Boogaard and Tim Arts (blue cap) have already got some awards bagged, including the Business to Business at the New York Advertising Festival. They work at the Belgian agency Mortierbrigade. This Q&A is with Tim, who functions as an Art Director and also has […]

GT5 has some flaws and pointless extra’s but the passion and experience of racing it’s about is brilliant and unmatched. Al right, let’s start of by saying that I wrote this review during the loading times of GT5. It becomes really annoying. I’ve kinda red the manual 15 times as well by now. My 3 […]

1. Zoom in and out on your subject in your mind. 2. Take up the perspective of an ant and a bird. 3. Look at your subject as if you were a priest/astronaut/prostitute. 4. Examine your subject wearing pink glasses. 5. Lie down on the floor. 6. Hold your breath for 30 seconds. 7. Put […]

Eelco de Winter worked at Result DDB, FHV/BBDO and &KoenseSeverein with clients like KPN, Sony, Fujitsu Siemens and Rabobank. He now works at Kaaps, a video production company in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as a strategist and production manager. At Kaaps, he tries to convey marketing strategics into emotions. Kaaps works for both charities and commercial companies. Could […]

Putting these ad-legend quotes together made a sort of quick guide to the act of stringing words together. The headline “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” David Ogilvy “It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money…” […]

After studying at the Krakowska Akademia in Poland, Peter Kowalski started Wordboner.com. He uses it as platform to sell his fantastic typographical wordplays, as tshirts and a few other things, such as stickers and iPhone cases. Tees aside, his promotion of the website is pretty clever as well, using various social media sites. Time to […]

First in the Q&A series is Ivan Raszl. He has many years working experience in the advertising field, having previously worked in Hungary and Bahrain in positions as Graphic Designer, Packaging Designer, Art Director, Creative Director and General Manager. Now he works as an online business consultant and is the founder and editor of sites […]

Ah, LEGO. Complete days of my life have I spend with these plastic building blocks. Yes, my LEGO characters suffered greatly at my fingertips. It’s been a while now but I still feel some of that passion for the brand deep inside. As the centrepiece of childhood fantasy and imagination, LEGO was a necessity… it […]

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Shortlist Clio Award

Wohoo! I’ve been accepted to the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam! I’m going to study Advertising! From Wikipedia: The Willem de Kooning Academy is the art school of Rotterdam and part of the Hogeschool Rotterdam, a university of applied sciences. It is regarded as one of the most prestigious art schools in the country […]

So many bendy roads, popping out of the ground, like roots from a tree. No idea where they came from, or where they lead to. – So many people, walking on the streets, like ants in their hill. No idea where they came from, or where they go to. – So many lights, shining from […]

Working on the website now. Blog coming up on this page so why not start with a blog entry? I’m also working on a neat gallery and an e-mail form for the contact page. I’ve chosen a vertical layout of the website. Normally I wouldn’t do that because it leaves little space for a gallery […]

Microsoft is building an anti-tracking function into its upcoming version of Internet Explorer (9). The new feature will let users easily keep lists of websites that track what they do online, and block any site from logging their web activity. This silly feature might lead to distorted results of devices like Google Analytics, as IE […]

Just want to say, I love this game. Absolutly love it. After playing MotoGP 3 this is such a relief. Here we have a game which takes back the game to one thing: racing. I played this on PC with a Xbox gamepad but it’s avaible for PS3 and Xbox too. Without a doubt the […]

Apples speed up your metabolism while onions decrease hypertension. Some foods have increased beneficial effects on your body. Still some might think that food has nothing to do with your brain. But you’d be very wrong to think that way.The brain is part of your body too. And just like your body, it needs fuel […]

“Live fast, die young.” I don’t know which rockstar said that but it seems very fitting for today’s time. I’m not sure just how big the influance of advertising is on this development, but I do believe a lot of things are forced to be faster. How many movies of two hours plus are there […]

Ayn Rand once said: “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.” The interesting question to me is this: […]

Christmas is filled with cliché’s, specially Christmas cards, as well as most Christmas ads. Still, the following prints use some of those cliché’s (Christmas tree’s, snowflakes, etc), but they do stand out. Hellmann’s mayonnaise CreAds (advertising agency from Singapore) Volkswagen postcard TGH (Russian tv channel) Smart Nespresso Heineken nutcracker Sooruz (skatewear) Pepsi (new logo) AB-Inbev […]

So I red this article about a Christmas tree, costing 11 million dollar, being unveiled in a hotel in Abu Dhabi. If you didn’t know yet, Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates, isn’t concidered a Christian country. 74% of it’s population is muslim. In fact, Abu Dhabi even banned Blackberry phones for “potentially […]

I don’t think random exists. Everything happens for a reason. Even the position of where a raindrop lands is explainable. When you trow the dice, it’s possible to explain why it stopped at 3. The notion of randomness violates the scientific method, and in reality, it does not occur anywhere in the known universe. Think […]

I’m pretty sure my articles contain some grammar mistake, or a few spelling errors, even though I’m using spell check. But what I mean with improper use of language is making at the moment you start stringing words together to make meaning that doesn’t make sense. Let me start of, right away with a common […]

In addition to ‘Stats and the truth’… I had a great teacher for physics at my secondairy school. Apart from the fact he was a total nutjob, he had some great thoughts about different subjects ranging from religions to photocamera tripods. Some where just discardable but some where very interesting. Such as his thought about […]

It’s scientifically proven: Black cars are 12% more involved in an accident. So, when buying a car, is it better to buy a white car? It’s easy to think that way, but statistics don’t mean the world. Think a little bit further. Maybe there is a direct connection between the colour of the car and […]

Money is power, a lot of people realise that. But they don’t apply that knowledge while spending their money. It’s not like, when you have heaps of money, you suddenly got power. It goes gradually. Small amounts of money hold power as well. See your money as a vote. Elections are constantly ungoing and never […]

Once upon a time Once upon a time, there was a kingdom inside my mind; full of castles, taverns and farms – mills, blacksmiths, stables and shops. There where forest filled with trees, fields of grass and gardens filled with flowers – all separated by twisty footpaths, and swift streams. The land was populated by ladies, squires, knights, and what […]