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 a different light, and suddenly it seemed so weird to work on promoting supermarkets one week, to campaign against foodwaste the other week. It felt so trivial to sell new flavours of toothpaste, or new fragments of shampoo. It’s not per se that I felt better than that, but I did feel the world could do fine without all that nonsense. Maybe the disinterest that people have against advertising, I started to feel while working in the ad industry.

Luckily I got the change to get on board at Vandebron just when it started, and I worked really hard, but also spirited, to create media with meaning. We’re creating a better world, like so many other companies. But few of them, really, are ad agencies.

I wrote longer on this for OneWorld, a Dutch magazine, the full article which you can read here.