Rogier Vijverberg — Founder & Executive Creative Director, SuperHeroes Worldwide
Rogier talks to TheNextGag about recruiting diverse talent, creating work in the adblocker’s world and embracing pop culture for advertising.
Rogier Vijverberg is the Founder & Executive Creative Director of SuperHeroes Worldwide in the Netherlands.
Rogier co-founded SuperHeroes in 2009. SuperHeroes is an international, creativity-driven agency with one mission: to save the world from boring advertising.
Rogier kicked off at Young & Rubicam. He quickly discovered that what he really loved was fooling around on the web, leapt into digital in 1997 and started pioneering. He’s a much awarded digital doyen, amongst others on the highly successful Heineken interactive account.
In 2009 it was time to uncover his spandex. SuperHeroes has in just a few years become a hideout for big global brands seeking attention, such as LG, Diesel, Converse, ASUS and Coca Cola. Based in Amsterdam and opening up in New York, SuperHeroes is undeniably storming the world.
With keynotes at Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Spikes Asia, Adtech London, Adtech New York and others, Rogier is a regular in the speaker circuit, teasing audiences on innovation and creativity. To further spread his beliefs, he also juries in international awards shows.
THENEXTGAG: AFTER LAUNCHING IN AMSTERDAM, YOU OPENED IN NEW YORK. DO YOU HAVE AN EXPANSION STRATEGY ?
ROGIER VIJVERBERG: That’s a very good question. Indeed, it was like first Amsterdam, then New York, then the world.
When we started SuperHeroes, our first starting point was that we wanted to be like a Dutch international agency. So for us, that has always been very important. The first guy we hired was a Spanish guy. No, actually, that was the second guy. And from that now, we’ve got about fourteen nationalities. We are really an international crew. And really quickly we started to do international work. And then brands were asking us “Ok, can you also be in another timezone ?” And that led us to open up in New York. And that is also why we are looking into Asia as well. That’s our next step towards global domination.
TNG: WHO DO YOU HAVE IN NEW YORK AT THE MOMENT ?
RV: In New York, we have a full team. We’ve just got a new office. We have our New York Managing Director. He is also here in Cannes so we have kind of our board meeting here. Yeah, that’s going really well.
TNG: WHO IS GOING TO OPEN THE ASIAN OFFICE THEN ?
RV: That’s something in the works. We are still talking to people.
We are in the recruiting phase right now. But the time is right. Because we get a lot of requests as well from our Asian clients to have a local presence. So, it’s a matter of time before we actually have a full presence there.
We do not innovate for the sake of innovation.
TNG: SUPERHEROES WAS NOTORIOUS FOR DOING A LOT OF INNOVATIVE WORK AND SELLING PROTOTYPES TO CLIENTS. SINCE THEN, A LOT OF AGENCIES HAVE SET UP THEIR LABS AND EVEN CLIENTS HAVE IN-HOUSE DEPARTMENTS WITH 3D PRINTERS. HOW DO YOU STAY ON THE EDGE AND KEEP YOUR ADVANCE ?
RV: By making sure that we do not innovate for the sake of innovation. But that we also make it entertaining as well. Now, what we are actually doing, is that we are doing more and more in terms of campaigns as well.
We started indeed in the early 2010s with rapid-fire shots. We are still doing some of that but it’s more like bigger, global campaigns that we are merging it and integrating into. That’s been one of our big changes of the past two years.
Still, our mission is to save the world from boring advertising. And what we are really looking into is how programmatic and retargeting are just really boring and annoying so how we can fix that. How can we look at mobile in a different way ? It is still a lot of experimentation but I guess it is also fundamental work as well.
And it is also necessary because actually the advertising business model changes of course. If you look at the younger generations, they have adblockers and they don’t watch TV. So, you need to reach them in different ways. And to reach them, you need to be over that and come up with experiences and be more relevant. That’s where our technology background really helps with that. We have open teams in house. But, it is not done yet. People constantly change; And the biggest challenge is constantly adapt to that and be ahead of the crowd.
TNG: YOU MENTIONED ENTERTAINMENT. DO YOU FIND THAT IT IS A NECESSITY TO ADD THIS COMPONENT TO A CAMPAIGN ?
RV: Yes. As we say, we are creating pop culture. So we are creating campaigns that people want to look at and like to share. We are still focusing on these young generations, the Gen Z and the Millenials.
The big theme for us is that we are moving into this post-advertising world. People are using adblockers, they are swiping, they are not on Facebook anymore, they are tired of Instagram, Snapchat is not always performing perfectly … And they are going underground, into the messengers and the dark social. Or they are going into events and chatting all along.
We are really finding new ways of staying relevant for this changing target. That’s a really big challenge.
TNG: IS THERE A PIECE OF WORK THAT YOU DID THAT REPRESENTS WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE AND SHOW FUTURE CLIENTS ?
RV: The really interesting one is we did a campaign for MTV Global and it was for the program “Single AF”. That TV program has a main character, which is Cupid. And we built a chatbot around it. So, Cupid was represented in the chatbot and was giving love advice. But he was also notifying you when there were new episodes and was sharing behind-the-scenes information of the program. It was really establishing an one-one relationship with this mass medium.
And that for us was a really interesting one because we feel that it is something that is going to be big in the near future. If you are active all day, you go to your Messenger and it is only a small step. And if you can open up to it, then you can make it entertainment and pop culture. Not in an annoying way.
TNG: YOU NOW HAVE YOUR OWN PR FIRM. IT SEEMS STRANGE FOR AN AD AGENCY TO HAVE A PR FIRM. WHAT WAS THE REASON BEHIND IT ?
RV: It was actually a very logical step. Also because if you are talking about advertising, you are also talking about communications. And it is from start to end. It makes sense already in the concept phase to think about “How are we going to promote this ?” And not only thinking about media, but also what influencers or special means where you can have free publicity. That makes sense that we have a PR agency in-house because they can already tap-in into the whole process, in the concept phase and not in the end so that we have very profound ideas.
And at the same time, for clients it is that you can be more efficient as well. Because the old model was we create an idea, then the client has a PR agency and they do their own thing but it is more like a press release and not very effective. Or they reinvent the wheel again. But now, we are more efficient and effective because we are already in the ideation. You can think about “If we do this way, then we might have more press or reach for example.” That was one of the reasons. And we had already a social PR team.
It is also about how you define PR. Because PR can be a lot of things. But we were already doing a lot of social media management. From ad buys to YouTube management. We like to have a more digital-first PR approach instead of just the old way. Keeping the old but also adding the new elements of PR.
We don’t hire traditional creatives so much. Because we want people to be fluent basically in any means.
TNG: WHAT KIND OF TALENT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ? HOW DO YOU WRITE FOR A CHATBOT IF YOU HAVE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE ?
RV: Pretty hybrid people. We don’t hire traditional creatives so much. Because we want people to be fluent basically in any means. We don’t have traditional teams as well. We connect people on the job and on their interests. In terms of mentality as well, we are really looking for people that are really embracing change instead of opposing it. People that are not pessimistic but optimistic. I guess that’s the most important.
Rogier Vijverberg
Founder & Executive Creative Director
