It truly is an end of an era: Kesselskramer declares bankruptcy

Something happened in the past ten years. Meetings were staffed with bobbleheads all rushing to cheer on and be agreeable, loving everything because criticizing things is mean, asking questions is rude, and having a sense of humor is offensive.

Before this culture took a hold of advertising and the world, there was a world where "why not?" ruled. Where a creative team who had worked in London returned home to Amsterdam and built a new agency on the back of doing flyposters for a friend's youth hostel. Videoing themselves in nearly half of the ads, they managed to make a big international PR splash on a shoestring budget with clip art and a fun attitude. Because back then, MTV still aired commercials and the target market spent weekends in Amsterdam, and gosh darnit, we actually had fun in the 90s.

That man in the white shirt and longish hair is Erik Kessels himself, everyone else in the video is a friend or working with the agency at the time.

The agency was originally in a chapel on Jacob Obrechtstraat 26, next to a big beautiful church, and close to a few other ad agencies. They eventually grew so big that they invested in a church building of their own, because why not?

Like with everything else, the people who worked for and with KK were roped in to help paint and decorate the church, and over a few weekend nights the gothic ceilings got their new colors while astroturf was rolled out. As people arrived in the reception, polaroids were taken of them which eventually filled up the frame behind the receptionist. The diving board did nothing, but the organ still worked and was sometimes played. It was always kind of cold inside, as old churches are, and it had a lot of space - so my hand painted wildplakken posters for Marcel at Amsterdam tattooing could spend an entire weekend drying off in unused hallways.

Once a couple who had gotten married in this church asked to come inside and see it again, the receptionist at the time let them in. They were horrified at the transformation. Chartreuse ceilings. Discoball lamps. A fort and a diving board in the middle of it all. Despite being gereserveerd Dutch people, a national trait that is very similar to how Scandinavian people behave but with different roots, as the modesty from Calvanistic influence can not be understated. The expression "doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg" - just act normal, that's crazy enough as it is, sums it up.
As you can imagine, an agency that decided to return from London and break all the rules were at the epicenter of a creative revolution wave that spread in the Netherlands, from the music scene to the interior design scene. So while this might look a little dated today, you can still see what influence it has had.

In 1997, conceptual design collective Droog Design shifted from an emerging Dutch phenomenon into an international powerhouse, I was working at FHV/BBDO at the time and there was no doubt that the creative center of Europe had shifted to Amsterdam. Wieden and Kennedy was already there, and from them a team split and created 180. In a triangle of bars on the Spuistraat you could run into everyone who was anyone in advertising, production, and design on any evening out, and the only "cliques" were between the Dutch speakers and the non-Dutch speakers.

At the height of it all, Amsterdam hosted creative gathering for all kinds of creative professionals, and I was often involved in hosting these gatherings. They were often informal dinners, which eventually evolved into networking breakfasts, creative summits, and three day conferences.
Condor Music went from one office to many, and eventually even opened one in Beijing. Amsterdam hosted the Boards summit, the Epica awards, the Tomorrow awards, I've lost count of it all. Sid Lee from Montreal wanted to get in on this and opened an office in Amsterdam, for a brief moment we all thought that we had a new Madison Avenue creative revolution happening. And it was fun!

But nothing lasts forever, alas. Even in permissive Amsterdam. In the land of "why not", they have now banned all advertising for all fossil fuels and meat products. While stricter rules can absolutely force people to be more creative, as has been proven with the legendary Silk Cut, Benson & Hedges, and John Player Special campaigns, it also really puts a damper on why creative people are attracted to a city. It's not like anarchy attracts creativity, but the Kraak neighborhoods (squatted) of Amsterdam and the occupied buildings in Berlin served the same purpose for creative inspiration. The difference between Berlin and Amsterdam is that the clients in Germany are in Hamburg, not near Berlin - so Berlin "only" has a music and an art, design, and author scene as a result. Not an advertising scene.

Perhaps anarchy is just a small part of creativity, lord knows that I've DJ:ed in occupied buildings Amsterdam on the Keizersgracht. When there was a deck up there and nobody wanted the party to end I just went home to get all my records and played until the sun came up together with another professional DJ.

I left Amsterdam during that heydey, for personal reasons, and I will probably always regret what I missed out on but as the Swedish saying goes "här blir inga barn gjorda" - which literally means "here, no babies are being made" (nothing gets done here, but specifically, no babies.)

We've all seen the happy accidents, the mistakes that turn out to be brilliant, the misprints that look good. You need space to experiment, and so the creative areas in cities are the cheap areas, Soho in New York was that area for a minute, Amsterdam had the quality of life that London lacked in the late 90s, you could literally bike to work and the rain never bothered anyone. And there was cheap space within reach. So the pilgrimage began.

Kesselskramers most recent campaign is still running, it's for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The reason for the sudden bankruptcy is that three major commercial projects unexpectedly fell through. The age-old story of clients backing out, not paying for work already done.

Will we see a new city like Amsterdam take over the title of the next creative hot-spot? I'm not so sure? I get restless, I globetrot, I look for it. I left Amsterdam and went straight to New York thinking it would happen there, but then a terrorist attack happened just as I had rented an apartment two blocks from the twin towers. My timing wasn't great then. I moved to Los Angeles unofficially in 2012.
I caught a bit of the creative wave in Los Angeles, but that died with the fires. I had some hope that the California to Nashville emigration would start a new revolution, but that city lacks space, and the energy there has died.

I've moved again. Creativity is restless. Creativity is seeking. Creativity is curious. Creativity never ends. Creativity may be nostalgic, but I also know, looking at these images, that this moment can not be repeated. This is lightning in a bottle. You can't catch that in the same spot twice.