SuperHeroes Reveal Plans for Asian Expansion

Like the Marvel Universe, the world of Dutch advertising agency SuperHeroes just keeps on expanding. They’ve just set up a new Batcave (or to continue the Marvel vibe, perhaps Stark Towers might be more accurate?) in New York and it turns out they’ve also got their eye on a new Asian hideout, as ECD Rogier Vijverberg and MD Django Weisz Blanchetta revealed at this week’s Spikes Asia festival in Singapore.

The team were in town to share their vision of human-centric advertising and their desire to end boring advertising once and for all, but as it turns out they’re also scouting for a new base in the Asia-Pacific market to service existing clients LG in South Korea and Asus in Taiwan and nurture relationships with other brands in the region.

“We’re not only here to do the talk and spread the word about the end of boring advertising, we’re also here to meet up with some of our clients because it’s always good to have some face time. And that brings us to the other reason that we’re here – we’re also looking to start an office over here,” says Django.

Much of the work they’ve done for LG and Asus has been global – but the team see the value in sharing a time zone. However they’ve yet to decide in which city to set up their base of operations – as yet the options are Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong or perhaps Taipei.

“Besides the practical side of things, you have to think about where is easiest to settle, what international relations are like with each country,” says Django, who is currently weighing up the pros and cons of each city.

So far the team has had an eye-opening and enjoyable ride with their current Asian clients. LG, for example, is part of the current Korean ‘Hallyu’ wave that’s slowly-but-surely taking over the world

“It’s great, it has a large drive to be successful,” says Rogier. “We did the surreal ‘Scary’ work for them which has gone amazingly viral and has been really successful and that’s opened a lot of doors for us in Korea so we get approached a lot by Korean brands.

“They have a really strong ambition. In LG’s case they want to be globally successful. I think what’s really interesting also is that the country also plans for that ambition. If you look at art, for instance, the country has never been very strong in art but now the government has a billion dollars available to support artists to create great work, just by using this planning in their economy.”

Meanwhile, Taiwan too is undergoing a branding and marketing renaissance, with tech firms like Asus leading the charge. “Everybody knows Taiwan from ‘Made in Taiwan’ so it has a history of great production facilities. But now what they’re going into is not just producing for others but marketing and branding things for themselves. If you look at Asus, it’s a really impressive company. They’ve got a lot of ambition also, pushing that forward, and with that comes great marketing. It’s exciting,” says Rogier.

And the relationships with Asian brands seem to have genuine mutual benefit – the SuperHeroes team are proud of their leftfield approach that they say has real, measurable results for clients. They also say that when it comes to tweaking their global campaigns to local Asian markets, they also frequently collaborate with local agencies in order to tap into their native insight.

This Is The Ticket #sneakerswould from SuperHeroes Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Aside from cementing plans for their Asian expansion, SuperHeroes look set to have a happily hectic few months ahead of them, with the recently launched #SneakersWould campaign for Converse and new Asus work due to be launched in a month and a half. Plus, like any crime fighting heroes, they’ve also got a few secrets and tricks up their sleeves – so keep your eye out for the Bat Signal.