Opening an Agency in New York - "It's Scary Man!"
Opening an agency in New York - which ambitious agency exec hasn’t dreamt of it at some point in their life? Creative agency SuperHeroes took the leap 2,5 years ago, an adventure that ended up being quite the fight. Until the gamble paid off and the city of Dubai said: “Yes Please”.
“Window dressing, fake it ‘til you make it, it’s more or less a necessary evil,” says Rob Zuurbier, managing partner at SuperHeroes New York.
“Look, we might be confident that we can handle that account. And on our website, we are showcasing great work for global A-List clients that we have done over the years, but that does not necessarily impress anyone here in NYC. When a client wants to pay your office a visit with their whole marketing team - they want to see that you have an organisation at scale, people to do the work and a leadership team that can tackle their business problems and builds trust. Now, we were situated in a shared workspace in Brooklyn at the time with a bunch of collaborating startups. So, we rebranded the whole space SuperHeroes New York, from the front door, to the kitchen, to the meeting rooms. I then ‘promoted’ every other company to temporary SuperHeroes. The guy building websites three desks down became my creative director and the lawyer down the hall my CFO. It worked, we had a great meeting, the client felt confident and we landed the account.
"I live in Brooklyn, commute by motorcycle and I have to say that driving home that day with the Manhattan skyline on my right, I couldn’t help thinking: 'Yesss, we are actually doing this here in NYC'."
Romantic Dream
New York is still very much the advertising capital of the world and an office there remains the ultimate dream of many agency execs. What’s interesting is that the three members of the SuperHeroes management team all see the adventure slightly differently. As for co-founder and executive creative director Rogier Vijverberg, who started his career at Young & Rubicam, the romance of the whole thing definitely plays a part. “Sinatra… it’s in my head, can’t help it, if you can make it there... It’s like asking the mountaineer why he wants to climb that mountain. Because it’s there and because that mountain will show you if you’re able."
Django Weisz Blanchetta, co-founder and managing director of the Amsterdam office with a consultancy background, looks at it as the ultimate test of entrepreneurship: "Establishing a viable agency in The Netherlands already commands a great deal of respect from me. But New York? From here, with a different language and culture…. You can’t help but wonder: Is it possible? Is it fun? Can we pull it off?"
Zuurbier, who made his career within the Dentsu Aegis network in Amsterdam, London, Brussels, and New York, says: "I was mainly ready to be more of an entrepreneur, more independent, fewer politics. I wanted to dive into this adventure with these guys and build something from the ground up. I knew I would be dropping in salary and perks quite heavily, but I honestly thought we’d be up, running and killing it in no time. That was a bit of a miscalculation."
Super Scary
The American industry press reacted to the Superheroes NY office with headlines such as: “Can an Independent Amsterdam Agency Tame Gotham’s Many Challenges?” and “Expanding into New York is no stroll down Broadway”.
Almost three years in, Zuurbier can confirm that. Funding (and he gives the word serious weight) was the first challenge. "Proper funding makes it so much easier, I mean - a decent creative team will cost you north of $300K a year here, now you want multiple teams obviously, so do the math. Then you’re going to need strategists, account people, producers, media specialists and so on. You want to move on from the 'one man and a desk phase' as soon as humanly possible. We also didn’t want to become a local agent for the Amsterdam office. We really wanted to build a self-sustaining agency here. But if you don’t have a couple of million at your disposal and you need to earn every dollar before you can spend it, then it means you have to hustle, hustle and hustle some more. Hit up those new business leads and do everything you can to bring them in."
Cultural differences
The gentlemen speak of an ‘industry’ that is going ‘100 miles an hour’, one where loyalty is submissive to direct results, where you can present your best work on your best day and you’re lucky if you even get a polite 'no' as an answer. “This city will eat you alive if you can’t deliver,” Zuurbier says.
“Talent comes at a price and is working at competing agencies and so you’re always going to be a bit ‘thin’ in the beginning,” says Weisz Blanchetta. “You want to scale up as quickly as possible and reach a size where you can service the bigger clients in the US. This keeps you up at night, but is also the exciting part of the challenge of course.”
Then there are the cultural differences as pointed out by Zuurbier: “If an American says 'very interesting', he means he doesn’t like it much, if he says 'I’m sure it’s my fault', then he means, 'You messed up'. And so you need to be on your toes. Then, there are the relatively ‘usual’ bumps in the road. A client who pulls out last minute, another client that wants to work with us but keeps dragging their heels, the fight to sell in that brilliant idea instead of the backup concept. And sometimes you have to take the heavier punches. For a tech giant, a film was made with the goal to juxtapose the product’ ‘realness’ against all the ‘fakeness’ that we are confronted with on a daily basis. Says Vijverberg: “It was a great campaign and it would have been hugely successful. But in the end, the client didn’t dare to run it. Not great for agency morale and a sorely missed opportunity for the agency to generate spin-off from a great piece of work. That hurts.”
Lessons learned
And 'That hurts' says a lot about SuperHeroes in general and the project in New York in particular. These are all stories that are somewhat reluctantly told. Solely focusing on all the effort and challenges will set you up for failure and the rationale behind the New York adventure does not change either way. New York will bring growth to SuperHeroes. “In our business, the US is still a major trendsetter. What happens there, we see happening in Europe a year later," says Weisz Blanchetta.
It’s also clear that the new US office brings with it changes in culture that are agency-wide. “In the Netherlands, things like employment laws and secondary benefits are very well organised and enforced by law," says Weisz Blanchetta. “In the US, employers can say goodbye at any time and without any rhyme or reason. So, on the one hand, we are giving the NYC employees a bit more time off, while on the other hand - being confronted with a more business-like attitude makes us a bit tougher and to the point as an organisation.”
Another partially US-learned lesson: working with so-called long ideas and sequential storytelling, which is also being implemented with European and Asian clients. The method is comparable to the way TV series are being made. Not one big commercial on a loop, but a number of short stories, all connected content yet new storylines which convey the message in any and all possible channels. “This is a completely logical format to us. "Also, when you look at our motto 'saving the world from boring advertising',” says Vijverberg. “It forces us to think much deeper about how the various content pieces add up and still enforce the core message.”
Another typical SuperHeroes concept from New York is the ‘Free Thinking’ sessions. Creatives and Strategists get free time to come up with concepts that have no brief against it. The best ideas that come out of these sessions then get matched to applicable brands, products or services and those clients are then approached systematically. “It’s also the perfect way to keep positive energy flowing,” says Zuurbier. “Setback? Alright guys, let’s do a session and keep on acquiring.”
Boom!
But setbacks are becoming scarcer. A big advantage when opening the NY office is that Amsterdam had already produced quite a bit of work for the US market. Clients like LG, Converse and Taiwanese tech company ASUS. With that, SuperHeroes brought a crucial differentiator with them to New York. The agency was already known as being digitally disruptive and slightly irreverent and when Adweek placed SuperHeroes on their 'end of the year' list of The Most Engaging Brand Content Makers, it increased SuperHeroes' recognition. And that's when things started happening just as Vijverberg, Weisz Blanchetta, and Zuurbier had hoped for. Once you become more established in New York, you become an instant international player and international clients start noticing you. Boom! An out of the blue call from Dubai happened. “We wanted to pitch the agency of record for the Dubai Tourism Board," said Zuurbier. "It was an extremely complicated multi-million dollar account aiming for Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 14 markets in total, 9 languages, 12 industries and three audience subgroups per industry. We pitched for two months straight against mostly big network agencies and we won. This confirms the gut feeling we had since starting this crazy journey, we made the right call. So far it’s totally been worth the fight.”
Singapore
The car rental company Sixt USA, Canon USA, the Chinese computer giant Lenovo and the Japanese beer Asahi all found SuperHeroes New York. And the list is growing. Superheroes New York now employs 10 full-time employees supported by a network of highly talented freelancers. The agency moved into their own space, an old art gallery on Broadway in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Superheroes Amsterdam in the meantime also keeps on growing and with 40+ employees is well on its way to becoming the largest independent agency in The Netherlands. The next step is also on the horizon: an office in Singapore. An almost obvious and comparable story; there are already Asian clients and with an office there, in Amsterdam and in New York, SuperHeroes will be even more of a global player. “Making a move as we did with New York makes you initially vulnerable,” says Vijverberg. “But I believe vulnerability is the biggest catalyst for progress. Which is also something that all three of us have, it’s an itch: What else is there, do we want this, can we do this?
"And then: Screw it, let’s do it. So now Singapore and then the rest of the world. Why? Because the world is there.”
