[Interview] Antoine Houtsma, Joe Public, Netherlands

Joe Public Amsterdam has been around for 12.5 years. We talk about this with Antoine Houtsma , who founded the agency together with Jeroen van Eck and Bart Oostindie and is still the helmsman.

Pepe Marais is the inspiring man who (co-)founded Joe Public in South Africa (March 1998). In January 2012, Joe Public Amsterdam started with the concept Take-Away Advertising. Can you explain how the start went and what the relationship is with the South African agency?

I met Pepe Marais in Cannes, where we were on the same jury at the Cannes Lions festival. He represented South Africa, I represented the Netherlands. What he didn't know at the time was that 9 years earlier I had planned to emigrate to South Africa and that in my search for a good advertising agency I had come across Joe Public Take-Away Advertising.

That agency model where clients could walk into the agency and order promotional dishes from a menu at fixed, competitive rates immediately stole my heart. Because in an industry that tries to sell creativity to clients, creativity is hard to find at the agencies themselves when it comes to their own agency model. So when we started talking and he heard what a fan I was of their agency, he couldn’t believe his ears. But there was more to it, because we clicked so well that we decided that week that together we would make sure that Joe Public would conquer the world.

Well, two years later it was time and I emailed him. A few months later I started our version of Joe Public Take-Away Advertising together with my creative partner Bart Oostindie and strategist Jeroen van Eck. Reinvented, because in South Africa they had already abandoned the take-away model almost 10 years earlier, the market there was not quite ready for it.

We started in Amsterdam entirely on the basis of good faith and friendship, with the same name but without any actual financial ties or shareholding. Since then we have worked together where possible, exchanged people every now and then, worked with teams from both countries on the same briefing for big creative opportunities and continued to build our international ambition.

The idea of ​​Take-Away Advertising (with a menu and opposed to pitches) was actually revolutionary in the creative world. How do you look back on that?

It was and still is revolutionary, it is a model with only winners. As an agency you are always paid to work, as a client you pay less than at other top agencies and you get the same quality, but much faster. It has brought us a lot, the necessary attention from the trade press and business success, although of course it is difficult to say how much of that success came from the formula and how much from ourselves.

How did you experience those early years, what were the reactions?

You know that when you shake up a market with a challenger formula that not everyone will be waving the flag. Things were said like Haha, don't pitch...well in a few months they'll just join in!

And for example, we were belittled for 3 minutes by Eugene Roorda in his column on BNR Nieuwsradio. Literally belittled because almost every word he spent on us had a diminutive after it, such as Self-proclaimed Sons of God…. What he of course did not mention was that he had been working with two potential clients who subsequently chose our agency.

By the way, we gave him a second chance at our 10th anniversary party with a new column about Joe Public. But apart from these expected reactions, the first years were a great adventure. Right at our first assignment for OHRA, we were filming in South Africa with one of the best commercial directors in the world. That first year, we filmed almost everything abroad with shoots for OHRA, Bertolli and Miljoenenspel, while we were only 5 or 6 Joes.

We were very visible with our work right from the start because we made a lot of TV commercials that also did well at the Gouden Loeki. Because of our non-pitch policy we were only busy with campaigns that actually went ahead.

The subtitle Take-Away Advertising has now been dropped, how do you profile yourself today and how has that evolved?

That's right, because we're still working internationally, we'll now go by the name Joe Public Amsterdam. We now have an agency in Belgium and we've started carefully in London with two people. In addition to the agencies in South Africa of course. And because we estimate that international clients almost exclusively look for an agency through pitches, we also decided to abandon our no-pitch policy last year and to gain experience with pitching.

And that didn't disappoint us, we won no less than 80 percent of the pitches. And luckily there were still enough advertisers who dared to become our customer without a pitch. Incidentally, that still happens on the basis of our famous menu with prices that are the same for every advertiser.

In 2022 founder and Creative Director Bart Oostindie left you to become a member of club pensionado as an unemployed slacker. What did his departure mean to you?

Yes, Bart Ootsindie will always keep wearing his joker. He has indeed updated his Linkedin profile since he retired. In itself it was a miracle that Bart joined us in business when we started Joe Public, because he did not want his own agency at all.

We then made all sorts of agreements with him so that he would participate after all. With all sorts of possible exit moments that he let pass by one by one because he found it all too much fun. But eventually there came a time when his hobbies won out over his work. In the meantime, he had not been in management for years and his departure was to be accommodated, although of course a friend and a striking personality left the building.

On July 1, 2024, co-founder Jeroen van Eck left you. Springbok has thereby acquired a majority in Joe Public Amsterdam. What does his departure mean? And what does it mean that Springbok has become a controlling shareholder?

Yes, stopping at your peak, that was too attractive for Jeroen van Eck. Of course we became Agency of the Year and a month later his planned departure came, as a good strategist this almost seemed planned. He did indeed decide to take a summer break and then look further.

In fact, you are right that Springbok no longer has 50 percent of the shares but a majority. In practice, it does not feel that way at all. I am simply running this office as I have always done, supported by a great group of Joes, some of whom are also in the MT.

We are at a very interesting time for the agency. We are now among the established names in the Netherlands. While more and more old agency names are struggling, shrinking to small agencies and seeing their name change more often than the weather. That is why I am very happy with Springbok as a partner.

Together with them we can meet almost all customer needs, from Big Idea to Big Data. For a customer like ALDI, for example, we work on the entire funnel , as it is called these days. And to optimize that collaboration, we are also working on moving to a new and larger building where we will get Joe Public Amsterdam and Springbok under one roof.

Not a cost-cutting operation as you often see with the major networks, but a genuine desire to offer the best possible cooperation to major advertisers such as ALDI.

I have worked at several agencies and have seen how difficult it is everywhere to make agencies really work together and I am determined to show how you should do it. The name Joe Public is also solid as a house, so that will certainly not disappear. We will keep two labels, Joe Public for strategy and creation, Springbok complements us with all the desired digital resources.

Over the years you have won many awards. 2023 was a highlight with SAN's, Esprix, Cross Media Award, the Effies. How do you explain these successes?

We won no less than 3 Effies last year and in the past year even 12! It is really difficult to explain that success, because I think it is also a bit of luck. I can say that during the year we are not busy making work that wins prizes, maybe that is the secret.

By not trying to be innovating everywhere, I think we make work that does its job really well. And that is close to the target group. That is something that characterizes Joe Public, we generally make work for the average man/woman.

It is not for nothing that Joe Public also means the common man . We cherish this too, for example, we recently went to the Zwarte Cross with all the Joes. And you should not be surprised if you run into us at the Huishoudbeurs.

What have you seen change in the market in the past 12.5 years? Do you see these developments as positive or negative? (think of AI, but also norms/values, hardening, humor in advertising what is and is not acceptable, changing media behavior, focus on digital expressions)

Well, times change of course. Personally I am glad that we seem to be entering a time again where humor gets the appreciation it deserves. In my opinion it is an important emotion that you can evoke with advertising, which has a positive effect on your message and brand.

What we notice, of course, is that you can no longer get by with just a TV commercial, but that there are so many incredible moments, paid and earned, that you as a brand come into contact with the consumer.

In order to be able to manage that well as an agency, we started working with Springbok 2.5 years ago. They complement us seamlessly and do everything that we simply did not have the expertise for. I think that an agency that now only focuses on traditional above-the-line work has had its day.

Looking back over the past 12.5 years, how do you see how advertisers and their CMOs have managed their budgets and creative expressions?

What I see is that advertisers are increasingly having to do more with less. And that squeeze is clearly noticeable at agencies. Production budgets in particular are very meager. That was also the reason for us at a certain point to start producing commercials and online videos in-house with Joe Public Shoot. In our opinion, commercials could be handled more efficiently, while online videos could get a bit more love.

What I also find striking is that in the time that I grew up in advertising, the A-brands did a lot of good advertising. That has completely disappeared. Large companies like Unilever only invest in their brands in small doses. Not 2 or 3 campaigns per year for a brand, but one every few years. And electronics brands, car brands and beer brands no longer advertise as grandly and compellingly as they used to.

How do you look at the next 12.5 years of Joe Public Amsterdam?

That is an interesting question. It is looking very far into the future, but I will try. Our ambition in the coming years is to become one of the large renowned agencies in the Netherlands. We have already been named Agency of the Year twice , but we now also have to make the step to a full-service agency in perception.

Together with Springbok we can now meet almost all customer needs. At the moment there are not that many agencies that still have that offer. We have to compete locally with an agency like TBWA.

Internationally, we are working on further integrating the South African Joe Public, which employs around 300 men and women, our Benelux offices with around 45 men and women, our London start-up and Springbok (also around 250 m and f), making us the first African-European agency group. So in 12.5 years, I expect that we will be visible in quite a few countries. And by then, Joe Public will actually have existed for 38 years, because the first office opened its doors in Cape Town in 1998.

www.joepublic.nl

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