Holland Takes to YouTube with ‘Cool’ Campaign

Image courtesy of YouTube

The Netherland’s Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC) is finding that a lot of its target market is heavily involved online and it’s getting strong returns in interest on its “Holland. The Original Cool” campaign. Promoting “Hip Amsterdam” is nothing new for the NBTC, but this is the first time in memory that the whole of Holland is presented as hip. The Dutch have traditionally employed a bicameral brand of marketing in the U.S.; working the so-called traditional market for tulips and windmills and a younger market for Amsterdam’s hip lifestyle. This campaign seems to unite the Dutch icons of both markets. Tulips and windmills, it turns out are as cool as the North Sea Jazz Festival.

Last year’s highly successful cool campaign received more than 1 million video views at www.holland.com/cool in only four months – and now it’s launching a new series in 2014. In its first day, this past Tuesday, it received 8,700 views. By Thursday morning it was already up to 31,000 views.

This latest video poses the question, “Can cool be taught?” Pim de Koel, the narrator guide of the first video from last year, which explored hip Amsterdam, returns to pose the question to a drollfully dull young American.

As Holland’s “cool ambassador,” de Koel spells out the cool branding saying, “Many of the things Americans appreciate and enjoy — artisanal foods, biking, cutting edge art and design, an open and progressive culture — are in fact Dutch, and have been for a very long time! What you call cool, we call tradition. You might say Holland is the Original Cool!”

In the complete series of three videos, which will see the second entry come out in May and the third this summer, de Koel explores Holland’s multi-textured cultural fabric, using plenty of quick cuts that lay out a lightning quick palate of art, design, biking, culinary and other experiential niches in Dutch tourism. The rapidity of the images gives the videos an entertaining frenetic rhythm that plays well with de Koel’s quick wit and the American actor’s droll facial expressions.

The three-part NBTC series is also sponsored by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and Amsterdam Marketing. The first episode in this year’s series begins, of course, on a KLM flight highlighting the airline’s “Meet & Seat” feature, which allows travelers to choose and connect with potential seatmates via social media. The hip tips from de Koel continue after landing at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, where de Koel teaches the American “how to be originally cool, starting with a visit to Amsterdam, and showing him how to adapt to the Dutch way of life through biking, museums, canals, local foods and other authentically Dutch experiences.”