By Gemma Newton on the Proximity Shadow Scheme
Other than chocolate, waffles and beer, what are the Belgians famous for?
Solving the murder mysteries of the aristocracy, using a combination of “order and method” whilst twiddling their perfectly formed moustaches?
Or getting caught up in adventures in far-flung lands and heroically saving the day with the help of a little dog called snowy?
Yes, Poirot* and TinTin may be Belgium’s most famous exports after the aforementioned culinary items, but having spent just over a week here I’ve learnt that in between all the eating, drinking, mystery solving and day-saving, these Belgians are also pretty good at marketing. Especially considering the complexity of their market compared to the size of the country.
Let me explain. Belgium is a linguistically divided nation, with Dutch-speaking Flanders to the north and French-speaking Wallonia to the south. Brussels, the capital, is officially bilingual but is actually Francophone, despite being situated in Flanders, north of the linguistic divide. Confused yet? There is naturally some rivalry between the two regions, so often to avoid favouring one language over the other, English is used as a neutral go-between. For example, the Belgian football shirts are labeled “Belgium” rather than “Belgique” or “Belgie”. Oh, and there’s also a German speaking region which often gets forgotten.
Before the languages student in me gets carried away with the polyglossic situation here, let me explain how this relates to the challenges of marketing. With the Belgian population only about the size of London’s, clients will allocate budgets proportional to the size of the market, without considering that Belgium has to produce 2 or 3 times as many pages/emails/TV ads than its monolingual and much larger neighbours. The cost of this means that before you start any campaign, you need to set aside about 20% of the already small budget for translating and building the extra versions. And that’s before you consider the very different cultural identities of the linguistic communities.
Nevertheless, the Belgians, and in particular, Proximity Belgium, have still produced some pretty cool things and made their mark in ad-land. The star of Proximity Belgium’s awards cabinet is the hilarious Baby made on board campaign for Dodge car dealership, which won a Gold at Cannes. I’m not sure if it would work in the UK – can you imagine the health and safety issues? – but it hit the mark here and did wonders for the agency.
And you may remember Belgium’s advertising industry asserting itself in a virtual strike? Protesting unreasonable pitch demands which swallow up agencies’ time and money in unnecessarily long pitch processes, the top Belgian ad agencies joined forces for a weeks’ virtual strike. You may think of it as a classic continental reaction to changing working conditions, but the fact that all the top ad agencies were involved (including VVL BBDO, the ATL sister of Proximity Belgium) gave the movement a lot of weight and publicity around the world. The IPA even gave its backing to the campaign as it recognised that UK agencies were facing similar problems.
These are just two examples of how Belgium is at the forefront of creative communication campaigns. So watch out as the Belgians use their ingenuity and sense of humour to overcome their extra challenges and small budgets. Who knows – one day maybe they won’t have to rely on fictional characters as their most famous exports after unhealthy food items.
*Poirot, unlike Nicholas Moerman, isn’t actually a Belgian export, having been invented by our very own Agatha Christie.
By Gemma Newton on the Proximity Shadow Scheme
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