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Can you imagine having to bury your loved one, creating a program in which his or her life is remembered in a respectful manner and having an entrepreneur talk about life insurance to the gathered grievers? This would be unheard of in the Netherlands. Yet, in Malawi it is common practise. In Malawi commercial messages and eulogies are a match.‬

Tagged with: africa, advertising,

The lost art of painting advertisements

In the Netherlands television commercials change every month or so, posters on bus stops are changed on a weekly basis and social media campaigns adapt their messages in real time to current headlines. Lifespan of commercials is short and, if anything, abundant. Not so in Malawi. One of the most striking forms of Malawian marketing is through stone and masonry billboards that have their messages painted on. Their lifespan is somewhat longer than most Dutch advertising forms: it will last until the paint fades. 

Tagged with: africa, advertising,

Why advertising can’t change consumer behavior (at least according to Dick Swaab).

I don’t usually hang out in casinos, let alone, on Thursday evenings but the twentieth of January I was invited to come listen to a talk about the brain by Dr. Dick Swaab, accordingly one of the most prominent neurobiologists in the world. The call was by the Esprix organization; the exemplary advertising prize in the Netherlands, presided by Peter Paul Blommers, Ogilvy Amsterdam’s vivid CEO. Professor Swaab wrote a cash hitting page-turner called ‘We are our brain, from womb to Alzheimer’. The chosen venue was, as I mentioned the Holland Casino near Leidseplein in Amsterdam. And what a venue it was. But before entering the catacombs of one of man’s most devastating addictions, let me write a bit on Professor Swaab’s explicit believe that advertising cannot change consumer behavior.

Tagged with: swaab, advertising, neuro, behavior, casino, esprix,