“Welcome to van North. A place where youʼll find a straightforward approach to building brands across borders. Weʼre here to create awareness, consideration and sales for our clients. We avoid catch- phrases, jargon and babble. Instead, we seek to understand each market. And find something meaningful, plausible, engaging and differentiating to say about your product or service.”
Is van North a Creative Agency or a Production Company?
The short answer is both. After working on global TV commercials for Mitsubishi Motors and Nikon, we had to create a launch film for Subaru with a pan-euro flavour but a modest budget. To make it achievable, we produced it ‘in-house’, contacting people we knew at the BBC and hiring a cameraman and sound-engineer from the “Top Gear” production team. We found a small ‘can do’ crew liberating and far exceeded the client’s expectations. This experience became our blueprint for future projects.
Are there advantages of keeping Creative and Production under one roof?
We can create strong ideas to a given budget, rather than compromising an idea because the budget / timing is insufficient or a client is covering supplier margins in a long supply chain. Locations are a key part of any shoot and we’ll often take the camera team with us on recce’s to get their technical perspective. Because we’ve worked on global clients, we work with the same content creators, strategists, photographers, DOPs, digital designers and talented people that also work for world famous agencies and household brands. For example, our production partner has worked on films and content for Toyota, Lego, Ben & Jerrys, Dell, ABN-AMRO etc.
How do you work?
Directly with international and Dutch domestic brands and companies. We also collaborate with agencies, filmmakers, photographers and production partners. Clients work with us in a variety of ways from creating 360º campaigns with a strong strategic foundation (the ‘what to say’ to ‘how to say it’). To clear, versatile brand positioning to creative product placement and copywriting across all markets. We apply creativity and a fresh perspective to everything we do.
We don’t work in a vacuum, we’ll study competitors and ensure the work resonates with your audience and ‘cuts through’ in the market. Whether it’s creating and producing an integrated TV & Digital campaign for Dutch kitchens, getting Hollywood A’ Listers like Natalie Portman and Meryl Streep into a client’s bath, positioning and creating comms kits for a farming brand or telling an 85year old cyclist’s story, we like to under promise and over deliver.
Capabilities
We believe in work that cuts through the noise of every channel and resonates with your audience. Wherever they are and however they are best reached – whether by digital, print, social, broadcast or direct. We draw on the diverse talents of our team and network to deliver across disciplines and platforms. And although we’re happy operating in the tightest of creative spaces, we resist being put into a box.
Clients
We created global brand positionings & award winning campaigns for Mitsubishi Motors and TDK. We’ve launched TVs and DVD players for Philips, 5 cameras for Nikon and got Hollywood A-Listers, 100 000 YouTube views and people across Europe into Albion Baths. Plus we managed to secure a small, bespoke bike brand 8 pages of free coverage in a national newspaper, thanks to the award winning photography.
