Communications Director Marieke van den Hoek has been working at De Media Maatschap in Amsterdam for 7 years. Last month the news came out that DMM and STROOM Rotterdam are moving forward together, making her the colleague of Senior Communications Consultant Matthijs Kloezeman. Rotterdam and Amsterdam continuing together within Candid, tell me honestly: how do you like that?
Marieke: ''My first thought was: will this make me happy? At the time, I consciously chose a small agency. DMM was an independent media agency with an office in the heart of Amsterdam. With such a living room atmosphere, and the lines of communication were short.''
Change is exciting
Marieke: ''A lot has changed, I have a lot of new colleagues and we are now part of Candid, a large company with several agencies.'' In January the first step was taken for DMM to move to the Candid building in Amsterdam-Noord. That was exciting too, but by now I really like it and am positive about it."
Matthijs has been working at STROOM for five years. ''I do recognize Marieke's feeling,'' he says. ''When we joined Candid in 2017 I also thought: what's going to happen now? But in retrospect, I actually really liked it, especially as a starting professional because you go through new developments. I don't know if without those developments I would still be at STROOM . Thanks to Candid a kind of glass ceiling has been broken, here everything is possible. You have many colleagues, not only within STROOM but also within the platform. Together you can provide such good services for clients, everyone helps each other.''
Marieke: ''It's very nice that new opportunities are coming my way now, I'm really looking forward to that.''
Rocking along on the waves
Matthijs also thinks Marieke will like it at STROOM and Candid. ''I have already noticed that she is completely open to the changes and that is also the only way. I'm sure she can do even more for her clients thanks to the platform.''
Marieke thinks so, too. ''Before, I had to refer my clients and now I can offer them something extra. Services we never had in-house, such as an advertising agency and a research department. This allows us to focus even more on what we are good at and what we enjoy doing. Clients respond enthusiastically and I get room to develop myself further.''
DNA match
Marieke and Matthijs agree that the culture of DMM and that of STROOM fit well together. Marieke: ''Yes, in terms of people and the level of service we definitely match well. The way of working will differ somewhat, but I think we complement each other well and can learn from each other. It is very nice to see how STROOM approaches things and how they are further ahead than us in some things. Participating in pitches, for example, and submitting cases for an AMMA (like the SIRE case we won last year). We mainly focused on existing clients-partly because we are frugal about our clients and always put them first, partly because as a small agency we didn't have the time or people to set up a whole pitch like that. Even though we didn't do much about our visibility, we were always high on our clients' ratings lists.''
How did you guys manage that? Marieke: ''We are good at maintaining relationships, both with our clients and with operators and advertising agencies. Through them we get so much new business. That's one of our strengths though, focus on relationships. I look forward to having more time to throw the marketing machine on, communicate more so we are seen. If you look at our old DMM website, the last news item was six months old. We didn't really need that exposure either, we were busy enough. But it's also just nice to show what you do and what you're proud of.
"Even though we didn't do much about our visibility, we were always high on our customers' rating lists."
De Media Maatschap becomes STROOM Amsterdam. The STROOM office where Matthijs works remains in Rotterdam. So how do you really become colleagues? Matthijs: ''We have all kinds of team-building outings and try to visit each other regularly. And of course do some beers and dances.''
Getting to know each other
Marieke: ''Besides outings and get-togethers, you get to know each other well during lunch, a cup of coffee or a walk. That's how you quickly become a real team.''
Matthijs: ''We still have that team feeling here, too. You are still relatively autonomous within a somewhat larger organization. In Rotterdam we also have drinks with colleagues from Coopr and Havana Harbor, and at the AMMA ceremony we all ran into colleagues from other Candid agencies. In the past you stood there alone with a colleague and didn't really know anyone else, and now you think: wow, there are so many of us here!''
Marieke is also quickly making many new contacts. ''We used to be that little club from The Media Partnership. Now it feels like my network has expanded tremendously all at once with a lot of nice, sociable people.''
Matthijs: ''I think it's very cool to see that we are making another professionalization push. The floodgates are opening again and there are additional knobs we can turn. Every time you see that it can get even better. What a party story this is, we can't think of anything negative. Keep it that way.''