Last updated on May 31st, 2013 at 07:33 pm
Alright, KLM, I took the bait. I saw the above email come into my inbox yesterday and I couldn’t help but be intrigued by such a bold claim. I have never really thought about Holland and cool in the same sentence. That same thought doubles for the Dutch. Nay for the Netherlands.
It’s not that I think Holland is not cool. It seems like a very nice place and I know many people who enjoy the town, but what did it do to become the original cool? That is a lot of responsibility to place on a nation, so I needed to see how they planned to live up to expectations.
Being inquisitive, I clicked through to their holland.com/cool website to see what it was all about.
The first thing I see? A box asking me to book a flight. Not so fast, Holland. You are trying to score a home run with me before we even have our first date. You still haven’t done anything to prove to me your coolness.
The next thing I see isn’t much better. Some guy yelling on a video and some text telling me what I call “it” – which I can only assume means cool – vintage, hip, indie. Three words I’ve never used in my life.
Eventually we get a few sentences about why Holland is the Original Cool, but by this point they have lost me. I don’t think Holland is cool anymore. I think it’s confusing.
The rest of the site isn’t much better. In fact, it’s just more confusion. I really have no idea what they are trying to get me to do by sending this email, and I am not any more likely to go to Holland as a result.
From a marketing perspective, this campaign is one of the poorest email marketing campaigns that I have seen in a long time. An un-targeted email that sends me to a confusing microsite with no explanation, call to action or purpose.
I can’t help but feel sorry for the marketing team who wasted so much time and shared marketing dollars on this message. I can imagine how things went down: Executives from the Holland tourism board, KLM and other organizations decided to work together on a campaign to bring people to Holland. Each partner brought several agenda items to the table that they wanted to have included on the site, and nothing was given a second thought. They simply built a website to throw every asset available onto the web. The result? A waste of time and a missed target.
How Could Holland be Cooler?
Show me the cool in Holland. Show me bigger photos to draw me in. Remind me of the great places I can visit within Holland, and the time of year I should go there.
Focus more on the 1-2 things that make you cool and stop assuming that we care about the others.
That’s what would be cool, Holland, if you focused less on saying you are cool and did more to show me that you are cool.
Holland is cool, too bad they can’t show it in this ad!
Hello!
Haha! I had a look at your comment and I would like to share my very (enthusiastic)
point of view!
I think you missed the point….in fact!
Holland is not only about big landscapes, fields, tulips and old paintings
in a museum…
it is everything else that make what Holland is! You have to feel it,
you have to experience it! Because this is unique! Unique by the design of the
streets, by the mindset of the people, by the daily life, by the atmosphere, by
the people, by the food, by the diversity, by the openness…. everything! This
is exactly what those videos are trying to show! everything at once! because
everything is accessible in 1 day!!
The country is small, you travel really easily from one place to
another, and if you want a beer, the beach, the fields, being in Amsterdam,
eating cheese, or anything else: you can do it in less than 1 hour! those videos
are awesome: because they are rich of everything of what life is made here!
This is like a concentrated pill of the life we have here! I love it!