KESSELS-KRAMER
_{(A GUIDE FOR THOSE WHO’VE NEVER HEARD OF US).}

Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising was initiated by a group of creative people working from a church in Amsterdam.

The church features original stained-glass windows, an exquisite marble altar and (for reasons best left unexplained) a gigantic wooden fortress where the pews should be. Once the chapel for a local order of nuns, it is now the home of a communications agency called Kessels-Kramer. ^{fig. 02}

KK was founded by an art director/ copywriter team, after they’d been fired from a prestigious London agency. Frustrated by the politics, slow production schedules and routine of large agency life, Johan Kramer and Erik Kessels aimed to create a less structured, more prolific type of company, one centred on finding new means of expression for communications.

From the start, Kramer and Kessels fiddled with advertising’s institutions. This fiddling included interesting business choices, as well as the frequent following of slightly anarchic whims.

Among the whims:

THE GREAT COFFEE MACHINE VENDETTA.

Coffee machines were banned for the first years of the company’s existence. Also printers. This was because coffee machines and printers were felt to represent corporate advertising at its most banal. Any coffee machine seen within a hundred yards of KesselsKramer was hunted down with brutal efficiency, battered until it gushed espresso over the cobblestones, bundled into a sack and tossed in the nearest canal. After many, many years the persecution of innocent coffee machines was relaxed due to one fundamental need: humans like coffee. Today, KesselsKramer staff enjoy the fruits of a (slightly nervous) coffee machine on a daily basis.

Among the interesting business choices:

DEATH TO ACCOUNT HANDLERS.

An “account handler” is a cornerstone in the structure of classic agencies. Account handlers are a buffer between agency and client. Traditionally, they present ideas to clients and relay client feedback back to creatives.

There are several reasons for this, but the most common is one you won’t find on any agency website.

It is:
Account handlers view most creatives as being too uncivilized to engage in client conversations. A bit too scruffy. A bit too monosyllabic. Frequently, they are right.

Fig. 02: KesselsKramer’s offices look like this.
In case you were wondering.

(In turn, most creatives view account handlers as clients-in-disguise. Frequently, they are also right.)

There are two species of account handler.

In some “creatively led” agencies the account handler is demoted to the cruel status of “bag carrier.” She/he is the girl/boy who takes presentations to meetings, plugs in the projector, sits in a corner, takes notes, unplugs the projector and carries the presentations back to the agency. They hold doors and make tea. They are geishas in suits.

Of course, you only put people down because they scare the shit out of you.

This leads us to the second type of Accountus Handelitus.

In many agencies account handlers shine. More than shine, they effectively run the place. They are smarter, quicker and infinitely more professional than creatives. They are also genuinely interested in responding to a client’s needs and solving business problems (as opposed to creatives, who are mostly only genuinely interested in winning awards).

These account handlers were frighteningly brilliant at university, and frighteningly brilliant at work. If they ever tried it, they’d probably also be frighteningly brilliant at water polo. They’re that kind of person.

Whichever kind of accounts person you were familiar with, to do away with the account handler function entirely was a major departure from accepted agency structure.

KesselsKramer’s issue with account handlers wasn’t that they were bad people, or scary ones, or ruthless Type A personalities. In fact, many people at KesselsKramer used to be account handlers.

It was simply that the role of account handler can be split over other departments. This hanging, drawing and quartering of the account handler expresses a certain logic, once you strip the job down to its core.

At heart, the account handler’s profession can be summarized as talking (with a bunch of emailing on the side). Sometimes this talking is incredibly eloquent and insightful, but it’s still mainly about opening your mouth, your neurons doing stuff and words coming out.

KesselsKramer noticed that other people can talk too.

Producers can talk to clients. Strategists can talk to clients. Even creatives can talk to clients, and they’re famous for not talking.

You just have to find the right people, train them, believe in them, accept their decisions and forgive their mistakes. (Actually, encourage their mistakes; mistakes are beautiful and constructive tools.)

Help them discover their inner account handler.