Between 2015 and 2020, I was copywriter for DSM Dyneema. As world’s strongest lightest fiber, Dyneema® is behind many iconic images: tethering satellites in outer space, upturning the stranded cruise ship Costa Concordia in Italy, placing the crown on the Freedom Tower in NYC, and as structure for The Ocean Clean-Up.
Originally, I was asked to write a feature story on this plastic’s remarkable history. As DSM began targeting the apparel and extreme sports industries with its Dyneema® Composite Fabrics through the storytelling platform The Dyneema Project, I also provided film scripts, white papers, press releases, magazine content and web/social copy. Throughout these years, Dyneema®‘s demand exceeded its supply.
Screenshot of landing page: a B2B co-branding call to action for collaborators with a vision.
Chemistry is a rock’n’roll game
As I talked to the various players behind its decades-long march to market, I discovered that chemistry can be a very rock’n’roll game: “involving multiple co-inventors, dismissive managers, happy accidents, quantum technological leaps, commercial innovations and a few experiments that under current regulations would be considered safety violations.”
Screenshot of a section of the extended feature, ‘Romancing the Thread: the story of Dyneema®’, which was based on interviews with all the main players behind the bumpy road to market of world’s strongest fiber.
Screenshot of a section of the extended feature ‘Under the radar and into the light: the story of Dyneema® Composite Fabric’ in which I tackle: “friendship, paranoia, lightness, a Koch Brother, neutron bombs, spider webs, airships, strength and a toothbrush with a sawed-off handle…”
Trailblazers: a quarterly magazine in which I interviewed those using Dyneema® Composite Fabrics to shake up their particular industry – whether ultralight camping, safety gear, drones, automotive, architecture or ridding our oceans of plastics.
Watch the short film: ‘Believe the Impossible’ (100,000) hits in the first month). Voice sound familiar?
Services: long copy, short copy, website, film scripts, white papers, social Client:Super Stories, 2015-2020
DUF is a Dutch-language book-magazine for 12- to 18-year-olds. It’s a ‘cluster bomb’ of text and visuals. Edition three is out now and acts as a primer in navigating our world’s media insanity. Buy it. It’ll blow your mind and your kid’s. There’s even dirty pictures. Below is my contribution in its original English.
COLA & PROPAGANDA
Do you want to lord over your friends, parents and – why not? – the whole freaking world? Learn now how you can become a dictator and sell cola at the same time! In seven easy lessons!
by Steve Korver, for DUF 3 (2012)
What is the difference between advertising and propaganda? Um, good question. Advertising aims to sell a service or product (‘Mmm that’s the best cheeseburger ever!’). Propaganda aims to sell a particular ideology (‘Yippee, we’re the happiest country in the world!’) or goal (‘This war is justified.’) Meanwhile in most Spanish-speaking countries, when people say ‘propaganda’ they mean ‘advertising’.
Both advertising and propaganda tries to influence human behaviour – to get you to open your wallet for a cheeseburger, or to sign along the dotted line at an army recruitment office. They both play on your emotions and not your intelligence. So it’s not ridiculous that both dictators and marketeers use the same box of tricks.
BIG SECRET NUMBER 1: People are sooooooooo stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid! But…
‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’ the American circus showman PT Barnum allegedly said. And it’s true. So keep it simple. But remember that people NEVER consider themselves as stupid. Half the time they are not even aware they are being brainwashed. Yes, humans suffer from overconfidence.
So it’s very important to not make your target audience feel stupid otherwise they will find someone else to get brainwashed by. The easiest way to do this is by dumbing down. Be folksy. Be a regular person who represents regular wants and needs. Be the Joneses or be Henk & Ingrid. In short: posh it down and sincere it up!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 2: Facts are for amateurs!
A friend’s journalism professor always nobly said: ‘Even if your mother says she loves you, never believe her. Always check your facts!’ However, facts remain the arch-enemy of both propaganda and advertising.
The secret of both dictators and manufacturers is: the truth is what you make it. Facts are only important in that they can help make your story more believable. But otherwise telling the truth is not as important as picking the truths that you do tell – and leaving out any nasty details. Sure, you can call your country’s economy ‘resilient’ but don’t mention that it’s based on slavery. And yes, highlight a phone’s ‘sleek and modern design’, but don’t mention it was made in Asian sweat shops. And how long did you say that battery lasts?
In fact you don’t even have to tell any truths, as long as you tell your lies with conviction. Why did US President Bush begin the war in Iraq in 2003? Oh right, because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However these weapons were never found. It turned out that the photographs that were used to convince other countries to join the war were made up. But those pictures did look factual!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 3: Join the winning team!
People like to belong to something: a family, a tribe, a movement. So both admen and propagandists work hard to convey a message of ‘come and be cool by joining us and together we can rule the world, you mindless lemmings!’ (But then without calling the target audience ‘mindless lemmings’ – see Big Secret Number 1).
This tendency of humans to want to be on the winning side has many consequences. For example, if a country is taken over by a foreign power there are invariably many more collaborators than resistance fighters. It also means that there are more Coke drinkers than Pepsi drinkers. Social networking has made this much easier by returning both propaganda and advertising to their original roots: word of mouth. There’s no better advertising than friendvertising….
BIG SECRET NUMBER 4: Link to the positive!
Certain people, things and ideas are more naturally shiny and positive than others. Latch on to them! Associate your product or idea with such things as: Freedom! Democracy! Honour! Sustainable! Green! Tiger Woods! Oops, we better think of another example. How about Lance Armstrong? Oops again…
OK then here’s another tip: whenever you have a spokesperson that turns out to be human in some way, drop them like a hot potato. Also if the battle for political gain or market share grows nasty you can also apply the inverse of this rule: link your opponent to nasty words or images. Negativity is always fun! Always remember: one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 5 Fight pure evil! (AKA: Blame the ‘other’!)
In real life there are always two sides to every story, and usually there is no clear right or wrong. But let’s forget about that. Nuance kills sales figures. You want to make a clear message and then stick to it. Assume there is pure evil in the world, and then establish yourself as the lesser evil. After all, who wants to be taken over by Nazi scum? Or be blown up by terrorists? By playing on fear of ‘the other’, you can ask people to make sacrifices. By linking social ills to a specific group, another group can be made to feel superior. By blaming butter for heart attacks, the sales of low-fat margarine skyrocket.
BIG SECRET NUMBER 6 Re-re-re-re-peat-peat-peat-peat! Repeat!
Repetition is highly effective. Drink Coke. Drink Coke. Drink Coke. McDonalds. McDonalds. McDonalds. Islam is bad. Islam is bad. Islam is bad. People in the industry often call this process branding – repetition makes the public associate certain qualities to a product or idea. So establish your message and start repeating anywhere and everywhere: commercials, billboards, product placement, social networks, etc, etc. But also be selective and think about where your target audience would most likely absorb and act on your message. But please don’t try to be overly creative. Just keep pounding!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 7 Humour works
Humans don’t like feeling stupid, but they love to laugh. It’s what unifies us. And it can pull the rug out of your opponent. One famous example came from WWII. The Nazis produced endless propaganda films that depicted endless lines of strong and disciplined blonde men marching, marching, marching… It was highly effective in intimidating the UK public. But then a Brit film editor came up with the antidote. By re-editing and playing with the speed of the images, he essentially re-mixed the marching men into a comedic dance act. The moral of the story? Monty Python über alles!
ONE BONUS BIG SECRET… Sex sells.
Of course it does. What do you think? Are you stupid or something?
My old friends the Anacondas have just released their third album of post-surf tunes: Bad Buzz/Lost in the Space Age. It comes with a story. After they recorded it a year or so ago, they asked me to help turn it into a ‘concept’ album. Since making a ‘concept’ album out of something that’s already recorded seemed pretty high-‘concept’ in itself, I naturally said yes. And anyway, I always do like a nice ‘concept’. And it’s really quite amazing what some liner notes, visuals and overdubs can do when it comes to fleshing out the ‘conceptual’.
The album’s ‘concept’ is really quite simple — like any good ‘concept’. It begins with the anger we all share: that the shiny space age we were promised never actually showed up (Where are our jetpacks? Where are our slow food pill packs? Who can we lynch?). Now try to imagine how pissed off and bitter a jaded and washed up astronaut would be. Of course: he would be really,really pissed off and bitter. And so Bad Buzz as a ‘concept’ was born. And from there we only told the absolute truth. And as Bad Buzz, I was given the opportunity to rant anti-hippie poetry while wandering the deserts high on Tang crystals, and sound like a psychobilly singer from Pluto (the non-planet) while grunting out the tale of a hotrod rocket race between Major Tom and Barbarella. And for these experiences I would like to say: Thanks fellas! But yes, it’s now best for all parties if they return to their instrumental ways.
The release party is at Amsterdam’s Paradiso on November 6. Oh, and the coolest thing: this album is also available in vinyl. Now there’s a ‘concept’! And a big thanks to Unfold for indulging the above advertorial. Maybe next time they’ll actually get paid — yet another ‘concept’.
Usually, I don’t have a lot to say about orange. And certainly my football strap starts twanging hollow as soon as I have played out my two basic one-liners:
‘Wouldn’t two balls solve the whole problem?’
‘If two teams can’t get it together to share, what hope is there for the bleeding billion different teams that make up this planet?’
It would be easy to smirk my way through some smart-ass facts like orange being the colour of the sex ’n’ spleen chakra, or that orange was considered by Goethe as the colour of the rough and uneducated, or that orange is the favourite colour of everybody’s favourite god of wine ’n’ bonking, Bacchus.
I could even dwell on the irony of orange — despite advertising’s Golden Rule: ‘Never Use Orange’ — becoming a marketing phenomena where seemingly everything that is now currently being sold in this country, from condoms to contact lenses, is orange.
But actually I’ve been getting into the spirit of things and now when those orange guys score, I even catch myself jumping to my feet as if an industrious fart of mine has suddenly harnessed the secrets of rocket science. So out of respect, I choose to discuss the aesthetics of football. It is such a purty sport after all…
For instance, when the mass psychosis surrounding the game gets too much for my weak and dicky ticker, I let my eyes glaze over and randomly follow the lil’ orange blobs darting about the green field until the sport takes on the vibe of fireflies darting about in a kid’s glass jar (or flames randomly darting about in a campfire…). It is all so very relaxing and probably similar in effect to staring into an orange hypno-pinwheel and getting very, very sleepy.
But before I get too lost in these visual games and a dull-voice inside my mind starts chanting ‘Must… Buy… Orange… Products… Must… Buy… Orange… Products’, I redirect my focus to take in the equally pleasing rhythmics of relaxation to be found within the stadium crowd scenes. The texture reminds me of those scrambly computer-generated pictures that you stare at until a 3D image pops out at you. And yes, invariably out of the sea of distorted orange comes a freaking huge orange clog to kick me upside the ass and onto my feet again and thereby forcing me — albeit happily — to start the whole process again of trying to regain my preferred state of freestyle floating.
But I wouldn’t dare to come across all flaky like psychic spoon-bender Uri Geller who has spent a lot of energy trying to convince people that if enough fans of a particular team focus on an orange dot placed on their TV screen, the resulting convergence of cosmic energies will lead to certain victory for your team… I’m no jock pundit, but that sort of stuff doesn’t strike me as very sporting.
The local anti-vertrutting (“anti-frumpication”) action group AI! Amsterdam, who this summer successfully lobbied for the easing of terrace laws, has changed their logo after being threatened with legal action from the city since their original logo was a parody of the I Amsterdam city marketing campaign. Hmm, so not having a sense of humour is good for the city brand?
These are complicated times we live in. It was all much simpler back in the 1970s. To entice more people to visit Amsterdam all you had to do was put out some posters cajoling long-haired American targets to “Fly KLM, sleep in the Vondelpark”. Word of mouth did the rest.
And then there was the tourist board’s Get In Touch With The Dutch campaign during the 1960s. This one just gets me all misty-eyed; those must have truly been the most innocent of times.
And for the last few years, it’s been I amsterdam. I can imagine it can work to help attract tourists and business. I only start seeing red when it peddles the delusional idea that it also works to unify regular Amsterdammers. It’s as if the local government actually believes that culture is not a grassroots phenomena but rather something that can be shoved down our throats from the top down.
OK, it’s easy to criticise. Marketing a city can’t be easy. I certainly can’t come up with anything better. “Ich bin ein Amsterdammertje” would probably generate the same confusion and controversy as JFK’s grammatical gaffe, “Ich bin ein Berliner”. And “Handy Airport. Lotsa Coffeeshops”, while appealing to both the business- and leisure-minded, lacks a certain elegance.
I think I’d just opt for golden oldies like ‘Amsterdamned’ or ‘Amsterdamaged’. I regard these lines as way more effective ambassadors. After all, the visiting dope smokers of today may just hold our city’s future in their hands. I figure it was mostly sentimental ex-hippies who invested in this city during the booming 1990s. They figured it would be a good excuse to come and visit a few times a year, and maybe recreate certain perfect relaxed coffeeshop moments from decades past. (And these investments got the city thinking that they could get even more by coming up with that era’s ho-hum city marketing ploys — “Gateway to Europe” and “Capital of Inspiration” — that resulted in the building of lots of new office space that today stands largely empty…).
Anyway… it was short-sighted to force Ai! Amsterdam to change their logo. The city is losing a perfect co-branding opportunity with a group that is both grassroots and community-driven.
