After Asus Win, Dutch Agency SuperHeroes Opens in U.S.

U.S. agencies are a familiar sight in Amsterdam, where shops like Wieden & Kennedy and 72andSunny flourish, but SuperHeroes may be the first Dutch ad agency in Manhattan. The Amsterdam agency is opening in the U.S. after winning Taiwanese PC challenger brand Asus as its first U.S. client. SuperHeroes -- founded in 2009 by managing director Django Weisz Blanchetta and executive creative director Rogier Vijverberg -- will create the first U.S. campaign for Asus' 2-in-1 Transformer notebooks, set to break before the end of the year. Asus was the world's fifth-largest PC vendor by 2013 unit sales after Lenovo, HP, Dell and Acer, according to figures from Gartner. Mr. Weisz Blanchetta said his digitally-focused agency caught the attention of Asus following its work for LG, including the online film "So Real It's Scary," an elevator stunt that's gotten more than 22 million views on YouTube. (To show how lifelike LG's IPS monitors are, the agency built an elevator floor out of opaque panels that appeared to fall open, creating the illusion to panicked passengers that the floor had disappeared). "We have an advantage in that we have experience working with Asian brands, and we also offer a very Dutch, liberal approach to creativity," he said. "The idea is that, based in Amsterdam, we can act as a bridge between Asian brands who want to advertise in the U.S and vice versa." Mr. Weisz Blanchetta, who comes from a management consultancy background, and Mr. Vijverberg, a creative who started at Young & Rubicam, will divide their time between their new office in Manhattan's Upper East Side office and Amsterdam. They hope to enter Asia next year, with an office in Hong Kong or Singapore, by partnering with a local agency or recruiting locally. They employ one other staffer in New York. The pair met at Dutch independent agency Qi Ideas, where they worked on interactive projects for clients such as Heineken before opening their own agency. SuperHeroes' declared mission is "to save the world from boring advertising." Clients include the digital account for Converse in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Appropriately, SuperHeroes' central Amsterdam office, with 35 staffers of 11 different nationalities, sports a giant mural of a llama (and was recently voted one of the "world's 30 coolest offices" by Inc. magazine).

After Asus Win, Dutch Agency SuperHeroes Opens in U.S.

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