Licence to create!

All freelancers are issued with their own creative licence when they join the Collective. Here’s an example:

Old collective commercials

Here are two old commercials made for and by The Collective, from back in the day when we only represented British freelancers:

English Trouble

Creative Communication

Netherlands: Freelancers face massive health cost hike

Freelance workers face an explosive increase in their premiums under the new health insurance scheme coming into force next year, the organisation for small and medium-sized businesses has warned.

Sector organisation MKB-Nederland has based its predictions on calculations carried out by newspaper 'Het Financieele Dagblad'.

A new one-size-fits-all insurance package will replace the two-tier, public-private health insurance on 1 January 2006.

Everyone will be in the basic package and can opt for extra coverage by taking out supplementary insurance.

The newspaper published calculations on Wednesday morning that the MKB says shows that high earning freelancers could face a doubling of their premiums to a total of EUR 2,900 a year.

Tens of thousands of freelancers — regarded by the tax office as self-employed entrepreneurs without personnel — could be hit by the increases, the MKB said.

Under the new system, freelancers, known as zzp'ers in Dutch, may have to pay an income-dependant premium of EUR 1,875 on top of the EUR 1,100 fixed premium.

Karin Kuiper of the MKB cautioned that the calculations are provisional and the government is to announce the maximum levels for the health insurance premiums in September.

But if the newspaper's calculations turn out to be correct, the cabinet will have to consider introducing a compensation scheme for zzp'ers, Kuiper said.

"In principle it is not so bad that people on a high income have to pay a higher premium. But increases have to remain at a realistic level," she said.

Kuiper also expressed concerns that entrepreneurs on a lower than average income will also suffer financially under the new health insurance scheme. Her organisation is afraid the government will exclude this group from the compensation scheme for people on low incomes.

[Source: Expatica News + ANP 2005]

Freelancer focus: Åsk Wäppling

As well as an award-winning art director for brands like Smirnoff, Heineken and UNICEF, Åsk Wäppling is also the creator and webmaster behind one of the world's biggest advertising websites ad-rag.com. From her base in Copenhagen she has turned what started into a daily web log into AdLand – a commercial-laden delirium of heaven and hell for advertising addicts around the world.

When, how and why did you come to start ad-rag?

I started Adland when I lived in San Francisco back in 1996. When I began surfing the web there was nearly nothing related to advertising out there, in 95 portfolios.com (still going strong!), zeldman.com, the University of Texas and J Walter Thompson were the advertising sites online worth their salt. There was also a copywriter, Dave Dumanis, who wrote weekly on his website called ad lib about advertising in early 96, which in hindsight must have been the very first sortof "pre-blog" adblog. Zeldman's ad graveyard, Dave's ad lib and the clear lack of websites that gabbed ads the way I wanted to inspired me to start my own site. The 'concept' of the website was to show ads separated at birth, much like the ad graveyard shows ads killed by clients or circumstance. I learnt some basic HTML and I collected all the good ad related links I could find on a page so that people who found adland could find more adstuff on the web. As time passed, I started posting my own long rants about the state of advertising, what it was like pounding the pavement with a portfolio looking for work and the pain of bad campaigns in a section named adrants, as well as excerpts from advertising books that I had read in the "adbooks" section. Later the commercial archive collection merged with adland in 2000. The whole thing grew quite organically, really.

How big is ad-rag now? (Members, hits and number of ads, etc)

Oh god, it's mind boggling really. More than 23 million people have peeked at the site since we started counting in May 2000, god knows how many saw the incarnations before that, there are more than 56 thousand members and there are almost 30.000 TV commercials collected in the archive right now. But the numbers change every as new people sign up and more curious onlookers stop by.

Did you ever think it would have become as successful as it has?

Sure, I daydream a lot but I don't think I ever pictured anything like this really. Back in '96 sitting in a very spartan room (I had only a mattress for a bed and a radio I bought at a garage sale for entertainment) ranting on about ads that seemed to be stolen straight off the pages of last years awards book, I wondered "is there anybody out there who thinks like I do about advertising?" and creating the crummy little site was my way of trying to find out and find some like minded ad obsessed ad pals. I felt a little lonely and wanted to meet other ad-nutters, share tips tricks gossip and opinions, which is still the basic idea with the site, as it is a huge community of ad-nutters now.

The answer is, yes there are lots of people who share the same ideas about advertising in general, Badland ads in particular, work ethics and so on, as well as smart people who have other points of view and weirdos who send hate mail saying something like "Why rant about ads when there are children starving in Africa?". It did feel like it took a long time before advertising people in general actually went "online", so to speak, in the beginning few creatives could be found roaming say the Usenet groups or similar hangouts like mailing lists. After the marketing people found the Internet things changed quite fast. One thing seems to be very slow in taking hold, I always wanted to talk to the ad-world, as it is the world wide web, right? But few see it that way and limit their reports geographically, as if that makes a difference in this day and age.

You seem to be online 24/7 and eat and drink advertising. What makes you so passionate about it?

I think my mum dropped me on the head when I was a kid. Ha! I have this tape I made in 1979 where I sing songs for my grandparents, up until the point where there is a commercial break on TV. Abrupt silence, all you hear is me breathing for a second, and then I break out into a "ring around the collar?" monologue and recite the entire advert before snapping out of it and return to making my tape. Clearly, ads always had my complete and undivided attention. Like anyone who loves anything, I want it to be the best that it can be. Advertising is too often trite, annoying and bad, when it could be information to the right target, entertainment for the right group and the pop-culture glue that keeps a company and their customers together. I love ideas. I love stories. Great advertising has both. Bad advertising has none.

What's next for you and ad-rag.com?

Well, already done Manhattan. Now let’s take Berlin. ;)

Thanks to Ask for answering our questions. She’s expecting her first child in October and we wish her all the best.

Ex-collectives wins Gold at Cannes

Ex-collective members, Chris Pugmire and Sharon Cleary, who are now working at Springer&Jacoby in Amsterdam have just won a gold lion at Cannes for their latest commercials. The ads were for Olympus but the Japanese HQ flipped after seeing their evil baby ad and pulled the ads, but not before they were run in Germany. The ads became cult successes on the internet and have now been endorsed by the ad world at cannes. Watch the Red Eye baby

Martini commercials

Perennial friend of The Collective, Yann Jones, just made these funnies for Martini – Suit and Bath

New freelancers join

Here are the new freelancers to have joined The Collective in June.

Bas van der Paardt – Dutch Art Director
With 21 international awards and two creative directorships under his belt, Bas is an experienced pair of hands for even the most difficult briefs. He’s freelanced for DDB, Wieden + Kennedy, KesselsKramer, OgilvyOne, Bates, and almost anyone else you care to mention.
Full profile



Falk Florian Eumann – German Art Director
Flak has been crazy about advertising ever since he was 15 years old when he had his first traineeship and he still loves it. He is very much a strategic, conceptual ATL Art Director with a very strong affinity to photography and film. He is also working on his own photography projects and also loves to write in English and Dutch fluently, and sometimes French.
Full profile


Stéphane Allaman – French Designer
Stéphane is a curious and imaginative designer based in Corbiel Essonnes in France. He’s produced great work for clients like Atelier Sans Frontieres and Helly Hansen. He speaks French, English and some German.
Full profile

New weblog

Welcome to the new Collective blog, the place to vist for all the updates about the world of advertising, freelancing and the Collective itself. If you have something interesting that you think we might like to post, please send it to blogger@thecollective-europe.com
Enjoy!
THE COLLECTIVE OF INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING FREELANCERS