Humans of Berkeley – Piet van Reeuwijk

I used to work for the largest trade magazine publisher in the Netherlands, then moved to an exciting Amsterdam-based communications agency affiliated with Edelman. While there were many reasons behind it, the biggest driver for the decision was because my future boss told me: ‘Such a stuffy publisher is not for you, come over here and we’ll make a consultant out of you, you can do it’. I really had no idea at the time, but she had totally hit the nail on the head.

In the early days

My family is from Wageningen and the East Dutch (almost German-like) culture was perfect for me. But then my father’s work moved us to Lelystad, a brand-new city on the reclaimed bottom of the IJsselmeer lake. This newborn town was a social experiment, with square neighbourhoods and angled streets that had no names but used numbers instead. It was a city in a barren wasteland, with exactly three valuable things: staggering cultural and social differences, all around rugged nature full of pioneering species, and a fantastic public library. I must’ve read every book in there, because I couldn’t always spend my days outside.

At school, I was proficient in mathematics, physics and chemistry, so I went to study in that direction, ascribing high status to the STEM subjects. Or at least, I did, until I discovered that my language ability was well developed –probably thanks to Lelystad boredom combined with that great library – and that language was a powerful tool for the comedian, teacher, and pastor that lurked inside me.

So off to Edelman, where they taught me morals. One of the executives once said: ‘He who can’t write, can’t advise’ which resonated with me somewhat, and led me to think ‘And he who doesn’t read, can’t write’.

Starting at a startup

At one point I jumped ship to work for a startup in the heart of Amsterdam. It was a fledgling internet access provider where, in order to save money and potentially have enough for salaries, we pulled the UTP Cat. 5 cables for the Ethernet network through the building ourselves. The very first internet connection for 3,000 global journalists at the 1997 European Council in Amsterdam? That was us. Thirty t-shirts and a unique transatlantic connection to internet hub MAE-East in the US. Then once we started seeing growth, the founders sold the company to the enemy – a national telecommunications company – and that was our whistle to collectively leave. Fortunately, many of us had been granted just enough shares to start companies of our own.

My business partner and I started a communications agency, specialising in B2B communications and PR for technology companies. Or rather for anyone that was trying to sell something difficult to understand and hard to make attractive. We took pride in breaking down complex subject matter, uncovering the details that were valuable and understood by the customers. Most importantly though, we knew how to get our customers’ customers moving.

Of course we did the four P´s, built the brand message, wrote crisis scenarios, worked on positioning, and explained to multiple clients that after the iPhone and with the rapid advancement of technology, the world would never be the same again. And this is still true to this day, though the predictions have moved on to AI. But above all, we prioritise the stories that turn the world upside down – not the specifications, but the why. Not the pixels, but the priceless picture they create.

Stories and science

Three hundred thousand years ago it was always about the stories, painting pictures on the cave walls and telling each other tales around the campfire at night. Instructive stories, connecting stories, entertaining stories, insightful and convincing stories, with flattering, tickling, hurting, contrasting, exciting, shocking and enchanting words. Stories that brought about a smile and a tear, a slap on the table and a warming embrace.

But then science came along and taught us that we were not in love but responding to signals fired off from neurotransmitters. That microprocessors with more cores and a higher clock speed are better. And that the characteristics of one brand of car are more favourable than another, and so it should be our preference – even if it doesn’t make you sing and dance or make our hearts beat any faster.

How wonderful is it then that a renewed focus on communicating our brand teaches us again to find words, phrases and images that really move us? The passion that connects us to the entire economic and social ecosystem in which we find ourselves? Because one cannot exist without the other; policy and communication both influence each other. That is the importance of storytelling, a fine art we had started to forget; the power of words and imagination to paint the right picture.

Storytelling is Berkeley’s strength. Not only for our clients, but to guide those who work here as well. I have come to feel at home with it. And meanwhile, in my hometown of Wageningen, they have started to understand it too. For a century Wageningen has been the location of the world’s best agricultural university, which has made the Netherlands the world’s second agricultural exporter. But nobody knew it until they finally put the right words to it: Foodvalley. And since then, we have decked that word out with a lot of decorations.

Who’s your favourite storyteller? The Grimm brothers. They collected German folk tales in the late 19^e century that thrilled young listeners and taught them life lessons. Disney later gave those original stories a honeyed twist: Cinderella, Snow White. Cultural appropriation.

What would you sing at a karaoke night? In Dutch, Malle Babbe by Rob de Nijs. A customer sings about a lady who earns her living with the oldest profession in the world, but unlike the others, he really loves her. Hypocrisy and a warped morality that you know will come back like a boomerang – delicious.

What’s the most used app on your phone? I read my printed newspapers, with Het Financieele Dagblad as a favourite, and then Google things like ´Why is parallel processing beneficial for AI applications?´ and ´What does the flamenco artist’s name El Camarón de la Isla mean?´. I use WhatsApp with the four out-of-home children and follow the live news. With X, however I stopped; too much self-congratulation of the political and journalistic elite.