The Frog versus The Dinosaur, page nine, in which the chirping Strawberry Frog bounces over The Dinosaur's long, graceful neck and alights upon the $26 million Credit Suisse global advertising account.

StrawberryFrog actually is the amphibious metaphor, mascot and name appropriated by a gigantic, 30-person, Amsterdam-based, intercultural, technology-enabled creative content agency that is unabashedly blasting bigger ideas and faster micro-market executions across the biggest brands, worldwide.

"The borders are coming down on ideas," says Scott Goodson, founder and creative director of StrawberryFrog. "Ideas can come from anywhere. Credit Suisse is a great example of how big brands are thinking today." That is, more like the nimble strawberry frog (an actual albeit extremely rare species that hails from the Amazon) and less like the pea-brained dinosaur (which of course is alive and well and in a meeting)

Just in case this still isn't making sense, Scott and company have distilled the concept into a children's book. What matters is that the moral of The Frog and The Dinosaur apparently has captured the imaginations not only Credit Suisse, but also brand-owners including Xerox, Elle.com, Swatch and Viagra. Also O'Neill, UPC, and IMD Business School in Lauzanne

Funnily enough, for someone so intently inconoclastic, Scott Goodson is remarkably steeped in advertising tradition. His grandpa was in advertising. So were his dad and his mom. His four sisters? They're all in advertising too. "We're like the bouncing Zamboni family," he quips. "We're all circus artists."

Born in Montreal, Scott Goodson got his start in advertising, folklore has it while still in diapers, working for his father's agency. Clients of note included Expo '67 in Canada, and then Expo '70 in Japan. Fourteen years ago in Greece -- that's where he met the Swedish sweetheart who is now his wife. And that's how both Scott's Netherlands and Internet links were forged.

You see, while visiting his then-girlfriend in Stockholm, Scott took a job with an agency called Adaptus, which numbered Ericsson among its accounts. Then he became co-owner of a creative agency called Welinder, which became Ericsson's worldwide agency. The significance of this: Sweden is perhaps the most wired society in the world and Scott worked on Ericsson's mobile phone account. "I had my first digital mobile phone in 1989," he mentions. "We had email and Internet back in 1991 and began working with it in new ways in 1992. We were already experimenting with having design studio people work with us over the Internet."

In other words, in the early '90s, Scott was already dreaming about the possibilities of a technology-enabled advertising agency. That particular reverie was deferred, however, when his dad's illness brought Scott back to Canada as executive creative director for J. Walter Thompson. He soon bounced back to the Netherlands, though -- to Amsterdam -- at the request of McCann-Erickson, which was thinking about opening an outpost of its creative consultancy, Amster Yard, there. McCann ditched the idea, but not Scott: "I came over two or three times and thought -- fuck -- maybe it would be cool to open that agency I had always dreamt of in Stockholm, in Amsterdam."

So he got together with a few people and started plotting it out. One of those people was Brian Elliott, who was a strategic planner for Andersen Lembke in Amsterdam. Another was Karin Drakenberg, a former senior creative at Swedish creative hot shop Sexton87 -- the only European agency other than Wieden to work on Nike. Karin is now StrawberryFrog's managing director. And a third gentleman -- Uli Weisendanger. He's the "W" of TBWA and was behind the Absolut Vodka campaign. Three months into the gig, the trio became a quartet with the addition of Rein Van Dieren, a former vp of Arthur Andersen -- "our frog version of Martin Sorrell," says Scott.



From the beginning, we felt that the big opportunity was to create a new market by working for selected international brands across borders. We would not compete with the Dutch agencies or the German agencies for national business. We would only go for those selected brands on an international basis. Basically, our competition is the big networks. That's pretty much the only choice that the clients or the brands have -- to go to BBDO or McCann. Even some of the big creative "hot shops" of the 80s that were initially quite small, had started to grow quite big. Even a BBH is now like 350 people.

We felt there was an opportunity to use the Internet as a tool to allow us to work in a different way. And so that formed the philosophy for the company called StrawberryFrog.

Inititally the name we came up with was David. We were thinking of David versus Goliath. Then we thought, ah, that's too intellectual. So we thought, what would be a cool David? Somebody said there was an article in Ad Age that called the big agencies "the dinosaurs."-
So we thought, well, what about a lizard versus the dinosaurs? Then somebody brought up the idea of a frog. But we didn't want to just call ourselves "Frog" because that's kind of boring.

So we did some research and found a frog -- the rarest frog in the world -- called the strawberry frog, which is from the Amazon. It's actually red with blue legs. It's kind of a funky little red, blue-jeaned frog. We thought that was pretty appropriate, for, you know, Amsterdam. I also think it does a good job of explaining what we do. We're a small, highly-focused, passionate group of people that moves very fast and efficiently.

The frog versus dinosaur is really 21st versus 20th Century thinking. Or, in another context -- it's a challenger brand versus an established brand. Big corporations see themselves as needing to challenge their own way of working because a lot of them see themselves and want to become a little more sprightly and more dynamic.

We are much more like a Dreamworks than we are like a big creative agency in the traditional sense. We have in the office here about thirty people. We are more like strategic conceptual creative thinkers and managers. So we come up with concepts and rough ideas. And then we hire really great teams and writers all over the world to actually come in with product and content. So instead of having full time, ten teams in this office, we've got four creative directors here.

We then go out to independent creatives, who are really good people who seem to be working more and more freelance, or own their own. We bring in people on a contractual basis. So, when we are developing a concept, we'll bring in a number of creative teams -- whether they are in San Francisco or New York or Paris or wherever to develop the work. And then when we actually execute it, we also work with that network of people, of talent, who we select for specialized tasks to help execute the ideas on a regular basis.

We work the way the big agencies always dreamed of working but never could because of politics. Here, we have these independent individuals or small boutiques in different countries who take a text and translate it. You know, people say you can't take a great idea and translate it. It's bullshit. Dostoevski has been translated into fifty languages. Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into over a hundred languages. You need a creative, talented, passionately interested person to take an idea and bring it to life.

So we have these people, and the ideas we develop. We're doing a campaign for Xerox now that's running in forty markets. Each one of those ads -- in each one of those different cultures -- the ads really work because they've been worked on by really good creative people.

That allows us to move really fast and quickly. We did the first Xerox ad in 18 days. It's running in 14 markets. That's incredible speed if you think about how long a big network would take. When I was at Thompson, it would take us eight months to come up with a concept. Maybe that says more about me, but, there were a lot more people involved. It was a longer process.

The traditional way is, London and New York come up with the ideas and then they are basically rolled out around the world. So it's a New York point of view or a London point of view. Here, the team here is multicultural, from about 14 different countries. So if a concept is too nationalistic someone will say something right away. Right from the beginning, we're focusing more on pure ideas that can be developed and evolved into culturally-neutral ideas.

Because we've got people out there locally we have the first true ability to deliver micro locally. A big network will say, "Yeah, we can do Michigan." Or, let's say you have a prestigious brand, so they buy space in a national American magazine. Because we have people in Dallas, we can actually do a campaign micro to Dallas. We don't have to have an office in every city.

For example, we did a corporate campaign for Pharmacia where the ads had to be written very specifically for a Northern Italian audience. We were able, through a very talented writer in Milano, to work together to formulate the advertising so it comes through. Another example would be for Elle.com, where we've done a helluva lot of banners for the U.S. market, talking to the female 18-year-segment. We've had to gear the jargon to different types of web sites for different regions in the U.S.

If there's a disadvantage in working with us it's that you're not going to get fifty account people to hold your hand. You're not going to visit luxurious agency offices with huge waiting rooms and fancy furniture. You're not going to have a big network where distribution systems weigh more heavily in the equation than creativity and ideas.

-We are executing for Pharmacia in multi markets. We are executing for Elle in multi markets. We are going execute for Credit Suisse globally. We work with the world's largest media companies.

We dock our little spacecraft at these massive media companies which the big networks use too -- and which are by the way owned by the big networks. And they distribute it. So, in terms of security and making sure the work is going to be delivered, the client doesn't have to worry because the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" is coming from the big media companies.

Our company culture would be fresh yogurt versus pasteurized yogurt. We're not going to last on the shelf forever. We're here, we're now. We move with the times. We're contemporary. We're very much where the world is at the moment. It's all about working really hard and providing the best possible ideas and flawless execution.

It's a culture where people from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Finland, fit in the same office and are aspiring to do the same type of thing. If London is the New York of Europe, Amsterdam is the San Francisco of Europe. It's on the West Coast, it's small; it's very funky. When Goodby was small and San Francisco was just becoming of interest -- that's what Amsterdam is like today. So it's a very multicultural, very savvy, very international place.

You've got a really rich creative community here. You've got the marketing companies here. Nike's European headquarters are based in Amsterdam. Adidas worldwide marketing headquarters in Amsterdam.

You have Gucci's headquarters in Amsterdam. You've got Tommy Hilfiger's headquarters for Europe in Amsterdam. And a whole bunch of other marketeers are based in Amsterdam.

Another good thing about Amsterdam is that it's like two hours by car to Brussells. By plane it's 40 minutes to London or Paris, an hour to Zurich or Berlin and 90 minutes to Stockholm. You can go skiing for the weekend. You can go to Barcelona. It sounds so exotic but basically it's like living in New York and being able to go to Boston.

StrawberryFrog is an inspiring place. It's pretty easy-going. And it's a very high ceiling. It's the type of place I think people would like to work. We said we wanted to have a place where you get up in the morning and say -- fuck -- I'd like to go to work today.

We have a big dog who walks around the office and eats everybody's lunch. We have a director of fun, who is Australian -- which by actual decision of the agency was a choice because Australians for some reason seem to have a lot more fun than most other people.

In the old days, people used to dream about building and selling. Today there are other options. Good agencies that do well don't need to be part of a big network. In the old days, if you had big clients you felt you had to have a network to be part of in order to be a realistic agency or a big client. That doesn't exist today. Today clients are going where the great work is.

The road most traveled is not the best road. Traditionally, American brands that are going to launch, they'll go into London and launch their brands from London. The British market being one of the most difficult markets in the world. They'll launch in London, they won't be successful, it will cost them a fortune and they'll decide that it's not such good idea to launch in London -- or Europe.

But there are so many ways today of breaking into this market. You could launch a brand today in Poland and then grow out of Poland and build your brand in Europe. You could launch a brand in Stockholm and then build your brand into England."

Two years ago when I told some of my former colleages that I was planning to open a new kind of agency with some partners to take on the big networks using the world's best talent, and the connectivity of the Internet to bring people together in ways which the big boys had not managed to achieve they said: "good luck, but we don't see how you can match the reach of the big networks, and besides who would want to work with a small team to do global ads when they can have a account director in every country?"

This reminded me of the grade -- a "C"-- that Fred Smith received when he submitted his business thesis for the creation of the famous hub-and-spoke concept which later became his Federal Express.

You have to think creatively and inventively in a new way about the whole game. There's no such thing as a history book. Nothing that you've learned in business school or in fifteen years of marketing at P&G or at a big agency is going to help you survive this world today.

You've got to have a machete, you need to have a lot of guts and chutzpah and big ideas and you have to be prepared to try new ideas. Because everything has changed. Everything is changing and everything has changed. Nothing is the same. Everything they taught you in business school is a liability. You've got to have a totally fresh new way. And a strawberry frog.