On Thursday, May 18, unexpectedly, art director, executive creative director and Alfred’s partner, Jorn Kruijsen, passed away.
By: Jeroen van de Sande, partner of Alfred.
It is 2009, sometime in the spring. The phone rings. It’s Jorn, completely breathless with excitement. “You won’t believe what I just went through! I walk into a shop, in the middle of the jungle of Costa Rica, there is a man laughing hard behind his computer. And guess what? He was looking at the Walk-in Fridge!’
We had just finished that commercial. Jorn left on vacation a day later, only to find out there in Central America that he had spread like wildfire over the internet. Jorn loved advertising. That’s why he really enjoyed moments like this. The moments when he got his hands on proof that it was indeed possible: advertising that people really like.
And advertising should be fun, he thought. Jorn was one of the leaders of a generation of advertisers who believed that advertising had a duty to entertain. “There is already so much junk being made, we are not going to participate in that,” he would say. Many people still remember the campaign for Pearle, with Ton Kas and Dick van den Toorn. And of course the Albert Heijn campaign with Harry Piekema as supermarket manager, in which he was involved for TBWA from the second commercial until almost the end, and which made Harry world famous in the Netherlands. But Heineken was still his favorite customer. And that remained the case when he later started working for Alfred for Affligem, Amstel and Texels.
Not quite coincidentally, I think, his career also started with a beer brand. “I have an idea!” he said one morning. We had just started our first job as junior creatives at DMB&B Amsterdam. ‘My brother has designed a label for a small Amsterdam beer brand, shall we come up with a commercial for it?’ I thought at the time that he was not very well, or at best, very naive. Because it wasn’t like that, was it? Surely you couldn’t ‘just’ come up with a commercial for a company that hadn’t asked for it at all and had absolutely no money for it? “Yes,” he said, his eyes shining. ‘Because a friend of mine can direct, and then we ask the agency to produce it. That beer shop thinks everything is fine, so the best thing is: there is no one to disapprove of the idea!’
The idea came. Man pisses on tree, tree falls over. Packshot with payoff: Red Eye, heavy beer. The friend turned out to be able to direct. And the agency did indeed want to produce it. The international network of which our agency was a part organized a competition every year for the best commercials made by the agencies worldwide. And so it was that half a year later we stood on a stage in New York with a grin from ear to ear because the project, set up by Jorn himself, had won the grand prize. His plan had succeeded.
It was a good lesson I learned from him there: success does not come naturally, you have to go after it. And what some people call naivety, you can also see that as optimism. Or rather, believe in yourself.
Besides advertising, Jorn especially loved people. From his family. From his family. His friends. And from customers and colleagues – who often became friends as well. When he entered a place, usually with a lot of noise (those who know him will vividly remember his trademark jovial greeting, “Gasteeeh!”), the room was filled with his presence. I know very few people who could light up a room like he did.
When we were nominated for a Leo for the first time in our lives at Cannes, he hugged me so hard that I – I’m not kidding – got three bruised ribs. That was Jordan. Always full in it. All or nothing.
As much as Jorn loved his work and his colleagues, he loved life. He embraced that too with all his might. Until the end, because the thought that it wouldn’t go any further, he just didn’t have room for that.
He has inspired and enchanted me and many people who have worked with him with his zest for life, his enthusiasm, his love of advertising, his huge heart and his utter refusal to take things as they are.
Not only am I losing a colleague and partner, but also one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And I’m sure a lot of people around me feel the same way.
Jorn, the Great Bear, has fallen. For the first time he couldn’t make it fun for us.
On behalf of everyone at Alfred,
Jeroen van de Sande
