TBWA\NEBOKO Strengthens Its Team with Creative Heavyweights

Over the past year, TBWA\NEBOKO has significantly expanded its creative team. In the post-COVID era, the agency is now operating at full speed and this mix of creative minds will contribute greatly to the agency.

Tuomas Karvonen traded the cold streets in Finland, after a few years at TBWA\Helsinki, for Amsterdam. He has created work there for different brands but, according to him, he created his most beautiful work for the Finnish Football Association. To make football more accessible for girls with a migration background, they donated sports hijabs together with Nike to every girl who wanted one. Thanks to this campaign, Tuomas was also elected "European Best Young Creative of 2022" by the Art Directors Club Europe.

Also new to the country is art director Tracy Kintu, born in Uganda and raised in Sweden. When she applied to TBWA\NEBOKO, she knew no one in the country, let alone at the agency. But she was so convinced of the work that TBWA\NEBOKO makes that she took the step to apply. Before joining TBWA\NEBOKO, she created some fantastic projects such as 'The Local Flex', in which local businesses are promoted in their direct area with the aim of putting them in the spotlight. For this, she used the insight that local businesses always appear in the latest music videos and that they always compete against the big players.

Norman Groenewegen and Pepijn Spanjerberg previously worked at Amsterdam-based agency Cheil. They have managed to acquire a significant list of awards during their time there. The duo is the proud creator of the Samsung SmartSuit and won a gold and bronze Lion at Cannes 2018. "Creating innovations is what we do best, for any brand. So, if there are any opportunities out there, bring it on!" says Pepijn.

Writer, performer, and voice-actress Cené Hale from Texas came to TBWA\NEBOKO’s office to record a voice-over when one of the creative directors asked her about her writing. Before she knew it, she was in the middle of a job interview, and soon after she became a copywriter for the agency: "I showed up at the office with a messy bun and sweatpants. I thought: if they take me seriously while I look like this, it's probably a good sign."

Creative duo Oscar Flinterman and Tjeerd Buntsma have worked together for four years at code d'azur and before that at various agencies such as Brandbase, JWT, and Ogilvy. On national and international clients, from ABN AMRO and Tele2 to Polestar. At TBWA\NEBOKO, they went straight into the ING pitch for which they are now developing the campaign. "We have our own take on things. For example, we made trash valuable by turning it into real pieces of jewellery for the McDonalds Litter & Glamour campaign," says Oscar.

Simone Di Laus and James Andrews moved from another Omnicom agency '180 Amsterdam'. They have developed campaigns such as ‘Ha(u)te Couture’ for Diesel where they had people print the online hate comments they received on their clothing in the fight against online negativity. At TBWA\NEBOKO, they’re currently working on campaigns for adidas.

This also applies to creative duo Nwabisa Tolom and Mica Batista. Nwabisa received many awards for her work on the campaign: 'Original is Never Finished'. Now she has the opportunity to write for adidas. Mica developed the campaign 'Rescue Dogz', where dogs in a Brazilian shelter were given names of misspelt dog breeds and thus ended up in search results of people who spelled the name of that breed incorrectly. The action ensured that all dogs on the website were eventually adopted.

Darre van Dijk, CCO TBWA\NEBOKO: "Attracting new talent is one of our strengths and always at the top of our agenda. We will also work a lot on this in the coming year. As an agency, we are running at full speed and to be able to keep up with the rest of the industry, we can really use some creative 'heavyweights'."