The Story of Wanderbrief

From Personal Project to Global Community.

After being submerged in the Amsterdam ad scene for six years, I decided to completely flip the script. I quit my job, left my apartment, gave my bed to an orphanage and tossed my belongings in a backpack. I was ready to take over the world. But, after booking an 'Around the World Ticket' I realised that I didn't have enough money to do everything that I wanted to do. So I was thinking, "What do I really need to survive on this trip?" And the answer I came up with was, just those basic physiological needs Maslow identified; room and board. That's when I came up with the idea to travel the world as 'The Backpacker Intern', exchanging my skills for food and a place to sleep.

To put my story out there I created a one-minute video that explained the concept. I didn't even write a press release but just posted the film on my personal social media. While I was in the air, flying from Amsterdam to my first destination Bangkok, the idea got picked up by Adweek, TEDxTeen, Campaign and Entrepreneur and within one week I had received more than 750 job offers worldwide. It was crazy. From day one I knew that this idea was going to take me to places I could never imagine.

After two years, this personal project had brought me to seven continents, 27 countries and 32 companies including Amnesty International Thailand, DDB Vietnam, TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, J. Walter Thompson Buenos Aires, Red Bull Austria, Ogilvy Cape Town and UNICEF New Zealand. I worked with the legendary hit-maker Nile Rodgers in New York, ex-drug traffickers in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, helped out a senior dog shelter in San Francisco, served food to homeless people at a soup kitchen in Malaysia and helped out One Ocean Expeditions during a polar expedition to the coldest continent of the world, Antarctica.

During my journey I was invited to share my story on stages like TEDxTeen NYC, World Merit Day Liverpool (where I shared the stage with the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala), Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, SXSW Festival and many more.

Travelling on your own for two years is not just rainbows, waterfalls and amazing Instagrams. I faced many fears, felt lonely, I got punched in the face, had food poisoning, ended up broke (twice), slept on floors and missed all birthdays, marriages, births and even funerals of friends and family. It was intense. Nobody was there to hold my hand when it got tough and there were no BFF's around to give me a hug. I really had to deal with it all myself. It made me a stronger person on both a personal and business level.

How Wanderbrief was born

When I made my way back to Amsterdam, I wanted to make meaningful work-life experiences more accessible for our generation. I hooked up with my best friend Valentijn van Santvoort (former Strategy Director HAVAS Boondoggle) and together we have founded Wanderbrief, a global community where people exchange their creativity for meaningful work-life experiences abroad.

On February 4th 2016 we launched in beta, got exposure on Adweek, The Economic Times, SXSW Festival and several media outlets around the world. Eight weeks later more than 5000 creatives from 47 countries created a profile on our website.

Our strategy is to open up city by city. First stop: our very own Amsterdam. We kicked off with projects for Vodafone and Amnesty International. The next destinations are lining up and we're now opening up London, Reykjavik and eventually the whole world.

Exchange creativity for experience abroad

How does it work? Simple. When a company is facing a challenge, we create an assignment and use our technology to curate top-notch talent in the creative industry from our growing international community. These include copywriters, designers, developers and other roles, as well as award-winning creatives from our Global Talent Partner, D&AD.

In a brief period of time (two to four weeks) the creative(s) solve problems in exchange for flights, room, board and some pocket money to explore the city. For our clients, Wanderbrief is a cost-effective opportunity for them to meet their business objectives through collaborative creativity, while supporting global citizenship and cultural exchange. For creatives it's a great way to travel, which looks badass on their resume when they get back home.

Wanderbrief Academy; using travel for talent retention

Millennials now make up the largest part of the workforce and they demand flexibility, mobility and accelerated development like never before. A recent survey by Deloitte, "Human Capital Trends 2015", shows that today, driven by shifts in both work ethos and the transparency of the job market, employee retention and engagement are the biggest problems companies face (3,200 respondents from over 100 countries). In response, we have created Wanderbrief Academy, where we enable corporate and agency high potentials to refresh their perspective on life through brief meaningful work-life experiences with NGOs abroad. This is basically a win-win for every stakeholder involved; the company develops their talent and helps the world, the talent re-energizes and uses its skills for good and the NGO gets free access to driven professionals to help them out with marketing and communication challenges.

Working with Vodafone

So, this is our first case history.

Vodafone Netherlands wanted our help relaunching their Instagram channel. We put the brief on our website and got a lot of emails from photographers. But one blew us all away. Philipp Benedikt from Austria made a video www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8c0vRNy and as a result of that came to Amsterdam. He brought us cookies, we gave him cold beer. Then he worked for two weeks, developing and delivering more stories than Vodafone asked for but which they are already using.

Refresh your perspective

Besides these work-life experiences, we also have Wanderbrief Journal, an online magazine where we create, explore and feature content on the subjects of travel, creativity and the entrepreneurial nomadic lifestyle.

In the end, everything we do adds up to our higher goal: to refresh the perspective of people and help companies meet their business objectives through collaborative creativity while fostering global citizenship and cultural exchange. If you want to refresh your perspective too, let's meet up. I'm [email protected] Coffee is on me.