Amsterdam’s city council has rolled out a digital discouragement campaign that asks rowdy British men aged 18 to 35 to ‘stay away’ from the Dutch capital.
The campaign comes as part of an effort to restore Amsterdam’s reputation that has recently become associated with partying.
Running for 27 seconds, the video depicts a young drunken man being arrested for unruly behaviour. The blunt and uncompromising copy included in the spot reads: “Coming to Amsterdam for a messy night + getting trashed = €140 fine + criminal record = fewer prospects. So coming to Amsterdam for a messy night? Stay away.”
According to the BBC, the online ads will appear when Brits search for pub crawls, cheap hotels or stag parties in Amsterdam.
Subscribe to Marketing Beat for free
Sign up here to get the latest marketing campaigns sent straight to your inbox each morning
Almost 10 years ago, the city’s former mayor invited ex London mayor Boris Johnson to see what British people were doing to the capital’s image. “They don’t wear a coat as they slalom through the red light district… they sing ‘You’ll never walk alone’. They are dressed as rabbits or priests and sometimes they are not dressed at all. I’d love to invite him to witness it,” Eberhard van der Laan said at the time.
The BBC has claimed that critics of Amsterdam’s advertisement have branded it as ‘discriminatory’ and have also claimed that it is ‘based on unfair stereotypes’.
