They have known each other longer than Herman Rutgers has existed. Maybe that’s why Anoeska van Leeuwen (BPD Europe) keeps calling the agency “Herman and Rutgers. Petra and Francine were always there at key moments in her career. She worked with them as a candidate and as a client. “The simple question everyone should regularly ask themselves is: what does and does not make me happy?
‘No, not BDP,’ corrects Anoeska van Leeuwen (48), laughing, for the third time in ten minutes. “The name is BPD, from Bouwfonds Property Development – just say Bouwfonds, it’s easier. She finds it amusing, or perhaps “typical” is a better description. Back then, when she started working at Booking.com, TomTom and Heineken, people often responded admiringly, “How cool! Eight months ago, when she became Head of Marketing & Communications at BPD, the reaction was, “Euh … what?!
She does not care that she works at a lesser-known brand: it was a conscious “unusual choice. When choosing her jobs, Anoeska was never guided by whether it was “a nice brand,” but wanted to know: what job is there, what needs to be done here, with whom should and can I do it? And she looked: who is going to inspire me?
She herself has enjoyed working at Heineken twice on an interim basis, once at headquarters and once at Heineken Netherlands. ‘In some areas it really is ‘world class,’ but really, at a big corporate like this, you have to be in the highest position or maybe one level below, if you want to have any say. I couldn’t care less if people say: working at Heineken or Unilever, that’s great! It depends entirely on where you sit and what you can accomplish.
Herman Rutgers came up with the position at BPD after Anoeska contacted him herself. That was nine months after she had given herself a one-year sabbatical. Before that, she had traveled the world continuously for two years as Global Director of Media Planning for Booking.com. ‘Very glamorous when you’re 30, but it’s different when you’re 45,’ she says honestly: she found it very enjoyable but the frequent travel also tough and inefficient.
Anoeska had thought: I’m going to work another 20 years now and would love to really go in depth for once, in a smaller organization, with fewer countries. So that she could take a little more ownership of her own agenda. BDP does not seem to fit Anoeska’s profile and her resume of only large, most publicly traded companies. But the “figurative construction job with a very nice ceo,” as Herman Rutgers described it, is right up her alley. Anoeska immediately had a good click with the ceo, and BPD’s mission, “Affordable housing for everyone,” appealed to her.
Like eight months ago in 2006, Anoeska also contacted Francine and Petra herself. They still worked at Mastwijk and did a search for a company Anoeska was interested in: TomTom. She was working at TNT as Group Director of External Communications and had found that she was happiest when she went on rounds with a mailman, learned to understand how the parcel service worked or how things worked with the incoming and outgoing planes at the air hub in Liege. ‘I was at the headquarters in Hoofddorp, far away from the business and had to have a lot of meetings. Operations, that’s where I wanted to be, I discovered. That insight got me thinking.’
Anoeska literally ran her finger down a list of AEX funds, looking for her next challenge. She still liked the dynamics of listed companies – “especially the PR side of it” – and ended up at TomTom.
Through-via she heard that Francine and Petra were looking for a Director of Communications for the navigation system manufacturer. They were already well into the process but still started talking to Anoeska and introduced her to TomTom. ‘They could also have thought: we’re actually already out, the customer is satisfied, that joker coming in now on the right, we don’t need him. But they’re not like that. We didn’t know each other but the conversations were immediately very good. They listen well, want to know: who are you, what do you think is important, what gets you excited and what doesn’t. They ask the right questions and they ask exactly what your role or contribution has been. They have placed me several times now and so far we have a 100 percent success rate. That is not because I am so good, but because they are so good at listening to who I am and what the client is looking for.
Herman Rutgers may be a good listener and ask the right questions, Anoeska has also listened carefully to herself from the beginning of her career and continuously asked herself questions. ‘Maybe I learned that in my first job, when I worked as a jack-of-all-trades at a small post-production company of TV programs and corporate films. There I learned to account for every stamp and that it is not a matter of course that your salary is credited every month, but that it just has to be earned. As a result, I regularly think: Do I think I have earned my salary this month? Did I really contribute something today, this week, this month; did it matter that I was there?’
Perhaps that is also why you will find few interviews with Anoeska if you google her name. ‘I’m bad at my own PR because I don’t think it’s relevant. For me, it’s really about the role I can play in a company. What does the company gain from me being interviewed or working on my PR? It was never about me, it was about the content: what are we trying to do here? How do we become more successful as a company?’
And because she thinks that content is so important and it should matter what she is doing, she also thinks it is time to go the moment she has nothing more to add. I get happy when I can build something, put something down, take it to the next level. I am not energized by very large corporates where everything has already been thought out 88 times and where you have to go from an 8 or a 9 to a rating of 10. I’d rather go from a 2 to an 8.
There is much that Anoeska could give people who are at the beginning of their careers. Perhaps her most important advice is that you should regularly ask yourself this simple question: what does and does not make me happy? Also, the choices you make in the beginning are important. Anoeska herself is glad that early in her career she worked for three years at a marketing and public relations consultancy – Winkelman and Van Hessen. There she got to look inside many different clients and quickly learned which types of companies interested her and suited her.
She loved technology and making complex things understandable. That’s how she ended up at Versatel, where she mastered the communications profession. As a relatively young Director of Corporate Marketing & Communications and the only woman in an international environment, she carried a great deal of responsibility. The company was run by an Englishman and an American, and Anoeska thought: you’re not going to care about how I’m doing; that’s why I want a coach. Through her network, she found a coach who guided her intensively for ten years.
Her advice: get a coach if you think it will help you. ‘It helped me a lot. I was not used to talking much about myself to begin with, I prefer to talk about something or someone else, but she taught me to look at myself critically. When you are young, you tend to appoint all people like yourself when you get to build a team. Because, you think: then it will be all right, I’m in this place for a reason, it can’t just be a coincidence. A coach can be very helpful in getting you to realize that you need to let go of the idea of thinking that someone else thinks the same as you. You have to put yourself in the other person’s norms and values, speak the other person’s language and use his or her arguments. By listening carefully and considering what the other person thinks and how he or she operates, cooperation suddenly becomes easier.
‘Many people say they don’t like politics. I don’t like it either, but it helps when you see the game behind it. You don’t have to play the game, but if you see how it works, you can get ahead of it. The best part is when you hear the other person tell you things as if they came up with them themselves, while you have it all pre-cooked. If the other person says what you very much wanted him to say, then you’re really having a very good day.
What’s most important? ‘Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Roll up your sleeves and get going. I also still feel insecure on a regular basis. Fortunately, I would almost say. The other day I had to present something to the managing board. It is much smaller in scale than I am used to, but I still think the night before: I have to go to bed on time, what am I going to wear, do I have my story right in my head? The times when a presentation does not go well are still the times when you did not prepare well, because perhaps you were too sure of your case and did not move well enough with your audience.’
Last but not least, Anoeska believes you should stay somewhere for at least three years. ‘The first year is intensive, then you give a lot and try to deliver the first successes. The second year you start to deepen and improve and the third year you start to really do it and innovate. The communications profession is so beautiful. And so different from when I started. More digital, faster. It is less easy to impose your will from a dominant position. People feel something, say it and often do so in a not very nuanced way. There is little room anymore for old-school marketing stories. Our business is about authenticity and relevance. About sharing real stories that matter. There’s nothing better than that.’
