A few words about me.
Hi, my name is Polle de Maagt.
Pleased to meet you.
In November 2015, I almost died of a kidney rupture and a lung infection. It was an experience that changed my outlook on life profoundly.
First of all, I decided to make as many beautiful memories as possible. By spending more quality time with my family, by exploring the world and by trying to craft wow-experiences for my clients – to have consumers and brands create beautiful memories together.
Secondly, I decided to not accept the horrible status quo of suboptimal relationships between companies and consumers anymore. Not as a consumer myself and certainly not as a professional. I started doing less meetings and more doings. Less powerpoints, more doing stuff. And even more than before, I obsessed about changing companies to be less about ads and more about acts.
I made a career out of it in which I try to learn about companies and their customers. And try to bridge the gaps between them. By inspiring the companies to change. By creating plans and strategies to bring this change into practice. By engaging and communicating this within these organisations. Because I think we can and have to to better. We need to change to be less about ads and more about acts.
My background – Polle de Maagt
I grew up in Tilburg (The Netherlands) where I used my curiosity mainly drawing and crafting with my mom and by building the most elaborate LEGO castles.
I started working for Belgian trendwatching agency Trendwolves in 2008, where I worked with Maarten Leyts and Tom Palmaerts, two remarkable trendwatchers, to uncover youth trends and youth/consumer insights.
I could not resist the temptation of joining Dutch/Belgian advertising agency Boondoggle in Amsterdam (and Leuven) early 2009. Tom de Bruyne, Gaston Serpenti and Astrid Groenewegen taught me everything there was to know about advertising. They let me work on clients like Rabobank, Nike and KLM.
After moving to Gent, late 2010, I joined InSites Consulting, a pretty remarkable marketing research agency. Not to do research, but to change companies to be more consumer connected, based on extensive research and tested models and frameworks.
And now, for the last 10 years, the Ministry of World Domination, where I change companies to be less about ads and more about acts. We do inspiration, coaching and strategy for a range of agencies and clients.
Traveling with an open mind – on omakase.
The Japanese habit of omakase (お任せ) when you’re ordering at a restaurant pretty much means, “I’ll leave it up to you”, inviting the chef to be surprising and innovative in the selection of dishes. I try to apply the idea behind to everything between how I plan my holidays, how I pick my runs, how I pick my food, how I explore cities and how I travel in general.
And as I travel 200+ nights per year for both business and leisure (mostly hiking), that’s a lot. So I keep an online notebook with plans, thoughts, ideas, routines, hikes, hacks, destinations, reviews and stories which I have aptly called ‘omakase’.