Erik van Bruggen

Erik devises ambitious campaign strategies and knows like no other how to make these work in practice. The fact that ‘in practice’ often means resistance to change and new élan, only makes it more of a challenge for Erik. BKB strategies are precisely intended to create new insights. For example, the multi-year campaign Faster, Better around reforms in healthcare, or the National Innovation Week, an extensive public campaign around innovation in the public sector.

Photo: Manon van der Zwaal

But there’s no party without music. Erik was the man behind the memorable John Lennon homage (2005) and the guerrilla performance by Junkie XL from a window on the Noordermarkt.

Erik looks far beyond the Dutch borders, particularly to the other side of the Atlantic, where he foresees new BKB offices in New York and Los Angeles. A BKB Academy in Surinam, or South Africa?

Erik gives campaign trainings in Central and South America where he is known as Enrique de los Puentes.

‘Uncertainty is a guiding light,’ is Erik’s motto. The credo of a reformer for whom only honest doubt results in new insights.

Born
1968, Texel
Education
1997, History at the University of Amsterdam
Curriculum vitae
Assistant to the then Labour Party chairman Felix Rottenberg as well as a member of Wim Kok’s campaign team.
Co-founder of the modernisation movement “Not Nothing” (1996).
Candidate for dual leadership of the Labour Party together with Lennart Booij (1999).
Co-founder of Booij, Klusman and Van Bruggen (1999).
At BKB
Since 1999

Favourite quote
‘Dream out loud!’