Even Apeldoorn bellen

Why it works

Something goes absurdly wrong, and the fix arrives in three words: "Even Apeldoorn bellen," just call Apeldoorn, the town where insurer Centraal Beheer has its head office. Created by the agency Geudeker/Oerlemans and run for some 35 years by DDB Amsterdam, the format has produced more than 60 commercials since the first reached Dutch screens in 1985, becoming the longest-running campaign on Dutch television. It is studied as proof that one elastic line can carry a brand for four decades: within two years Centraal Beheer ranked among the country's three best-known insurers, and the company now counts the phrase as part of Dutch culture. Spots such as "Rio," "Leeuw" and "Acupunctuur" won Gouden Loekies, the campaign has collected prizes from Effies to Cannes Lions, and in 2011 visitors to the ReclameKlassiekers exhibition in Amsterdam voted it the Netherlands' advertising classic of all time. It is also a cautionary case: in the 1990s the late advertising professor Giep Franzen complained that hardly anyone knew which brand was behind the famous line.