Pat Murphy:

Hi, and welcome to The MCA Prodcast, your fix for everything innovative in advertising production. I’m Pat Murphy, and I’ve been working in this industry for more than 35 years. I’ve seen a lot of changes, but know there’s plenty more around the corner. Each week on The Prodcast, you’ll get to hear from one of the movers and shakers who are shaping our world for the future. And we’ll dive into some of the key challenges facing our sector today and how we’re best placed to overcome them.

And diving is the operative word for this particular conversation as we say hello to Jeroen Van de Waal from the Reef Company. Jeroen is an entrepreneur, investor, conservationist, and passionate about the oceans. A longtime certified SCUBA instructor having lived all over the world and has a unique perspective and aims to improve ocean literacy globally. Jeroen’s latest venture is the Reef Company. I’m not gonna go into any detail about that cause I’d like to ask him all the questions. At MCA we’ve partnered with Jeroen, his amazing Reef Company to support him and his team in their communications and increasing the profile of this amazing initiative.

Jeroen, welcome to our humble podcast.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Thank you Pat. It’s an honour to be here today.

Pat Murphy:

Now, thanks for joining us today, and I’m so excited that both of our companies have joined forces to connect with the world’s greatest storytellers to help bring to life this amazing story of yours and support the cause. Indeed, there are a number of things that we share, a desire to do something positive something real. We both are talking to larger global brands about purpose, about advertising, about doing the right thing. It would be great to know a little bit more about your passion for the oceans. Where did all that come from?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

I grew up in in Robin Hood Country in the east of Holland, close to the German border far away from the sea and the oceans. But my mother instilled a great passion in me to read many books. And so, ever since I remember, I’ve been reading adventure books about the golden ages, where England and Holland were dominating the global oceans and where sailors were roaming around for sometimes four or five years without seeing their family. And so I learned a lot about the oceans, the size of the planet, and all the beautiful spots that I I want to wanted to see myself.

On top of that, in the mid seventies, my parents bought our first little Phillips black and white television. It was super small and every Wednesday afternoon there were television programmes on TV for children. And I watched all the episodes of Jacques Cousteau and this Adventures on the Calypso expedition ship at least 20 times.

Pat Murphy:

I remember them well. Yeah, that was great actually!

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Yeah. So I started to dream about becoming the next Jacques Cousteau when I was about six. And nothing changed.

Pat Murphy:

Fantastic. And why coral reefs? Because obviously you’ve got the whole ocean and you’ve been a SCUBA diver. What has drawn you to the attention of coral reefs, particularly?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

I always try to use the KISS principle and explain to people what is driving me or what my purpose is about and how things work in my simple mind. Everybody might know the African elephant. The bull – mature bull – weighs up to 12,000 kilogrammes. That elephant is born out of a very little sperm and a very little egg that we can’t see with our bare eyes. And that’s what I love about nature. Once you fertilise the project and the mama elephant starts with her gestation period of about 25 to 27 months, this magnificent animals being born. Now, many people are these days focused on elephants, on tigers, on panda bears, etc etc – things that we can see on land. Very few people, you know, only less than 100 million people for sure on the planet are actually SCUBA divers or people that have seen how beautiful life can be under the water.

Now, why did I talk about the elephant and the birth of a baby elephant and the size that they can grow into? If you look at a blue whale, the biggest mammal on the planet it weighs at least five times more than an African elephant, right? 60,000 kilos. It’s the biggest mammal on the planet. Coral reefs are animals. Many people think that coral reefs are plants, but they are not. They are animals. They inhale oxygen and they excrete co2. Now these animals, they can be thousands of kilometres long. And in the Great Barrier Reef for example, and all healthy coral reefs on the planet cover less than 0.03% of the ocean floor. It looks like nothing! So from outer space, let’s say there’s only a few reefs that we can see, but these reefs on the planet representing this utterly small percentage are responsible for more than 25% of all life and biomass in the global oceans. So we need to protect these reefs. When we pull the plug or natural coral reefs, we get a irreversible chain reaction of, of, of, of misery and death in the oceans. The oceans as a single entity are responsible for more than 70% of everything, and anything that we need on this planet like protein, oxygen, carbon sequestration, climate control, etc etc. So for me, it is pure, simple. If we don’t protect coral reefs, we are not protecting the oceans or we are not protecting the planets.

Pat Murphy:

So how many of the coral reefs that are out there, how many of them have been affected to date and, and, and by how much?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

The sad thing is that over the past 150 years, we already have succeeded in destroying more than 50% of all natural coral reefs on the planet. So more than half of them have already been destroyed. Scientists are predicting that if we don’t do anything immediately regarding climate change, which is one of the core source factors behind diminishing the corals reefs, 90% of coral reefs will be gone by 2050. Now, that sounds far away but it’s around the corner, right? Yeah. it is within my lifetime. Your lifetime, and definitely within the lifetime of our children. So that’s the state of affairs today.

Pat Murphy:

So we’re actually in a race now. This is not a jog, this is a race to make big change very quickly.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Yeah. It’s cliffhanger. We keep talking about it. I think you and I have a similar age, and when I was growing up in the seventies we started to talk about a hole in the ozone layer, etc etc, right? And what happens with human beings is that we keep talking and talking and talking about it as if we are watching a movie. And what I normally say to children and adults is that when we are at home and we are watching television, we have the luxury of 7, 8, 900 channels on our TV. And if we are watching History Channel and we don’t like it, we flick our remote control to Animal Planets or to Discovery Channel until we find something that we like to see. What’s happening in real life is that Animal Planets is turning into history channel, and we don’t have a remote control for real life on this planet, right? So we can’t flick channels, we have to protect Animal Planet, you know with all the force and power and imagination that we have,

Pat Murphy:

And a lot of the stats that you’ve provided in, in the last few minutes, a lot of this is just still not known right now. I mean how do we get this message out there, do you think?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

I’m building a, an Ocean Consortium. My mother company is called The Blue Beat Group. Blue Beat is the blue heartbeat of the Green Planet. And under the Blue Beat Group, I have four verticals. The first verticals a group of companies called Orca Nation. It is a fusion of orcas, my favourite mammals with inspiration, motivation, vacation, etc etc etc. Orca Nation is an ocean literacy company that organises school camps for young and old, in the jungle on the ocean, around scuba diving, around classroom education, digital education, etc etc. I call it ocean literacy. So I think education is the first and foremost pillar for the United Nations in the sustainable development goals of which we have 17. Everybody and anybody needs to have free access to education when, when we can educate people, all these statistics on the being of the oceans and the planet and life on earth. That is, I think, where we have to start. And that is one of the things that my group of companies is trying to do, right?

Pat Murphy:

And we all individually have a responsibility and business as well. I think we all have a responsibility to help drive this, because as you were just saying, you know everyone is talking about it, but not really doing a lot. So I think there is an opportunity for people like yourself, people like ourselves at MCA to actually take some real action,

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Pat. I totally agree. That is why I’m so extremely inspired by our friendship and us looking at engineering an architecture around partnerships where we can make our businesses thrive. Because I believe that sustainability has to be profitable. Once the sustainability efforts are profitable, we have an unlimited source of funding and energy that we can use to save the ocean’s, planet and ourselves, and which is one of our tag lines. It is good for your business because it’ll give you a very positive view in society and in the business world. And it inspires other organisations as well to join our partnership movement. So we get limitless access to funding to build reefs and to do what we need to do. So, I agree.

Pat Murphy:

So the building of reefs, tell us about the plan and the action you’re taking right now.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

We have been working on our project for more than five years. And what we have concluded and calculated is that point number one – we need to build about 2,500 to 7,500 reefs with an average concession size of about 50 square kilometres. So five zero square kilometres. When you do the multiplications, the minimum size that we need to cover to absorb all the excess carbon that is being produced for the planet today on an annual basis, is roughly the size of New Zealand. If we go to seven and a half thousand reefs, it’ll be bigger than the entire United Kingdom. So this is the space of ocean floor that we need to cover it. Reef concession areas in which we will build our reefs.

Pat Murphy:

How are you gonna make all of that happen? Because that sounds like a, an enormous undertaking.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Yeah, it is. We need at least 500 billion US dollars to build this number of reefs as per our estimates. But what I like, Pat, is we will make it a team effort. So when I spoke to some of the big Fortune 500 companies, without mentioning names, one of the chief executives said to me, ‘okay, Jeroen, you only need 500 billion dollars. That’s nothing. The global ocean economy as one entity today is 31 trillion dollars a year’. When you look at the oceans as an economical unit, as a country. You only need half a trillion. So that’s a fraction, one 64th, right, of the annual equity!

Secondly, if you make partnerships with the FTSE 500 companies, you only need 500 FTSE 500 companies that each invest 100 million a year over 10 years to get your 500 billion! So to him, it sounded totally feasible. Why is this? Because if we don’t do anything about climate change and protecting the oceans and everything that the oceans are giving back to us, we basically are on a dead end road, right? So whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or whatever you believe in… it doesn’t matter. All human beings on this planet need the oceans to be healthy. So it is in the greater interest of the global society, 8 billion people to do this.

Pat Murphy:

And you think big business is the route to success? And what, what would you expect from governments?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

I obviously the stance that we need governments and governance and policies and policy making, etc etc. So I just want to make that statement because I typically use black and white language when I speak. I’m not anti-government, but I think many adults are making a massive mistake. I I’m a father of two children, and I have a lifelong responsibility to do whatever I can to give my children a beautiful outlook on the future. And that is my personal responsibility. And I think any parents on this planet has that responsibility. Otherwise, you are not a good parent. So I can’t be lazy and sit back on my sofa bit my remote control and glass of wine and watch television and complain about my government, right? The government is only there for guidance. We, as human beings, individually, have an endless responsibility to do whatever we can to be good citizens of this planet. And that is why I believe that everybody and anybody that walks around on this planet has a singular individual responsibility to do something about it. And I believe in the force of the greater good. I love ants – the little insects many people think they are stupid, but there are beautiful books written about ants and how smart and creative they are. They build massive cities underground with air conditioning, food distribution, etc etc. Now if we look at us, 8 billion people on this planet, we could say, ‘okay, maybe if you look at an ant mound and you look at the entire planet, and you can draw a parallel between humans and ants, we have the same opportunity to turn our ant mound planet earth into something beautiful, clean that works’. If 8 billion people, you know follow their north star on the betterment of the ocean’s, planet and ourselves, we can move mountains. That’s what I believe.

Pat Murphy:

Now, one of the challenges we often hear about sustainability initiatives is that it actually costs more. This at a time of commercial pressure for both businesses and individuals. But I remember you telling me a story a few weeks ago about a certain ice cream brand. Can you just remind us of that one?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Yeah. Firstly I think both of us have been around for a very long time. Whenever I was running a business as a leader, as a general manager, or CEO I always tried to design irresistible propositions for my customers. I never looked at the price. Price is just one of the instruments, one of the components that, of course, has a certain benefit in your proposition.  But typically price is maybe position number four, definitely not on position one or two or three. You have to be unique in what you do. You have to be creative, you have to innovate, and you always have to be like, you know, at the forefront of moving right, to displace your competitors. And that is what I always try to do.  Also in my projects today.

So what we are doing at the moment, just to give you an example – there’s a famous ice cream brand that prides themselves in being super sustainable and the greenest brand on the planet. But even they shyly admitted that for every tub of ice cream they produce, they produce three kilogrammes of carbon. Now, ice cream is a luxury product different than water, milk, bread, butter, eggs, whatever. And technically we don’t need ice cream! So the easiest solution would be to stop consuming ice cream, right?

Well, human beings like luxury they like desserts and ice cream and what have you. So let’s imagine that we continue manufacturing ice cream. What we jointly calculated is that if they increase the price to consumers of every top by only about 15 cents, they can help us to build reefs in the water that absorb the carbon that those ice cream tubs are putting into the atmosphere. And we will be able to offset it entirely underwater.

The added benefit for the ice cream manufacturer would be that they will be one of the first movers in the fast moving consumer good market, sponsoring a reef company and putting attention, advertising time, etc etc, on the oceans, which helps me with my ocean literacy project, because you can imagine that we built a beautiful campaign around this together, for example, with MCA and show consumers how important the oceans are, even when you eat ice cream.

Secondly, it would give this ice cream brand a USP over their competitors who are not recognising that they also put carbon in the atmosphere. So it gives them an added benefit. So we, we create a win-win win situation, right? Where we put people planet and purpose plus profit, you know, first. So it’s just example. We have many of these!

Pat Murphy:

Amazing and I’m looking forward to introducing you to all of my brands that we are working with as well, because I think there’s a huge opportunity there to make those connections.

We were talking to the team – Sophie at AdGreen the other day on our webinar. She said the biggest contributor to carbon emissions when producing content in advertising is the travel. And in many instances, over two thirds of that carbon footprint. You know, in a world you can do remote shooting now with all of the technology that’s available, which worked so well during that lockdown, maybe it’s as simple as just not travelling or travelling less – saving both the impact on the environment and costs.

What simple things do you think businesses and individuals can do to make a difference?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

I think the essence of us having a better life in the future is in the simple things. Everything that we do can be multiplied by 8 billion people living on this planet. And if we are oblivious and we think that we can’t make an impact individually, then we are doomed. I want to give you some examples to make it brutally clear. I lived in a country, and I don’t want to name it because I love the country, and I’m not go to single out one single country but I lived in a country for 10 years where almost all fruit is imported, and 60% of all foods that they import is being thrown away every day because they purchased and imported too much. The country is hot and warm, it’s hard to keep goods good because they perish.

So, 60% of all food there is being turned into waste.

This is just horrendous. Now we can blame the country or the supermarkets in the country, or the restaurants in the country, but ultimately it’s a consumer issue, right? Because when I grew up, for example, in Holland, I ate typical Dutch food, which is very bland and boring – potatoes, some meat, some veggies, not a lot of creativity! When I go to Holland now, I can eat tacos, I can eat sushi sushimi, I can eat Greek food, Chinese food, Indonesian food, whatever kind of food. And a lot of this food today is being transported by aeroplanes . You know, salmon is not a typical fruit that we could get in Holland, right? 30, 40 years ago. And now you find it everywhere. And these are just basic, simple examples. This is how it is!

Pat Murphy:

No, I agree with you. And as I was growing up, I remember the very first banana I ever saw, the very first avocado. You know, these things were almost luxury items when I was growing up, right?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

You are right! It’s nice, right? But how do I address it in my private life? Six years ago, my wife and I sold our cars. We both had a car and we lived for six years without cars. Of course there are some setbacks when you don’t have a car. But I’m still alive. I’m still happy. What many people don’t realise is if I ask people, what is the percentage of use of the car that you own on a 24 hour basis, do you have any idea? Pat?

Pat Murphy:

I have no idea. Tell me.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

It’s less than 4%.

Pat Murphy:

I can believe that!

Jeroen Van de Waal:

So you could simplistically say that for every car on the planet, we could make 20 people happy if it was occupied 100%, right? So 4% times 25 is 100. So let’s say 20 people could use one car! That’s why you have Uber and all those other platforms.

Now in my society, in Holland, in Portugal, etc etc, most households are not proud enough if at least every adult doesn’t own a car. I know many families where Mama, Papa and the adult children have a car all living in the same household. It’s insane. Think about the resources that we put in all these cars that are only used 4% of the time. So these are things that drive me when I look at solutions, right? In Holland, we say we can’t wipe the floor and clean it when the faucet is still open and the water’s running, right? So we have to close the tap on excessive consumption and consume in a much smarter way.

Pat Murphy:

I totally agree with you. And I took a decision – us as a family, three years ago actually, when we were in London to get rid of our car, we didn’t need a car because it was hardly ever being used. So you know, we get about on, on amazing public transport. If you’re living in a big urban area in a big city, and they have great public transport, why do you need a vehicle? It’s a big question mark for me.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Me. And you not owning a car base for all your vacations. Just to give you an idea. You can repurpose that money.

Pat Murphy:

I can jump on an aeroplane, eh Jeroen?!

Jeroen Van de Waal:

<Laugh>. Exactly. Yeah.

Pat Murphy:

No, actually we don’t need to living here in Lisbon, as you know.

Now grabbing people’s attention and creating a rally cry for the cause is going to be absolutely critical not just now, but ongoing into the future. It’s what got us talking originally. And the conversation ramped up when we met at the Ocean’s Conference recently. What are you looking for from our team, do you think, and, and the industry as a whole to be able to help you?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

My philosophy in life is that I’m a, a generalist and a futurist. When it comes to the strategic execution of the verticals that I need to pull together to be super successful in delivering on our vision and mission, I need to work with the best possible strategic partners on the planet. We are signing partnerships with companies that are specialised in installing subsea assets on the ocean floor. They will install my reefs. We are working with technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, etc etc, who will help us with the entire cloud architecture that we need to measure our performance to store ocean data, etc etc. I’m just giving examples here, right? We will be working with the leading FMCG companies on campaigns to propagate ocean literacy and to get funding streams up and running.

The way I look at MCA is as a strategic spider in the web. You guys, in my mind, are going to be our strongest communication channel. So when you build advertising campaigns for your top customers I hope that we can build in triangular win-win-win cornerstones that will drive MCA’s business, that will the business of your FMCG customers, for example, and that will drive funding streams that will enable me to build more reefs, right? And that is how I look at it.

One of the core projects that you and I discussed, which makes me super enthusiastic, is that I want to use your augmented reality production techniques. I seem to believe that you have a partnership or studio in Poland where I want to produce a super duper movie of about 12 to 15 minutes that outlines our entire vision and mission and the purpose behind the Blue Beat Group and The Reef Company together with MCA. And that shows everybody and anybody in the street in a very short period of time how important the oceans are, how big the challenge is, and how we are going to address it and put climate change under control. So those are just a few examples of how I think we can work together with MCA.

Pat Murphy:

Fantastic. And look, you know, we are excited about making that happen for you as well. And the whole team when you came onto our webinar only a week or so back they were so excited, enthusiastic to all muck in and help. So we are looking forward to helping you on that. Good.

Jeroen, this is such an important initiative and something that could genuinely have a huge impact on the world and the future for our kids. As you mentioned, you know, my kids as well I want leave a a great future for those guys as well. It’d be great to get you back in a few months to check in on the progress that you’ve made. And I could carry on chatting for ages, for today, thanks very much for joining us on the Prodcast at MCA.

Jeroen Van de Waal:

You’re welcome Pat. Thank you very much for having me and looking forward to show you more down the road.

Pat Murphy:

Fantastic. And I haven’t asked you actually, Jeroen – what’s your favourite ad of all time? Do you have one?

Jeroen Van de Waal:

Yes. There are two or three ads that they made that make me smile every day. One of them is of a lovely guy, cleaning the floor in an aquarium. He’s listening to music on his Walkman and singing and dancing as he mops the floor and he makes a twist and spins around and with the broomstick, he hits the glass of a massive shark tank <laugh>, and it starts cracking. And the rest you can imagine. It’s very funny.

Pat Murphy:

Looking forward to seeing that, and I’ll be posting that up as well.

Jeroen thanks so much for taking time to talk to me today. To find out more about the MCA podcast, please head to theprodcast.com where you’ll find details on all my guests, links to their favourite ads and full transcriptions of the episodes as well.

If you’d like to feature on The Prodcast or have any comments, questions, or feedback, please email us at podcast@murphycobb.com.

I’m Pat Murphy, CEO of MCA. Do come and connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram, all of which the links are in the notes for this episode. We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks again to my guest Jeroen, my team at MCA and my production team at What Goes On Media as well.

Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.