Our Pioneer in San Diego, USA: Rob Zuurbier

Meet Rob Zuurbier, Managing Director, North America at PACIFIC in San Diego and our Pioneer of the week. Having started his career in the ad world at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, for the last 13 years Rob has been working at international shops across the globe including in London and New York. We chat with Rob to find out more about his life in San Diego and what it is about living abroad that makes it creatively inspirational and different.

Through our Pioneers series, in collaboration with Nils Adriaans, we catch up with members of the Dutch Creative Community living abroad and ask them to send back personal ‘messages in a bottle’.

How did you end up in the US? What drove you?

In April 2020 I moved from New York to San Diego with my American girlfriend and 4-year-old son. I’ve always worked at creative agencies until now – at PACIFIC, we blend creative with performance in a way that I was never previously aware of. I’m realising there is still such a huge gap between performance and creative shops – it just doesn’t make sense. I made this move because I felt it would make me a more complete marketeer and creative. Always keep learning!

Also, the year-round great SoCal weather, palm trees and Pacific Ocean on our doorstep might have helped a bit in the decision-making process. ☺

What makes you feel at home?

London was already quite different from Amsterdam, then nine years in New York – but being in Southern California feels like a whole different country on its own. It’s almost like living in the movies. We live near the beach and it has this real SoCal Surf Vibe. Everyone calls you ‘bro’ or ‘dude’. On top of that, other than a great life with the family here in San Diego, I am a bit of a petrol head. In NYC it’s tricky to have a car or a motorcycle – here it’s very doable, affordable and we have riding weather all year round (+ the nature is mind-blowing).

What stands out the most there (professionally)?

It’s definitely a different environment being at an agency that has SEO and PPC at its core. A lot of my colleagues have an analytical mindset and are scary smart. It’s a far cry from the much more extraverted agency scenes I was used to just about everywhere else. This has taught me a lot over the last eight months and made me more aware. Between wrapping my head around the intricate details of performance marketing and managing this group of amazing talent, I feel like I have learned more in 2020 than I have in the combined five years prior.

What is your Random Pic(k) Of The Week?

I always look out for Google’s year in search when December comes around, and once again in 2020 it was great.

What’s the best/most radical piece of work over there?

This year we did a bit of campaigning ourselves around search based on data that we pulled. We did a wild posting campaign and some night projections both here in San Diego as well as in NYC (we wanted to do more cities but it was just too expensive).

What ‘souvenir’ would you bring home?

In all honesty, I don’t think I’ll end up back in the Netherlands. I would like my son to eventually learn more about his Dutch heritage however. I think that if you boil it down as to why I like it here so much - it’s this stereotype but true notion that anything is possible. Here it never feels unrealistic or crazy to think extremely big. I feel like that mindset might be something to bring back. Dutchies always like to play ‘the devil’s advocate’ but here we’re always seeing limitless opportunities.