For 15 years, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam has gained worldwide recognition for its daring, confrontational, and occasionally just plain offensive advertising. Through press, posters, TV, and even flags stuck in dog poop, the hotel's advertising has been picked up on CNN, MTV, and other global stations, garnering awards and press on the most miniscule of budgets.
The reason for all the fuss? Honesty. By daring to tell the truth and describe the hotel as the rat-infested dive it is, the campaign connected with its target market: young, cynical, media-savvy backpackers. Since launching the campaign, the hotel's dormitories are rarely empty, not bad for a place that doesn't even guarantee toilet paper. This frank and often humorous collection of the hotel's advertising celebrates everything that's good about a very bad hotel and proves that innovative, successful marketing requires neither a jaw-dropping budget nor a sugarcoated version of the truth
