JOHAN DE WITTE
Hospitals, medical devices, pharma. I've been in the room.
Through a specialised healthcare and engineering agency, I’ve worked on accounts including Becton Dickinson, Abbott, CSL Behring, AZ Sint-Jan Brugge, Dedalus and Officinall.
Interviewing surgeons and nurses. Scripting and directing best-practice videos.
Writing staff magazines people read to the end. Building client reference cases, the kind with real names in them.
On the industry side: medical devices, vascular access, operating room optimisation, hospital IT, cybersecurity. Scientific articles, press releases, internal campaigns.
Most of it had to be accurate before it was allowed to be good.
::: HEALTHCARE :::
::: FINANCE :::
Banks, insurance, fintech. Complex products, clear copy.
Campaigns, customer communications, proposals and internal content.
From retail banking to investment and professional services.
I know the language. I know when to leave it out.
Proposals, tenders, bids. Different names. Same job: make them say yes.
Six years at PwC. Recent work for RGF Staffing.
National and international proposals across staffing, professional services, logistics, healthcare, finance and government.
I turn requirements into a case the client recognises as their own.
When a proposal needs more than words, I bring in video: team introductions, explainers and case studies. Script and edit by me, filming when the job needs it.
::: BIDS, PROPOSALS, TENDERS :::
Six years inside PwC's proposal team. It taught me how these firms think and how they buy.
I helped shift the proposal tone of voice from inside-out to client-first. Obvious now. Less obvious then.
I know the culture. I know the deadlines. I know some of the reasons proposals fail to land.
::: BIG FOUR & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES :::
Familiar ground. Tenders, and video that makes HR tech look human.
Quickli for RGF Staffing. WorkID for Federgon, the Belgian federation for HR service providers.
Promo films and explainers. Script, edit and delivery by one person, on budgets that leave no room for a crew.
::: STAFFING & RECRUITMENT :::
How do you make people stop scrolling? Some say it's the hardest brief.
I write it. I shoot it when the job needs it. I edit it. One person for video and motion content that gets watched. Often stock footage, always a sharp script. Because motion without message is just noise.
Low budget. No room for a weak script.
::: VIDEO & MOTION :::
.
A lot of my client work never went public. NDAs, internal use, closed platforms.
So most of what you see here started as a self-promotion campaign.
No client. No brief. Just an idea I wanted to try.
Have a look.
::: LONG COPY :::
Anyone can write one good sentence. The trouble starts at sentence forty.
Websites, white papers, annual reports, employee magazines, brochures, proposals, presentations, scripts, speeches.
Nobody reads a white paper for fun. It still has to hold them.
::: TAGLINES :::
My favourite discipline. A tagline gets no second sentence to fix the first one.
A few from over the years.
One of them I wrote at McCann-Erickson in 2001, for a safe-sex campaign aimed at pupils aged 15 to 19 in technical, vocational and part-time secondary education.
Several proposals were tested with them. Ours came out on top, and the minister has said she lost a night's sleep before signing it off.
Flanders kept the short version, then gave it a new job. "Veel blabla, weinig boemboem" now means all talk, no result.
The Dikke Van Dale lists the expression and points back to the campaign.
Wij maken alle oren blij
Lapperre
Bla bla bla en dan pas boem boem boem
Veilig vrijen
Als je kan tellen,
kan je winnen
21 (Nationale Loterij)
't Is schoon wat we samen doen voor onze toekomst
#VANRSL
Klimaatswitch
Doe je mond open
voor je sekst
Veilig vrijen
Positieve energie
Nuon
Licht ze uit het donker
Amnesty International
Wat dichters schrijven willen wij laten lezen
Poëziecentrum
Vind u één ook zo weinig?
Baraka (Nationale Loterij)
Prettig parkeren
Q-Park
Elk karakter vindt er
zich in terug
3 Suisses
Denk ruim
Cera Bank
::: HOW I WORK :::
.
A draft that reads like a committee wrote it? I'll give it one voice.
An AI draft that sounds like nobody wrote it? I'll put a human back in it.
Tenders with a tight deadline, from intake to a submittable document.
Stakeholders who all want a word in it. I've sat through enough of those meetings to know which comments to act on and which ones to wait out.
Video: script, edit, delivery. One person, one invoice.
I deliver on time. I pick up the phone. Simple.
Happy to jump in for a single project.
Even happier to stick around.
Full-time or four days a week, if that's what you need.
::: FAQ :::
Do you need a copywriter?
Not for everything. Your own people can write the internal memo. It gets interesting when a text has to pass four reviewers and still convince someone who doesn't have to care.
Can't AI do this?
Some of it, yes. I am paid to assess what AI tools produce in Dutch, mostly checking and rewriting machine translation for international brands. Send me a draft that feels off and I'll point at the lines.
What makes me different?
Thirty years of copy that had to get past someone. And I make the video too. Rare combo, apparently.
How fast?
Usually faster than the approval process. Tell me your deadline and I'll say straight away whether it works.
What if it's not right?
We talk. I fix it.
Languages?
Dutch, Flemish register included. English. Translation and transcreation from French and English.
How does this work?
You call. We talk. No two-hour intake. Email works too.
::: ADVERTISING :::
Thirty years in advertising. From junior copywriter to creative lead. Coached teams, won pitches, lost pitches, picked up creative awards and Effies along the way.
I missed the Mad Men era. Less whisky, more deadlines. But the work still had to perform.
Here's a selection.
PUBLIC SECTOR
A 2001 awareness campaign that got teenagers talking about contraception before they had sex. Media budget of 148,736 euro. Free coverage worth almost three times that. See the case.
AWARDS & TRADE
How do you celebrate an Effie win? With champagne. And an ad in the trade press.
NON-PROFIT/CULTURAL
Rode Kruis, Amnesty International, Poëziecentrum... When the cause matters more than the budget.
EDUCATION
Campaign to convince students and career switchers to choose HOGENT. Their parents still thank me.
Manifesto for the University Fund of KU Leuven. High stakes, tight lines, zero fluff. Every word under the microscope. And it still had to flow.
REAL ESTATE
Ads and brochures for real estate projects. Also help me pay off my house, so there’s that.
INDUSTRIAL
Corporate, internal and external campaigns for a global building materials group. Helmet required while working.
FASHION AND RETAIL
Campaigns for the once iconic catalogue brand.
Affordable fashion on paper, before online took over.
RELIGION & OPINION
Activation campaign for a Christian opinion magazine. Direct line to Rome, and copy that moves heaven and earth. Blessed be the brief.
MOBILITY & SAFETY
Traffic safety campaign for the greatest city in Belgium. (Yes, that one.)
MEDIA
Relaunch campaign for a bold magazine that wanted to ditch its babe image. More brains, less bikinis.
FOOD & FMCG
Making Craquinettes van Craqoutte crackle. On radio.
Activation campaign built around the iconic sugar man, star of countless sweet TV spots for Sucre Tirlemont. Hard sugar, soft nostalgia.
TECH & DIGITAL
Remember when "googling" still needed explaining? I wrote those ads.
Radio and TV commercials to sell internet. Back when that was still a thing.
CASE VIDEOS
How do you win an Effie Audience Award? Make them laugh. Then make your point.
::: ABOUT YOU & ME :::
You're busy. You need it done. You need it good.
You don't have time to explain everything twice.
You don't want to chase freelancers for deadlines.
You want someone who picks up the phone.
I'm Johan. Senior copywriter, based near Antwerp.
I started in advertising. Eurocom, TBWA, McCann, DDB, Saatchi & Saatchi…
A few creative awards, a few Effies, and one line that made it into the Van Dale. Then six years inside PwC, writing proposals that went past more reviewers than I could count.
That is the whole story, and it explains the one thing I care about.
I write copy that reads, not just complies.
Since then: banks, insurers, hospitals, medtech, engineering. Tenders too, national and international. And when a project needs video, I write it and edit it myself.
Along the way, I've worked in just about every sector. From healthcare to automotive, from staffing to pet care. Nothing surprises me anymore.
I write in Dutch and English. I translate from English and French.
Some clients call me for one project. Others bring me in as part of the team, four days a week or full-time.
I deliver on time. No blah blah.
I drink my coffee black. No sugar, no milk, no nonsense.
Got a deadline? johan.dewitte@telenet.be
::: INDUSTRIES :::
I never picked one lane. Thirty years in, that turns out to be the useful part.
A hospital and a bank are the same work in different clothes. Once you've seen it in one, you recognise it in the next. You are useful in the first meeting instead of the fourth.
Here's where I've been so far.
Automotive
Beauty & Cosmetics
Electronics
Energy
Engineering
Entertainment
Fashion
Finance & Insurance
FMCG
Food & Drink
Government
Healthcare
Home & Garden
Industrial
IT & Telecom
Leisure
Media
Non-profit & Education
Real Estate
Recruitment & Staffing
Retail
Services
Transport
Every sector has its own way of saying things without quite saying them.
Same job, different code. I've learned to read most of them.
The rest I pick up on the job.
No forms. No chatbots. Just me.
::: CONTACT :::
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Johan De Witte | Copy. Video. Bids. | johan.dewitte@telenet.be | +32 475 95 59 36 | LinkedIn | Privacy ©
DE WITTE COMMV | ANTWERPEN | BTW BE0448 766 639
