Co-founder & Creative Director of Built in Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Gen Z swipes left on most brands faster than a disappointing Tinder date. So R.I.P. to channel loyalty. We need to start living in the reality where if your brand isn’t exciting, customers won’t last long (good advice for, um, anything in life). And that’s exactly the playground Daan Klaver operates in. As the Co-founder and Creative Director of Build in Amsterdam, he leads the studio in building some of the sharpest, most self-assured brand identities coming out of Europe right now. Think tech giants, cultural institutions, high-growth fashion and lifestyle labels, and global names like Adidas, Polaroid and Akris.
Daan is known for helping brands meet consumers wherever they are — regardless of platform. For him, your website is your only fully owned territory. Think of it like your bedroom. Everything else is just foreplay in someone else’s space. So we’ll be free to proclaim him the king of omnichannel. He’d probably just call it common sense, but the Dutch do have a reputation for being precise, methodical and very direct, so no surprises there.
And then there’s his philosophy. At one conference talk, he put a single word on a slide: “Steal.” Steal energy. Steal references. Steal from culture. For Klaver, design is seduction — the synthesis of observation, evolution and tension between different voices. The best brands understand rhythm, anticipation and timing: the art of building tension before delivering the moment everyone’s been waiting for (another, um, very useful life skill).
So yes, this methodical Dutch guy will show you the blueprint for truly omnichannel brands. But fair warning: side effects of his session may include increased heart rate, sudden brand clarity and a strong urge to strip down your entire brand experience, slowly, carefully, layer by layer.
Daan Klaver: Commerce, Designed to Connect
Customers treat their ecommerce journey much like a situationship. They scroll, they drift, they abandon their cart like an unanswered text and come back three days later acting like nothing happened. The path to purchase is nonlinear, emotional and honestly, kind of a mess (just like the best kind of chemistry). Most brands respond to this by getting louder, more desperate, more everything, which, as any seasoned flirt will tell you, is never the move. Nothing kills desire faster than showing up differently every time, so Daan Klaver builds brands that behave the way he wants them to. In this session, he will break down what a truly connected commerce actually means, why most brands are still organised around internal structures instead of actual human behaviour and how to build brand experience that has customers keep on coming. Again, and again and again.