This BMW ad adverises the new 8-Speed automatic transmission – “comes standard with the 1, 3, and 5 series”. It looks amazingly sexy and feels instantly right. What a great insight; BMW brings out the little boy in us. No further explanation required. And that makes it easily Cannes material. By the way, in this ad you see its full size; the Matchbox version times 43! Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.

This film reminded us of the animation quite recently created by CCCP for the Scheepvaart museum. Both are similar styled, both promote a museum, and both use the same voice-over. Apart from that the film is of course making the museum look quite attractive. And we didn’t know that Naturalis owns one of the world largest collections of organisms; 37 million items! The animation also gives us a peak in the future; who needs to visit a physical museum, when you can make edcuational films like this – which is kind of ironic. Created by Plus One Amsterdam.

I have to admit. Lately I have an obsession. It’s a bit of a nerdy obsession. It’s about defining the agency of the future. Maybe this doesn’t sound dead sexy at first glance, but bear with me for a moment. In return I’ll promise you this will lead to excitement and I’ll throw in some relationship advice in as a bonus. But let’s first get back to the nerdy part. The part I’m diving into is defining the agency of the future. The more I am getting into that, the more I am convinced that the agency’s biggest challenge is not about understanding online or social media. The biggest challenge is a fundamental reboot of the way we define the concept of ideas. I think it’s unbelievable – and maybe even unforgiveable – that in the advertising business we seem to make everything we do important and big, but in the end we never truly rethink the essence of our ideas. To honestly ask ourselves if maybe a different type of ideas is needed to actually become measurably important in driving conversions. The large part of the business is still about the holy grail of finding the big idea. That one and only idea that can be campaigned 360 degrees – including social media and online, mind you! I think 360’s make you dizzy. And sick. Sick is not good. It makes you look greenish and, yes face it, unattractive.

More…

We’re very pleased to announce a brand new set of columnists. Before we worked with ‘Viewpoints’, allowing our readers to contribute on a casual basis, but we’ve discovered that deadlines work better than ‘whenever you like’. So we recruited a bunch of ad folk willing to write on a more regular basis. In order of future appearance; Astrid Groenewegen, strategist and founder of SUE Amsterdam; Axel van Weel, since recently freelance (long form) copywriter and ‘surf magazine journalist’; Sasha Naod, PR specialist and journalist, who worked for Philips before and recently started his own business; Gerald Hensel, strategists at Blast Radius and responsible for founding APG Netherlands; Marleen Wiedhaup, freelance copywriter; and Maarten Boer, copywriter and founder of Buutvrij for Life – the Cosumentenbond found his columns often too critical, so let’s see what he can do for us. Astrid kicks off today with the column ‘Design for excitement’, about the small, designy things in our business – rather than the ‘big ideas’ – that make us love brands.

What a great film to promote the release of the ‘Air Balloon’ bag charm by Louis Vuitton. A ‘bag charm’ is a small icon attached to your Luois Vuitton trunk or bag that automatically traces your steps and thus becomes a memento of your journey – ‘charms’ originally are small jewelry icons hanging from a bracelet around the wrist. Louis Vuitton has been creating bag charms for more than 10 years now – according to LV some of them have become collector’s items. The film was created by Christian Borstlap – Part of a Bigger Plan – in his signature graphic style; black and white, crisp and clear, but with much eye for detail at the same time. The wonderful song Too Insistent by The Dø makes the journey complete.

There’s a new ad brand in town, called the Account Planners Group (APG) Netherlands, an organization that brings account planners – or strategists, if you will – together. APG is an existing brand that was first coined in London and which now exists in several other countries than the UK, among which Germany, Sweden, and Australia. Gerald Hensel, German, planner at Blast Radius, blogger, and fanatic tweeter, is the initiator and the co-founder of the Dutch APG. In November, the first open invitation meeting kicked off at Strawberry Frog – hosting the event. We were there and judging by the amount of planners that attended, it was a success. We took Gerald out for lunch at Stanislavski to ask him a few questions about his initiative.

More…

When you’re introducing a new, important, public phone number, you have to make sure people remember what to dial. This is often done with annoying tunes that are glued into your skull. Not in this commercial though, wanting us to report neglected or abused animals. It plays with some striking images, thus tapping into your visual memory instead. So, no catchy “144” song, but some sad animals turned into numbers – you could call that animal abuse in itself, but we were assured that no animals were harmed in the making of the commercial. Finally, to make sure our auditive memory is not left out, the pay-off “Bel 144 en red een dier” (meaning: call 144 and save an animal) modestly rhymes. Created by Y&R and executed by Hectic Electric.

You see it all the time, advertising being inspired by art. This commercial quite literally is. Which is to say, we’ve seen this concept, a mosaic of choreographed webcam images, already many times in many forms. It started in a music video we believe. But we can imagine that for the average (potential) Prius Wagon driver - in the Netherlands certainly not the George Clooney’s of this world – it makes quite a cool ad. And, in all fairness, it is very well art directed. Made by Launched and directed by André Maat (Hazazah). Creative tunes added by Massive Music.

There’s a somewhat strange trend going on in the Netherlands. Ambulance personnel is being harrased quite regularly whilst trying to do their job. You wonder how ambulance personnel could possibly evoke any aggression. And when you see this SIRE commercial, with the pay-off “If we respect our medical care providers in wartime, why not in peacetime”, it becomes even weirder to think about it. You can sign the petition ‘Hands Off’ here. Strong one, by Selmore and director Rogier Hesp (Caviar).

We drove past this poster (click picture = full poster) the other day and it stuck to our mind. What a powerful image – matching seamlessly with the title; Deadly Desire. And when you look at it more closely you see some blood and a male arm – instead of the expected female arm. Makes you curious. Nicely done by Creative Cell. The première by ‘Fantasten‘ is on January 20/21 in the Melkweg.