Robert Röling, PhD student at the University van Amsterdam (economic geography), wrote an article about his research on Amsterdam’s success in attracting international agencies and creative talent. The article is titled “Small Town, Big Campaign: The Rise and Growth of an International Advertising Industry” – it is published in the academic journal Regional Studies. Röling’s thorough article starts with describing the history of international advertising. In this context scholars nowadays speak of four big waves of international advertising, Röling explains. And Amsterdam is the centre of the fourth wave. Read the rest of this entry »
This picture was sent to us by one of our avid commenters known as ‘Bernbach’. He wrote to us: “I always wonder what this Amsterdam police sign means. Are they trying to sell us deodorant?”. It made us think of DNAge, a Nivea skin care product that supposedly prevents your skin from getting older. Though this spray doesn’t protect your skin; it says it’s way more effective; it protects the whole neighborhood. From getting older? How? We don’t really know, but in any case it doesn’t smell as good as most deodorants. That guy (or girl?) is clearly not happy with it.
The commercial we’re showing today is not that interesting in itself. It is about Red Bull sugar free being distributed all over the place. To stress this message, Red Bull hid 4-packs of Red Bull throughout the Netherlands. And with some hints on a dedicated website you can search and find them – yawn… What is interesting about this project is that the animation was created by “junior” director Aras Darmawan from Indonesia. We don’t know why he is called junior, cause the animation looks pretty senior to us, but the fact is that he is part of the PanicProgram, a new brand recently launched by (post) production agency PostPanic to give new visual talent (both local and international) a chance to show their skills. The other side of the cutting knife, is that PostPanic can also take in projects with meager budgets. A great idea that will hopefully give many ‘junior’ directors wings.
There’s so much to see a the Uitmarkt that you might need a few extra sets of eyes. That’s what this poster communicates quite literally. It was created by Studio Jona (photographed by Arjan Benning) for the Amsterdam Uitburo. The Uitmarkt, which was held last weekend, is a market that shows what the new cultural season has to offer. Artists publicly give a free sneak peek into their acts to get the cultural audience excited and make it run to the box offices. Because there’s so much to see Delft/Amsterdam based agency Fabrique – together with Q42 – created the ‘Uit app’, an app that displays the full Uitmarkt program. The app is navigable by artist, genre, time, and place. After the Uitmarkt the app is still useful for showing – and updating – the ‘Uit’ agenda.
On September 13th the World’s youngest Fomula 1 racer, Lewis Hamilton, will compete against a virtual racecar, built up from 28.800 Facebook profile photos – we’ve also uploaded our own. The question is, who will finish first; Hamilton in a racecar, on a 2.7 Km track, or the 288 MB Facebook car that will be downloaded with Vodafone’s mobile network. It wouldn’t surprise us if the Facebook car wins, since the campaign is there to display the speed of Vodafone’s new, upgraded network. According to Vodafone, it is as fast as the average computer connection. That is quite a claim. And if true, how about communicating; “Vodafone’s new network; as fast as a landline”. Anyway, if you would like to see the actual race, it will be shown live on Facebook. Created by Achtung!.
The Dutch advertising spendings have strongly improved in the second quarter of this year. According to media agency GroupM outdoor advertising grew with 30% compared to the same quarter last year. TV grew with 8% and newspapers 6%. Magazine advertising didn’t grow, which could be an indication that within a few years all magazines will become digital [AAB]. Strangely enough GroupM couldn’t say what online is doing. Overall, the Dutch advertising market grew 6% to 8%. The PBIN (the body that represents the Dutch online agencies) does have an idea about online growth. It expects a revenue growth of 9% in 2010 – based on research among its agencies. If this is true – the research might of course be a little biased – it will bring the online category more or less back to pre-crisis results. And according to the PBIN it shows that advertisers are still changing their budgets towards online.
This commercial was made for the Luxemburg, Belgium and French markets. Since it was created by Amsterdam based Lemon Scented Tea, we wanted to share it anyway. We had never heard of Bofferding. It sounds funny. The commercial is more serious though. It felt to us as a cross-over between Bavaria (that is, the pay-off “Zo, nu eerst een Bavaria”, which basically means ‘Phew, now I deserve a Bavaria’) and Grolsch (more specifically the pay-off from the 80’s: ‘Craftmanship is Mastership’). But that’s not really relevant since the commercial is not made for the Dutchies. Strategically it does make total sense, but there’s something odd about the end, where the hero almost clumsily opens the bottle with his screwdriver, and a bad voice-over somewhat spoils the nice images we saw before. A bit of an anti-climax, really. But, all in all, skillfully made and thus A-brand-worthy. And it did make us a little thirsty, we have to admit.
Quite spectacular this outdoor ad for the Adidas F50 Adizero. Not only did Adidas change the tram stop benches, the real boots were also incorporated in the outdoor furniture. Created by 180, TBWA\BEC and JC Decaux.
In the past 5 years the Dutch bicycle scene has undergone a small revolution. Where a bicycle used to simply be a means of transportation, today it is a fashion item. Especially the fixed gear bicycle (or ‘fixie’) is beyond hip (Vans, tattoos, Chrome courier bag, rolled up trousers, funny hairdo, etc.). Ironically, the fixie lifestyle that comes with the single gear bicycle was imported from the US, a country where only the coolest couriers dare to defy the NYC traffic. The first brand to copy American styled bicycles and that started the revolution, was Johnny Loco. It was created in 2005 by advertising agency New Message. In the beginning the bikes were made in China and fell apart within no time, but nowadays they’re pretty reliable. And since no bicycle brand does fashionable advertising, Johnny Loco is the one eyed king in the land of the blind. We don’t mean that in a derogative way; we very much like the ads. We also came across another poster with former Elite “model of the year” Barbara Egeler. It is probably no coincidence that Loco means stupid in Spanish… Which reminds us; the ads are a more classy version of the “Be Stupid” campaign by Diesel that was banned in several countries, because it supposedly provoked ‘stupid’ behaviour. The photos were made by René Kramers.
Good news for Amsterdam. Team Volvo brings together “the best people” from EuroRSCG 4D (Amsterdam), Arnold (Boston) and SapientNitro (Shanghai) to work dedicated on Volvo. All agencies have been working for Volvo before. The unit will start in September with 30 people. Jorian Murray (ex Dye Holloway Murray and ex DDB London) will be leading the pack. The joint agency is going to direct the three most important markets in the world; North America, China and Europe. Murray built up a reputation for building car brands when working for Volkswagen from 1992 till 2007 – allegedly it doubled VW’s market share. Murray said Amsterdam was the city of choice, because it is the creative capital of Europe. Sven de Smet, since June director of global marcom at Volvo, added that Amsterdam attracts international creative talent, has an Anglosaxon focus and is well connected (thanks to Schiphol airport, AAB). We wish Team Volvo the best of luck!
