This very pretty girl doesn’t seem as smart as the phone she is hypnotized by. But fortunately you only need MTV Mobile to get her into bed. We couldn’t decide whether this commercial is weird or attractive. So it’s probably both. And that makes it typically MTV. The only thing that annoys us a little is the over the top Dutch-American voice-over – though this might proof that we’re not the target group the commercial is aiming for. Created by Nothing and directed by Elwin Bles.
Last March we wrote about the beautiful idents director Mischa Rozema created with his production agency PostPanic and sound production agency Massive Music for alternative rock channel MTV Rocks. MTV liked them so much that Rozema was asked to make some more. Again the idents (Fly-by, Bugs, and Loop-the-loop) clearly carry Rozema’s signature; imaginary landscapes, surreal characters, and a visually stunning mix of live action and CG. It took PostPanic five months to create them. Which shows once more that the more creative freedom you give your agency, the more energy it will put in your project. Or maybe it’s just a case of: the less you pay, the longer it takes. It doesn’t matter, it’s great work anyway.
We didn’t know MTV has a sister channel called MTV Rocks – in fact, we didn’t even know that MTV has 5 more specialist channels; Classic, Dance, Base, Hits and Shows. MTV is rebranding these channels and commissioned a total of 32 TV idents, to be created by motion/audio studios from around the globe. Amsterdam based Post Panic (motion) and Massive Music (sound) created these surreal idents for MTV Rocks – currently MTV Brand New in the Netherlands. It is obvious that the alternative character of the channel inspired script writer and director Mischa Rozema to make these five 12 second idents. He used surreal characters and moods to make people wonder what they are looking at – as if they were flicking the remote and coming across something really weird. Even though we’ve never watched MTV Rocks, this ident definitely gives us the impression that it does.
“Erection? Veridian Dynamics is looking for test subjects with balls”. In this outdoor campaign Comedy Central teases its audience to watch the new TV series ‘Better off Ted’ about a dubious research institute called Veridian Dynamics. After a week the Comedy Central logo was slapped on top of it to reveal who was behind it. But of course that wasn’t clear from the start. No less than 4000 curious guinea pigs called the number to find out how they could earn some extra money – welcome to Holland. Other ads asked the Dutch test subjects to be deep frozen or launched by a rocket. Comedy Central also built a (bit of a crappy) dedicated website that links to the TV series on Comedy Central. The striking campaign was created by Dare.
With this fantastic idea about global warming for MTV Switch, Ogilvy won a golden Outdoor award at the New York Festivals. Last week we were slightly disappointed with the meagre Amsterdam-score in Cannes (except of course for the wonderful Grand Prix by Tribal DDB); we only won a few silver and two handfuls of bronze – no gold! Fortunately we scored better at the New York Festivals. Although we have to say that their website is so crappy that we doubt the quality of the awards. Anyway, EuroRSCG 4D won four awards – two gold, one silver and one bronze. Gold (2x) was for Volvo – we’re not sure what exactly they made (couldn’t find it on the NYF website), but the awards were won in the categories ‘Art & Technique’ and ‘Interactive’. This doesn’t surprise us, since 4D has won a truckload of prizes in the past years for Volvo already. 4D’s online partnership with Volvo is surely one of the more successful ones in the business. Creatiefteam.nl won gold for DHL and New Message silver for promoting a program called The Phone. The program is an Augmented Reality Game (inspired by the great movie The Game) with hidden phones, assignments and the chance to win a big sum of money. New Message hid some ringing phones in TV and Radio programs, which of course generated instant word of mouth. Simple & Smart. It also won bronze in Cannes last week.
Our previous post was about MTV Networks offering its clients advertising services. This week Boomerang announced that it too starts its own agency. Until now Boomerang was especially known for very succesfully spreading freecards (see picture) in bars, cinema’s and universities. The name of the new Amsterdam agency will be ‘Bureau 1835′ – because Boomerang’s target group is normally 18-35 years old. And as if that’s not enough, Boomerang is more ambitious still. Next week it will launch ‘Amsterdam Create’ a network for young creatives. With this initiative Boomerang connects advertisers and (freelance) creatives online, thus embracing the long tail and smartly using the great benefits of crowd sourcing.
