This state-of-the-art example of great story-telling, was made by Dawn. With all our big banks in trouble these days, the timing for introducing the ‘Big Bank Theory’ couldn’t be better. Interesting is that Alex seems to have borrowed its ‘small bank’ brand positioning from its parent company, Binck Bank. After all, it was Binck who introduced ‘big bank bashing’. Either way, we love the sympathetic tone of voice of this animation (“Once upon a time…”). Hopefully this new advertising property will not prove too successful though; before you know it Alex will grow BIG!

As a gay friendly city Amsterdam is home to the ‘Roze Filmdagen’ – read: pink movie days (15 – 25 March). That’s how this promotional poster (click = full poster) came to feature Buddy and Pedro; two African pinguins that live in the Toronto Zoo and were found out to be gay. At some point the zoo decided to separate them – “what should our young visitors think of this?!” – and this caused quite a stir. Buddy and Pedro thus became a symbol for the freedom to love whoever you want. And that’s why Amsterdam based Dawn chose to make them an integral part of this year’s festival. They’re everywhere; on posters, in booklets, on t-shirts, and even part of the awards.

After having introduced our new columnists last week, this week we’re introducing a new item called ‘Inspiration’; Amsterdam creatives sharing their inspiration on a weekly basis. In order of future appearance we found the following posse willing to show us what they like, what fascinates them, or what they admire on a regular basis: Jennette Snape, art director at Dolly Rogers; Jarr Geerligs, art director at Selmore; Joep Beving, creative at Massive Music; Rick de Zwart, designer at Meneer de Zwart (and responsible for AAB’s visual identity); David Snellenberg, copywriter at Dawn; Johan Kramer, director at 328 Stories; Martin Pyper, designer at MeStudio; Reuben Alexander, creative at Buutvrij for Life; and Christian Borstlap, art director at Part of a Bigger Plan. Of course these people do more than just what their often somewhat rigitd title suggests (in art, music, photography, etc.) but you can read about that on their profile page, once they’ve posted their first contribution. Today Jennette Snape kicks off with an art piece she created herself. The title is “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”; a nice kick off for this new genre, since it philosophies on what inspiration really is.

If you live in the Netherlands you probably know ‘Artis de Partis’; it’s an icon of the Amsterdam zoo and a cuddly doll for many Dutch kids. Two years ago Artis conceived an alien brother for Artis de Partis to promote Artis’ planetarium, called ‘Artis de Marsis’. The cyclope was a logical step to further exploit the success of Artis de Partis. When Dutchman André Kuipers – a big fan of the Artis planetarium – recently went into space with the ISS international space program, he decided to take Artis de Marsis with him, which led to this wonderful picture of Artis de Marsis in space. On top of this Dawn – Artis’ agency – created a goodbye film, a dedicated webpage where one can follow Artis de Marsis, and a special program in the Planetarium. The fans of Artis de Marsis will soon even be able to make an inflight call with Kuipers live from the planetarium. Engaging advertising in its truest form.

Though we’re always a bit wary of ‘commercials’ that show how the consumer is impressed by seeing an ad – it’s usually (art) directed – we very much like the idea of Triodos boldly using Nasdaq and Thomson Reuters’ tickertape on Times Square – probably the most expensive billboard in the world – to communicate that the stock market is about greed, instead of happiness. Quite a change from last year’s  ‘Follow your heart, Use your head‘ ad – about which we said it wasn’t aggressive enough. What we like best about this ad is that it ironically shows that money makes the world go round; everything is for sale. Created by Dawn.