When you work in advertising, your worst nightmare is someone asking you to make a commercial for ‘feminine intimate care products’ – that’s correct, vaginal soap. Several male teams at Grey Amsterdam were tormented by Lactacyd to do just that – without any satisfactory results. Then someone had the luminous idea to ask a female team the same question. Elise Beenakker and Dagmare van Willigenburg came up with this brilliant idea for Lactacyd; the vagina-perspective – using the pay-off: “You’re vagina is fulnerable”. The execution could have been done better, we think, but then again, they had to use this tiny camera… In any case, GSK last week announced that the commercial will not be broadcasted anymore “due to internal reasons”. It wouldn’t surprise us if someone high up the GSK tree – maybe from the US head office – found the commercial too confronting. If so, why sell a product that embarrasses you? In any case, GSK also made it clear that the commercial is not to be submitted to any advertising festival. Too bad.

Fltr: Carl Johnson, Hazelle Klønhammer, Marika Zijp, Colin Lamberton, and Seyoan Vela.

New York and London based agency Anomaly – in 2010 ‘Agency of the Year’ according to Adweek – has just opened a third office in Amsterdam. Carl Johnson, who also spoke at the Tomorrow Awards last week, says the agency opens a second European office so close to London, because “London is not as instinctively continental as Amsterdam.” Hazelle Klønhammer will be managing the Amsterdam office. Before, Klønhammer was group account director at W+K Amsterdam and most recently MD at Grey. At Grey she worked with ECD’s Colin Lamberton and Seyoan Vela. Lamberton and Vela recently left to Team Volvo and JWT Dubai, respectively. They are followed up by Marika Zijp, who previously worked at MRM and McCann Amsterdam, among other agencies. Zijp will work at Grey along strategy director Paul Sijtsma, digital director Peter Hoekstra, and managing director Patrick Joore.

Grey bought – or “integrated”, if you will – digital agency Blutarsky. Blutarsky is following its former MD Patrick Joore in the slipstream. Joore, previously MD at Blutarsky, started at Grey last month. Blutarsky’s eight-strong team will move to the Grey Amsterdam office. According to Wikipedia ‘Blutarsky’ is slang for a 0.0 quarterback rating in American Football, the lowest possible rating – it was derived from the movie National Lampoon’s Animal House in which John ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky (picture), played by John Belushi, scored 0.0. We’re not sure why the agency was inspired by this character, but hope the two agencies will ‘kick some ass’ – to stay in the verbal realm of football.

As from March Patrick Joore will be the new MD of Grey, replacing Hazelle Klønhammer. Joore comes from Blutarsky. Before that he was head of account at Lowe and CSD at JWT Amsterdam. Klønhammer joined Grey in 2009 – after having worked for W+K, TBWA, 180. Together with ECD’s Colin Lamberton and Seyoan Vela her task was to turn Grey Amsterdam in an international creative hotspot. Our question then was: “Here Today. Where Tomorrow?” Well, here are we now: it seems that by hiring Joore Grey decided that the international focus has no priority anymore. Lamberton and Vela will stay on board – though the question is, for how long.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam/London won gold at the London International Awards (LIA) for Nike’s ‘Write The Future‘ – in the category film. The campaign also won three bronze awards in the categories print, poster, and music adapation – the latter went to Massive Music for updating Focus’ hit ‘Hocus Pocus’. Grey Amsterdam won silver in print for Pink Ribbon Magazine’s happy breasts. 180 Amsterdam won bronze for ‘The Match Tracker’ for Adidas.

Source: Adformatie

This commercial advertises the Pink Ribbon Magazine that is published once a year to raise awareness and, more importantly, money for the battle against breast cancer – all profits made by publisher Sanoma are donated to the cancer charity. The commercial, created by Grey Amsterdam, clearly tries to create a sense of community among women and it does so in quite an arty way – partly due to director Johan Kramer and musician Junkie XL, who composed the music. Last year’s campaign, that won quite a few awards, was more friendly – a poem about two breast living happily together their entire live – and maybe therefore a little easier to digest. It raised € 1 million, which is quite decent for Dutch standards. Let’s see if this commercial can lift the bar a little higher.