Two weeks ago, we shared the wonderful walk-in fridge commercial for Heineken. And yesterday we found out that Qi created a virtualwalk-in fridge to translate the commercial online. On the dedicated site you can open different Heineken bottles/cans with the pointer of your mouse. Skilfully made and also making us very thirsty. The only pity is that the site doesn’t really match with the TV commercial. So our suggestion to Heineken; next time try to bring the agencies together in an earlier stage of conceptualization.
To fully appreciate this it helps if you have seen the commercial ‘The Date’ – in which a man takes his date on a spectacular night out. ‘The Serenade’ is a Valentine’s Day inspired follow up. It comes with a Facebook app that allows you to create a Valentine serenade to be performed by the same band that plays the catchy song Jaan Pehechaan Ho in the original commercial – in a personalized way as you can see here. The climax is this Wednesday – on the 9th of Feb. – when Heineken will host ‘Serenade Live’, an 8-hour YouTube event during which you get the chance to ask someone out on a date in an unforgetable way; performed by the ‘Serenade Band’. On top of that the performers will react live to the online audience. Created by Wieden+Kennedy.
With a track record like Tribal DDB it’s hardly a surprise that they became interactive agency of the year at Eurobest this year. Throughout the year they’ve been making great and award winning work for KLM and Philips. The climax of their award victory march has been Eurobest this week; out of the 12 nominations they won 9 awards – for Philips Obsessed with Sound 4, for ‘Wake up the town‘ 2, and for KLM Tile & Inspire 3. What really took us by surprise was ‘The Legendary Making of The Date’ for Heineken by Wieden+Kennedy winning a Grand Prix in film. We already noticed that every big budget commercial nowadays gets a making of to create some relatively cheap content – and PR for the agency, for that matter. But actually winning a Grand Prix with the side project of a campaign is quite something. Back then we said: “Not your standard ‘making of’, but one made with ‘joie de vivre’ and lots of CG jokes. If we weren’t already, this would want to make us work in advertising”. The commercial itself, ‘The Date’, also won silver in film, and ‘The Entrance’ won gold. We were told that AKQA’s London office sent in the work of AKQA Amsterdam, so you could say that the Grand Prix and Gold in Mobile for Heineken Star Player (social betting on football matches), also went to Amsterdam. DBB and 180 won silver in film for ‘Old Lady’ (Volkswagen) and ‘Marked for Life’ respectively. We also had the Epicaawards last week. W+K won 5 Epica’s plus a Grand Prix for ‘The Entrance’ and ‘The Date’ combined. Again W+K won an award (gold) for the ‘extra’s’ – some extra mini scripts around ‘The Entrance’. 180’s Marked for Life won gold and silver. Finally Lemz did well with 2 silver and 2 bronze for IKEA 365, KLM Live Reply, and ‘Children see things differently‘. In total Amsterdam won 22 Epica awards. One final note to Eurobest and Epica; can you guys please merge? There’s no reason to have two identical continental award shows – except making lots of money, of course…
The Champion’s League season has started and according to Heineken it is the most prestigious competition on the planet. Wieden+Kennedy was asked to convey the Champion’s League as ‘black-tie’ football; the players on an epic stage in prestigious arena’s. Well, they’ve done an impressive job with Clarence Seedorf and Gianluigi Buffon performing in an opera house overlooked by real angels. Here‘s another one in an ancient Roman gladiatorial ring, with Vieira and Van Nistelrooy competing in front of Adler’s goal. Wieden also created a series of adaptations, meant as humorous, but in our humble opinion a weak attempt, almost spoiling the beauty of the originals. Anyway, the films were directed by Martin Krejci (Stink) and shot by Stepan Kucera.
This is something Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam has proven to be good at; showing the essence of a sport and the passion of its supporters. They’ve done this for Nike several times – recently in Copa Barrio – and for EA Sports’ FIFA – here’s #10. It’s all done with heroic copy and visually supported by lots of action, packed stadiums and close-ups of fans. Since the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is sponsored by Heineken this year and since W+K is the Dutch beer brand’s favourite agency after winning a cabinet full of awards for The Entrance and The Date in Cannes, the agency makes a logical choice. The commercial explains ‘The Code’, which basically comes down to the well known saying that rugby is a barbarian game played by gentlemen – while football is a gentleman’s game played by barbarians, for that matter. The film was directed by Steve Rogers (Revolver). In print the code is aptly translated into: “We lost some teeth. We gained some friends” (among other lines).
