Imagine you’re hiking around Loch Ness in Schotland and all of a sudden the legendary monster appears. Wow, you could be the very first person to get Nessie on ‘tape’ and sell the footage to the media! Luckily you already have your camera at hand, ready to use! Too bad though, if you put your camera off, instead of on. But of course there’s Centraal Beheer, the Dutch insurance company. The message: whatever happens, just call them. Made by DDB. Very smart and funny idea and also nicely executed (like most of the other 50 commercials that were made in the past 20 years for Centraal Beheer). Still, we always wonder if you can insure yourself for this kind of misfortune. Would they compensate you for the thousands of Euros you missed out on, because you’re clumsy with your camcorder? We know, it’s advertising and that it will give the brand a higher (top of mind) awareness. But to us it comes across as free entertainment for the people. And you would think there are more effective ways to spend your advertising Euros.

Weird, but with mileage is how we judged this concept for Autodrop (‘car liquorice’) in October 2010. Last week we came accross this one; ‘secret passage.’ Compared to the first one it feels slightly more accessible. And we like it. Created by DDB Amsterdam and directed by Hans Knaapen (Electric Zoo).

Quite an integrated campaign this new work ‘See what light can do’ by Tribal DDB and DDB Amsterdam for Philips. A ‘lightover’ team – based on the successful home make-overs – visits 29 homes in 8 countries around the world to show how the right lighting can transform your house into a much more atmospheric environment – the insight behind it; light changes your mood. The results are presented online. This content is not exactly our kind of content, since we’re not big fans of home make-over TV, but we can easily imagine it will persuade enough consumers to start thinking about LED and – more importantly – see Philips as the thought leader in this field. Part of the platform is a ‘3D Home Lighting Designer’ app that helps consumers to choose between different lighting options and advises them on which (Philips) products to buy. There’s also a Facebook page where you get in contact with the experts on ‘light design’. To generate mass attention Tribal/DDB also created a (bit of a corporate) commercial in which Philips presents its platform as the future of lighting. Together with the recent Wake-up Light campaigns, Philips is firmly reclaiming its strong heritage of being the lighting expert.

In advertising beer brands are the most desirable accounts to obtain. So we can imagine Alfred has been popping some… um… Grolsch ‘beugeltjes’ when they found out they won one of the more sophisticated beer brands in the Netherlands. Grolsch, the past 7 years handled by DDB, is a beer for someone who prefers quality and good taste, rather than getting brainlessly drunk with friends. At least, that’s what it was always about. The best pay-off to illustrate that was: “One day you’ll stop drinking beer and start drinking Grolsch” (JWT). Sadly in the past years we haven’t seen any advertising with much aspiration anymore. The last one we can remember was ‘Everlasting love‘ – with the pay-off “Beer, the Grolsch way” (DDB). A few years ago Grolsch started to claim creativity in combination with music stars. Though a good idea in itself, the advertising was probably too complicated and therefore not picked up by the consumer. We can imagine that this made Grolsch go more mainstream, moving towards the other beer brands and away from its once unique positioning. The climax was the last commercial – shown above – celebrating the ‘pop’ sound, It felt so average that the pay-off “Beer that grabs you” sounded completely incredible. So, time for a change. We hope Grolsch allows Alfred to give the iconic brand back its exclusiveness. We wish them luck!

Picture: ECD’s W+K Amsterdam Mark Bernath (left) and Eric Quennoy (middle), mainly responsible for Wieden+Kennedy’s huge success in Cannes and Enrico Balleri from Nike, just after the award ceremony last Saturday. What a great closing night for the Amsterdam agency it was. Nike Write the future scored seven more Lions – earlier in the week it already won gold in Cyber. At the most important award night the Amsterdam agency first of all won the prestigious Grand Prix in film. It was a very close finish with Puma’s ‘After hours athlete’ as jury chair Tony Granger (CCO Y&R) explained at the press conference. After a lengthy discussion he asked the jury to put all the rational arguments aside and vote from the heart. This gave Nike the final push. Nike also won five Lions in Film craft: two Gold (Editing and Script), two Silver (Production and Sound), and one bronze (CG). And the seventh Lion, Gold in Integrated, proved that the campaign didn’t just have a pretty face. And then Heineken; for this other power brand W+K won five Lions in Film and Film craft. Four for The Entrance: Film: Gold and Bronze (interactive). Film craft: Gold and Silver (Direction and Sound Design). One Lion went to The Date – more or less the sequel of The Entrance. It won bronze in Film. This brought the grand total for Wieden+Kennedy to 13 (!) Lions. Together with all the Lions that Portland won for Old Spice, W+K must easily be the most awarded independent network in the world. Two more Amsterdam Lions went to MINI ‘Flow‘ (Silver in Film craft) by BSUR and one to Volkswagen’s ‘Old Lady’ (Bronze in Film) by DDB. All in all Amsterdam (officially) won 25 Lions, 8 (!) more than last year.

With 13 shortlist nominations in film and 7 in film craft, Amsterdam should be able to win some more Lions tomorrow night. Of all these nominations 4 go to Nike ‘Write the future’, 3 to Heineken’s ‘The Entrance’, and one to Heineken’s ‘The Date’, which adds up to an impressive 8 film (craft) nominations for Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Write the future also has a nomination for Titanium (integrated), though this case was sent in by Nike. BSUR also does well with 4 nominations for MINI Countryman’s ‘Flow’. Philips’ ‘Wake up the town’ by Tribal DDB has 3 film nominations. Other film nominations go to Volkswagen (DDB), Centraal Beheer (DDB) – we personally liked this more subtle Centraal Beheer film a lot better – De Bijenkorf (Selmore), IDFA X-ray eyes (TBWA) – a very smart film – and the beautiful Sire film ‘Marked for life‘ (180). We’ll keep our fingers crossed!