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.
Yesterday was a good day. Not just because it was our first day in Cannes and we enjoyed soaking up all its extremes – Le Palais, the sun, the beach, ‘le canard au miel’, and lots of drinks – check out our photo’s here. It was also a good day for Amsterdam, because it won 5 Lions! Two silver lions went to outdoor; Interbest ‘mail stripper’ and the Go Fast water-bike, both to Y&R Not Just Film. At the time, we weren’t too positive about the unattractive stripper, because we doubted its effectiveness. You could say the silver lion has proved us wrong. Two bronze lions went to the radio commercial ‘sexual harassment’ (Publicis) and an Allsecur outdoor ad (Ogilvy). In Media Muse and Starcom won Silver for their 3D Samsung projection. Earlier, on Monday Amsterdam won two meager bronze lions; the Dutch dress for Bavaria in promo – which definitely deserves more in our opinion – and bronze for Boondoggle’s KLM Suprise in PR – in Holland this won a golden Spin (read: cyber) award. Hopefully we’ll be able to celebrate some gold later this week.
Our first day in Cannes! We’re going to keep a photolog this week, so any tips on interesting (preferably Amsterdam related) activities are welcome – like winning a Lion for example. We look forward seeing you and (maybe) getting a little tipsy together!
Last Friday the digital Podge was held in Amsterdam. The podge (meaning ‘small belly’) was founded in 1994 by Phil Jones (right in picture). What started out as an informal dinner between design professionals has now branched out into sports and digital. The digital podge now travels through Europe. When Achtung! visited the event last year in Stockholm they liked it so much that they decided to invite the event to Amsterdam. Together with Bert Hagendoorn (left in photo) Achtung! invited about 100 CD’s and MD’s from the best digital agencies from the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Germany and Sweden. The day started with a reception at Herengracht 502, the official residence of the mayor of Amsterdam, clearly breathing the wealth of the Dutch 17th century and creating a nice contrast with the modern, mobile addicted, casual scene. The podgers were welcomed by Achtung!’s Dick Buschman (second left in photo) and Caroline Gehrels – responsible within the municipality for selling Amsterdam to the world – together with jenever (Dutch gin), haring (herring), and kroketten (meat croquettes). The creme de la creme of digital was then taken on a ‘rondvaart’ boat to view Amsterdam from the water – though the presence of an abundance of cold Heinies and interesting conversation partners made sightseeing a little difficult. We were then taken for a late lunch to ‘De Goudfazant’, a restaurant on the Northern, industrial, hip and happening shore of the IJ river. After a rich lunch there was time for coffee and ping pong. Through the rain – to remind everyone to be in Holland – the online professionals were finally taken to café Nol, a bar in the Jordaan that used to be visited by true Amsterdammers. Unfortunately Amsterdam Ad Blog didn’t make this, because the intense conversations about the future of digital in combination with a considerate amount of alcohol persuaded us to call it a day – a wonderful day! A visual impression can be found here.
On Saturday the last Cannes Lions were awarded to Amsterdam agencies in the categories Film and Film Craft. Silver went to the intelligent commercials made by TBWA\Neboko for IDFA – international documentary festival Amsterdam. Though we liked the previous concept a little better, the one showed in this post brings the message ‘You can’t make up reality’ in a similarly convincing way. 180 Amsterdam won silver in the ‘Film Craft’ category for their Adidas film ‘Every team needs the spark’. Indeed, a lot of craftsmanship. XXS and N=5 won bronze for their Dierenbescherming (animal protection) and Live Interactive Billboard ads respectively. The latter is an aggression awareness campaign that shows a billboard with ambulance personal being harassed. Bystanders that watch the billboard are being filmed and integrated in the film – so they watch their selves being inactive. Quite smart, though in our opinion this case would have been better of winning in Outdoor or Cyber. Like last year Philips won a Grand Prix (this time in ‘Film Craft’) for The Gift, “a sci-fi thriller in a dystopian future” that shows quite some skills being brought together. It was created by DDB London in assocation with RSA Films. We mention it, cause Tribal DDB Amsterdam was responsible for the overarching Parallel Lines campaign that included the 5 short films – of which The Gift was one. O.k., enough chest pounding already. Let’s get back to work!
Draftfcb won a Silver Promo Lion for Upload Cinema yesterday. We talked about it before, since it already won a Dutch Spin Award and Silver Lamp. The concept is simple; it takes YouTube films to the big screen. The idea came from the desire to promote one of the smallest Amsterdam cinema’s (De Uitkijk), because it was on the verge of being closed down. Through a monthly theme a selection of ‘User Sent In’ web films is shown in De Uitkijk. Agency 2009 – changing its name every single year – won a Bronze Direct Lion for a fantastic employment campaign that was to find a designer for their studio. The agency made an Adobe CS4 (that was not on the market yet) look-alike packaging, dubbed Abode CS4 (Ad for most Brilliant and Outstanding DTP’er Ever). 2009 delivered the desirable, but fake sofware through an Abode delivery guy at the doorstep of the best agencies in town. There it would of course end up in the Studio, thus giving it Trojan horse power. The software in the box enabled designers to design their own resume and with a simple click they could send it to 2009. Brilliant campaign that generated lots of free publicity and – not to forget – made them find their new DTP’er.
