It is the digital special effects and – more specifically – the person behind them, that makes this commercial worth watching. 24 year old Tim Smit is (with respect) your typical ‘computer nerd’ who has found his way up the steep bit of the long tail, through his attic production ‘What’s in the box?’ that he posted on YouTube last March. After an item on the Dutch (NOS) news, an appearance in a popular talk show, a call from Hollywood (“who is this guy?!”) and 1.7 million hits on YouTube, Tim was approached by Amsterdam agency Nothing to direct this commercial – with the pay-off “This is a job for Werkspot.nl”. Werkspot is the eBay for small jobs around the house, like painting, plumbing and gardening. So in the unlikely event your house is ever attacked by aliens…who you gonna ‘call’?!
If you think this great ad for Activia was made unauthorized by an amateur creative, trying to build up a portfolio; you are very right! The ad was made by Anna Komarek – or rather, advertising agency Pink and Poodle, that conceived Anna. The ADCN (the Dutch art director’s club) asked Pink and Poodle to promote the new ADCN website, on which the ADCN members can from now on integrate their portfolio and social media pages. Anna – sexy and ambitious at the same time – infiltrated the ad creatives’ social networks in search of a job. She promoted herself on Facebook and Twitter, using YouTube video’s and a very ‘promising’ Flickr portfolio. And although most of Anna’s followers knew she was a hoax (“too staged”, as someone commented), her job hunt made pretty interesting content. And this of course immediately proofed the value of the improved ADCN site. Wonderful strategy, brilliant execution. Pretty lamp (= ADCN award) worthy!
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.
They talk about ‘clear’ communication. But these ‘specialists’ cannot even clearly communicate their own USP…
Still fun to watch though and quite a nice way of presenting themselves. What’s not to get about the USP??? Or are you just jealous Dicky?