Kong Amsterdam, the digital agency of N=5, built a very smart feature with Hyves (= Dutch Facebook) for the Dutch Ministry of Justice, called Stanislav. A video, with strong James Bond-like execution (the Eastern Europeans play  the bad guys), warns in quite a convincing way to be prudent about sharing your personal information online. When you watch the video through your Hyves profile, it uses your accessible data, like name, age, city and photos in the story. The subtle thing about it, is that you don’t realize it is using your profile content, until you all of a sudden see your friends’ and your own photo appear. Interesting detail: Hyves also gave the advertising agency access to the data of hidden profiles, which they weren’t allowed to do according their own terms & conditions – would that be a cyber crime? Anyway, a minor detail when you realize how useful and effective this message can be. And compliments to the government. Usually they make unconvincing, waste-of-money advertising.

Update: (August, 21st) Adformatie reports that the campaign was terminated this week, because of its overwhelming effect. Three million Hyvers watched the personalized video (out of 16,5 million Dutchmen), while the link was forwarded more than 7 million times. Impressive.

Wow, what a great print ad (click pic = full ad) to explain that you sell “extra strong garlic sauce”. It instantly shows how Heinz’ new sauce scares away all the personal ads in the newspaper: no date guaranteed! Though when you think about it; is the repllent quality of garlic an attribute you’d want to blow up? Mmm. Probably not. Then again, if we’re talking about single mindedly conveying a message loud and clear, this ad is a winner! Created by N=5.

Yacco Vijn leaves digital agency Kong (N=5′s digital sibling) to become Managing Creative Director at TBWA\Neboko alongside Bas Engels. It was a hard decision for Vijn, but the fact that TBWA has been so consistent in its creative success over the past decade and the fact that he leaves Kong in good shape, made him decide to accept this new adventure. By hiring Vijn TBWA wants to incorporate digital in its DNA, which is different from previous attempts to found separate digital agencies; first agency.com and a few years ago Flow – both attempts failed. When we asked Vijn what he thinks of becoming MCD at an agency known for being especially good in making (Dutch) TVC’s, he told us that ‘digital’ is becoming obsolete: “The term is slowly eroding; when I go to a shop to buy a camera, I’ll ask for a camera, not a digital camera. It’s obvious that it will be digital – everything is. I think the time is ripe to stop putting digital labels on agencies and go for integrated by default“. Wise words. Floris Hülsmann, who ironically enough left Flow last year to join Kong, will be taking over Vijn’s role until Kong has found a replacement.

Not really groundbreaking, this banner created by Kong, but way more interesting than your average banner and therefore more effective we’d guess. The banner educates us about using our mobiles as a weapon to identify offenders; “Catch the thief Use your mobile”. We wouldn’t recommend the shopkeeper to use his mobile, cause he’s being robbed with a gun – clearly a stronger weapon. It’s for the bystanders. The banner allows you to move your pointer over the scrambled thieve to make him visible. And with a click of the mouse you can capture him. You could call it practice. We can imagine it’ll help the police, but if feels a little dangerous nevertheless. What if this adrenaline pumped figure stops to direct his fear and aggression towards the person behind the mobile phone? Maybe the government should use this banner in combination with a disclaimer; ‘taking photo’s of criminals might get you killed’.

After having been part of the Cyber jury in Cannes this year, Yacco Vijn has now been invited to join the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) and to be part of the jury of the 16th annual Webby Awards to be held in New York next June. Vijn co-founded Kong – the digital sibling of N=5 – in 2007 and helped to put it internationally on the digital map within no time. One of its biggest hits so far was Stanislav, an online campaign warning against cyber crime, winning all the important digital awards. It was one of the first campaigns – if not the first – in the world that aggregated data from a social media profile and use it in a campaign.

What a killer concept; a last minute billboard, becomes a last-minute billboard! The copy underneath the offer: “Our offers are so last minute that we could only create this ad last minute”. It proves once more that brilliance and simplicity go hand in hand in advertising. Created by N=5.