We can imagine that when you get a brief for a new EA game it will often tell you that the gameplay is new, improved, and more realistic than ever before. To demonstrate this the most obvious thing to do is to show some in-game footage and lift a little corner of the veil of gameplay. That’s what AKQA did to promote the launch of Grand Slam Tennis 2. The responsive “total racket control” is translated into a replay of the final shot at match point during some memorable Wimbledon, US Open, etc. match. We tried McEnroe (or at least an avatar that vaguely resembles McEnroe) vs Borg. And we found out that the game is so realistic that – amateur as we are – scoring the winning point against Borg proved impossible. Then again, maybe we were just too impatient. For those of you with more patience, try it out here.
We received an e-mail from Audentiy’s Niels den Otter about a new Nike film – featuring Moussa Coly, who lives and plays in Pigalle for Goutte D’or – for which he did the music and sound design. Den Otter: “My inspiration for designing the sound in this film comes from how I see Paris; a city full of contrasts: stylized shops and fashion mecca, while at the same time a melting pot of different races, tough neighbourhoods, and street culture. That’s why I chose for harsh, realistic sounds in a stylized way. I listened to ‘The Weeknd‘ and used a deep and ominous bass with a very slow pace, steadily becoming somewhat softer with the help of the floating and vibrant Prophet synthesizer. I made it all build up to the climax of the question: “For whom do you play?” and then made it dissolve in the echo and its delay“. The film searches for a position that celebrates both the super star as well as the man in the street – something we saw before in the Copa Barrio commercials made for Nike by W+K. It was created by Stephane Ashpool and produced by Marc Madeleyn at Cake Film, directed by the young and upcoming director Paul Geusebroek – known for directing Dutch music videos for bands like The jeugd van tegenwoordig – and shot by Menno Mans.
AKQA Amsterdam has appointed Rui Vieira to the role of Creative Director. Azorean-born Vieira worked at Fullsix Group in Lisbon. Before he worked on brands like McDonald’s, AXE, Playstation, and the popular portugese beer Superbock. Vieira is also known for organizing and producing the International OFFF festival in 2008 and 2009. About his move: “AKQA is an exciting new horizon for me and I’m proud that my work has led me to the world’s leading digital agency, based in the world’s most creative city”. Vieira will join AKQA in April and will be working across the agency’s accounts, including Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, and Electronic Arts. We wish him all the best.
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 Epica awards 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…
Paul Lavoie, Taxi, talking about the power of doubt at the Tomorrow Awards
Yesterday we were at the Tomorrow Awards, the award show that is to inspire the industry to innovate faster, as Ignacio Oreamuno explained in his welcome speech. It proved quite a long afternoon – at some point turning into a night – if you take into account that only 5 awards were given away. It helped that the event, held at Pakhuis de Zwijger along IJ river, was sponsored by Absolut and some other hard liquor brands and was hosted by the hyper active Haley Mancini of Boom Chicago. There was also some improvisational, interactive theater by some actors who perform occasionally at Boom Chicago to keep the crowd going, but only at the end of the evening this seemed to pick up – when the bottles on the tables started to empty. The most interesting part of the show were the four speakers leading some of the best agencies in the world; Paul Lavoie (Taxi), talking about doubt as an essential ingredient for great work and showing an 8 minute film he just made about the last two days of Vincent van Gogh’s life; Nick Bailey (AKQA) talking intelligently about AKQA’s many ‘human platforms’; Carl Johnson (Anomaly), announcing his new office in Amsterdam and wisely stating that the digital era needs more collaboration and less ego; and finally Jean-François Bouchard who very entertaingly and convincingly showed how at Sid Lee underwear is the preferred dress and crazyness key. There was one thing that all the speakers seemed to agree on; we live in exciting times. You’d almost forget that there were also some awards to give away. The winners were: Skype in the Classroom, Made by Many (UK); Halo Reach, AKQA (USA); What Do You Love, Big Spaceship and Google Creative Lab (USA); HypoSurface, Mark Goulthorpe (inventor) USA; Les Paul, Google Doodle Team & Google Creative Lab (USA). All cases were, as Oreamuno promised at the beginning of the show, digitally advanced. It was a pity though that there were only Anglo-saxon winners. But since this is only the second year of the Tomorrow Awards, it probably just needs some more time to get discovered by the rest of the world. In any case, we definitely agree with Oreamuno; less awards is more.
Pfff, this style of advertising is getting really worn out – just as Nike Air Max….
Actually we did do a competition to design a boot for Nike ID. then we made it and gave it to Cesc Fabregas to wear: http://tinyurl.com/lpq8bg
O.k., Rikki, fair enough. And well done, of course!
Not that original indeed. And, what I dislike, is the fact that we treat the consumers as kids: They are allowed to play a bit with the work of others, but nothing truly creative of their own.