This arty commercial was made by KesselsKramer (KK) for J&B Spain. When the whiskey brand asked KK to develop a ‘digital event’ this summer, the Amsterdam agency chose to translate the quality of the spirit into two icons representing aroma and taste; a 24 carat golden nose and mouth, weighing both a kilo and worth €25.000 each. In an online game in a surreal London, the consumer can search for the icons and win them. Since the website is only in Spanish, we haven’t really been able to understand the exact rules of the game, but we definitely like the strong iconic images and the well executed Avengers-style commercial. A convincing way to make the brand stand out from its often conservative and dusty competition.

We are very much starting to like internet provider Ziggo! After several surreal commercials – made by DDB Amsterdam – here’s yet another great ad. It features an Indian, called Howling Wolf, a woman on an Egyptian camel and some ‘naughty’ girls (read: ‘porn stars’) getting the fast download-train. A great metaphor, using living images to get this message across. Apparently though, a concept quite easily conceived, since Amsterdam agency THEY used the exact same metaphor last month. It’s interesting to see how both agencies executed the same idea in two different ways. It also tells you a lot about the Dutch internet market. As you can see, the main goal of these cable providers is to give ADSL a bad name. A tough fight for ADSL, since cable is faster (according to UPC up to 120Mb!) and since the Netherlands has one of the highest cable-densities in the world. What’s more, most consumers prefer to have one single provider for both TV and internet. And cable providers already offer landline calls (within the Netherlands) for free – a service many ADSL-providers still have to live on. So the question is not, do you prefer cable or ADSL? The question is, which ad did the best job in persuading you to choose cable?

This week we read on Adrants about an iPod app made for Hardee’s, an American fast food chain that makes – among other things – supersized, cholesterol building French Dip Thickburgers. The app, called Parisian Pick Up, allows you to pick-up girls and Hardee’s burgers – both meat, right? Adrants’ Steve Hall writes: “users can select their favorite French mouth image, select a message, and then hold the screen over their mouths to deliver it with a swarthy French accent or in perfect French with subtitles”. Great app, you would say. But the idea is not new, unfortunately. It’s practically identical to Vanabbetotvessem’s Lovelips app, we wrote about two months ago. And a remarkable detail – that more or less rules out the coincidence  of two great minds thinking alike – is that 72andSunny, the agency responsible for the Hardee’s app, has an office in Amsterdam. Opening up an office in Amsterdam for ‘inspiration’, now all of a sudden renders a whole new connotation.

Amsterdam agency Swordfish Media made this stop-motion video to promote itself through YouTube. The message is pretty straightforward, with words like ‘cross media’, ‘no nonsense’ and ‘clear communication’. But using the famous long-tale-channel is definitely more original than using Microsoft’s PowerPoint. Still, we have to say that the mother of all agency presentations is Boone Oakley’s video. It is not just fun to watch, it also smartly uses YouTube’s interactivity buttons to transform the agency presentation into a complete website.