That’s a good question when you see this impressive ad for Electronic Arts, made by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. The combination of poetic copy (“More hugs than a forest full of bears”) and rich art direction make it a treat to look at. The main insight of the campaign is that about 2 million FIFA games per day are played. And that’s a whole bunch of gamers trying to imitate the Rooney’s, Benzema’s and Xavi’s of this world.

To fully appreciate this it helps if you have seen the commercial ‘The Date’ – in which a man takes his date on a spectacular night out. ‘The Serenade’ is a Valentine’s Day inspired follow up. It comes with a Facebook app that allows you to create a Valentine serenade to be performed by the same band that plays the catchy song Jaan Pehechaan Ho in the original commercial – in a personalized way as you can see here. The climax is this Wednesday – on the 9th of Feb. – when Heineken will host ‘Serenade Live’, an 8-hour YouTube event during which you get the chance to ask someone out on a date in an unforgetable way; performed by the ‘Serenade Band’. On top of that the performers will react live to the online audience. Created by Wieden+Kennedy.

Last Wednesday the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Nederland) hosted a session in ‘De Kring’ on the Rembrandtplein dubbed ‘XXX Expat’ (XXX is part of the city’s shield), with the noble aim of bringing two parts of the Amsterdam ad industry together; the Dutch and the expats. Some would say these two groups are surely two sides to the same coin, others would say these are separate entities with little or nothing in common other than geography. The somewhat lacking relationship between these two communities has been well documented over the years, yet despite this, nothing has ever quite bridged that gap, except of course – modest as we are – Amsterdam Ad Blog. Lode Schaeffer (ECD at Indie), new chairman to the ADCN is determined to branch out and readdress the balance. The idea was simple; get five speakers from leading agencies in Amsterdam to each give a presentation about the experience of living and working in Amsterdam as an expat.

The evening kicked off with Chris Baylis (ECD at Tribal DDB, British), Baylis talked about “Dutch optimism”, something he applauded as one of the great positive cultural traits of the city. He continued, however, by showing how this optimism has a downside when applied to the work place, and quickly becomes a laissez-faire attitude to deadlines and overtime. He explained how shocked he was upon arrival that Dutch employees as a rule refuse to work weekends, a delinquency he had thankfully managed to stamp out of the agency by hiring more international folk who were prepared to sacrifice their free time and days off. So the thing you initially like and champion in a culture becomes the thing that you don’t like and try to change. This insight came up a few times throughout the evening.

Next up was Eric Quennoy (ECD W+K, Australian) who took us on a leisurely, sprawling train of thought following his journey of experience in Amsterdam during the five years that he’s worked here. This talk was more free-form than lecture, and all the better for it. The last 5 years of his career have been “the most productive and the most satisfying so far”, which he puts entirely down to the city itself. The “nurturing environment” and “oasis of calm” allows all the chaos to go into “your work instead of your life” and the “beautiful backdrop of the city” affects you positively as a creative person. He pointed out that in other cities you spend half your time competing with other companies, watching what they are doing, trying to stay ahead “keeping up with the Joneses”. Whereas here he feels free to do his thing. Just as great artists retreat to epic landscapes to create their final opus, “we ad people do our best work out of Amsterdam” – well said Eric.

Jennifer Skupin (Creative, KesselsKramer, German) started things off by unwittingly, but comically, reinforcing a certain national stereotype when asking to “be in control of her own slides”. The idea of structure and control versus fluidity was evident in her presentation as she contrasted German ways of defining things versus the Dutch way. The prime example being KesselsKramer, which is branding meets design meets advertising. This idea of blurring the lines between different disciplines would be all but impossible in her native Germany. She admired the Dutch “strong sense of design” and the importance attached to “corporate identity”. She made an interesting point by contrasting Dutch police cars and fire engines with German ones. Dutch design won, hands down. However not all aspects of life in Holland were equally pleasing and she termed Amsterdam a ‘stop-off place for the International crowd’ populated by the transient.

The following speaker was Ron Smrczek (ECD TAXI, Canadian) who was the freshest blood on stage with only ten months in Amsterdam under his belt. Therefore – as he admitted himself – some of his observations were “rose tinted”. His main points were about Amsterdam being beautiful, old, multicultural, yet English speaking and how the city stays true to its roots and history. TAXI merged with a local agency, so there’s a strong Dutch culture at the office, he joked about the way everyone took lunch together, which was great, but “WHY does it have to be exactly the same every day?!”
His final observation was that on the surface there doesn’t appear to be a huge ad or design industry here, but if you scratch away you can find little pockets of magic.

Finally, Stephen Hancock (Creative Director 180, British) set up his well thought-out presentation by observing that 180 still feels quite isolated “in our own spaceship” as an international agency – even after 13 years here. What attracted him to the ad scene in Amsterdam was the random mix of people and nationalities in the mix, as opposed to London, for example, which seems to churn out “one type of person, quite wanky.” He agreed with previous speaker Jennifer Skupin that it was easier to blur the lines here and many disciplines under one roof and noted that historically Amsterdam has always been progressive, global, outward looking. Another typical thing about the Dutch is that the way of thinking is far more polarized; you either “love or hate” something – which he literally quoted from the invitation – as opposed to the lukewarm “like or dislike” (see picture). The combination of a “no nonsense” approach and wanting to have “everything under control” is translated in Dutch design; it all looks so well ordered and linear. Designer Dick Bruna, famous for creating Nijntje (or Miffy), was mentioned as a product of this sense of restriction and discipline. His final point was the town and its industry is small enough that “everyone in this room knows each other by default” so there was no more excuses in bringing the Dutch and the International audiences closer together.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the speakers were on the whole positive about Amsterdam. Their insights were largely shaped by the amount of time they’d spent in the city and the experience of living here; as opposed to any really deep insights into Dutch culture – perhaps Stephen Hancock’s design references came the closest to this. Ultimately the event worked best as a rallying call and reminder to the Dutch ad community as to just why so many international folk move over to work in Amsterdam. In fact it’s sometimes far too easy to take the good life for granted.

Here some more pictures.

Edu Pou, CD at W+K, has found a new creative partner in Stuart Harricks (left in picture), after his former partner, Joakim Borgström, left for San Francisco to join Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Harricks joins W+K after leaving Y&R New York where he was Global CD for LG worldwide among other brands alongside Andrew McKechnie. Recent work for LG included the award-winning ‘Something Lurking’ film, created with Psyop. Before Y&R, Harricks worked as an Integrated ACD at Modernista!, Boston. And before that he spent four years at Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore. 24 year old Zabeti (right in picture) was born in Paris to parents of Persian origin and grew up in Germany. After graduating from the Miami Ad School in Hamburg, he received the ADC’s Student of the Year Award. In 2007 Siavosh joined DDB Paris and created the famous Tropicana billboard (powered by oranges), among other striking work. During his four years at DDB he impressively won 4 Cannes Lions, a ONE Show Pencil, 2 WEBBY awards, several Young Guns awards, and 2 D&AD nominations. We wish both Harricks and Zabeti all the best in Amsterdam!

The Champion’s League season has started and according to Heineken it is the most prestigious competition on the planet. Wieden+Kennedy was asked to convey the Champion’s League as ‘black-tie’ football; the players on an epic stage in prestigious arena’s. Well, they’ve done an impressive job with Clarence Seedorf and Gianluigi Buffon performing in an opera house overlooked by real angels. Here‘s another one in an ancient Roman gladiatorial ring, with Vieira and Van Nistelrooy competing in front of Adler’s goal. Wieden also created a series of adaptations, meant as humorous, but in our humble opinion a weak attempt, almost spoiling the beauty of the originals. Anyway, the films were directed by Martin Krejci (Stink) and shot by Stepan Kucera.

The ad factory Wieden+Kennedy just keeps on giving birth to new, international commercials. This one for EA, ‘Love Football, Hate Football’, promotes FIFA 12, the much anticipated game by those who are obsessed with football – the ones who play football, comment on football, read about it, argue about it, worry and even dream about it. According to the press release the game has a “player impact engine, precision dribbling, and pro player intelligence”, which doesn’t really mean much to us, but should make the game even more life-like than FIFA 11. Production budget-wise this version is clearly more modest than last year’s commercial; Rooney, for example, is the only star player that could be afforded physically – the other ones merely earned their selves a digital role. We understand why they chose Rooney; he must be on Wieden’s pay role by now – here he’s writing the future for Nike. The commercial was directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (Smuggler) and post produced by The Mill.