Even now, a year after moving, everyone I meet asks me why I left CP+B to move to Amsterdam. Before this move, every other job interview, offer and acceptance had followed essentially the same pattern. A day trip from Boston to Richmond. Or Richmond to Boulder. Eight to ten meetings with planners, heads of client service, creative directors. Hurried lunches with three people trying to get a little food in your face. Scurrying off to the airport and back to the current job. Then a call a week or so later, always from an HR person with no authority to negotiate, pretending they do. (more…)
Archive for October, 2009
How I ended up in Amsterdam
Friday, October 30th, 2009Martini Moments on YouTube
Thursday, October 29th, 2009This ad, made by Watson & Lewis, makes you want to cancel all your appointments and book a trip to Italy instantly; beautiful people, beautiful scenery and an atmosphere you want to completely drown in. And although the Martini logo presence is a little dominant, it makes a very nice long form ad. The commercial is made for the Dutch market only. Why make such an international big budget commercial for such a tiny market? The reason is that they are using YouTube for the distribution and thus could allocate the whole media budget to production! Well allocated, we have to say.
Interview: John Norman
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
John Norman is art director and ECD at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. He grew up in Texas and as a kid his first creative moments were ‘playing war’. Unlike George W. Bush, John got over it and nowadays he is fascinated by design and nano science. Apart from that, he is inspired by Michelangelo’s stubbornness for his own believes and by Terrence Malick for the sparseness of his dialog. John moved to Amsterdam after following up Jelly Helm’s advice to check out the city. And now he loves it so much that he wouldn’t change a thing about it, if he had the chance. Outside work, John loves racing bikes and is a sucker for a field full of bunnies. To read the entire interview, click here.
Lactacyd dares to say ‘vagina’
Monday, October 26th, 2009‘Your vagina is vulnerable’ is a good way to grab everyone’s attention, right from the start! The commercial continues: “In your life you wear 4790 strings, use 69723 meters of toilet paper and 130 liters of shaving foam, you produce 1700 liters of sweat, have sex 3760 times and your period 2920 times”. En it ends with “Lactacyd helps to protect the natural balance of your vagina”. Although it only makes sense to use the ‘v’ word when you’re advertising ‘feminine intimate care’ products, there are not many FMCG manufacturers that would dare to do so. So our compliments go to GSK for being direct and speaking a language we understand. And even more compliments go to Grey Amsterdam for the stylish execution – it even makes the Lactacyd bottle look old fashioned. Interesting detail: beginning of this year Grey made a similar ad for Lactacyd with the ‘subtle’ difference that the commercial was filmed from within the vagina! GSK had it recalled, because some consumers complained about it at the Advertising Standards Authority.
Big bank theory wins Dutch design award
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Already in January we called this commercial about the Big Bank Theory by Dawn ‘state of the art storytelling’. Last weekend the beautiful animation, made by Postma Graphics and Motions, won a Dutch design award for best motion design. A good excuse to show it again.
FIFA Earth connects on and offline football
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Earlier we talked about FIFA 10, the new EA Sports game that was released beginning of October. Together with the game Wieden + Kennedy also created a new online platform, called FIFA Earth. This platform uses live data from the FIFA games that are being played around the world and translates these into a virtual globe. For example you can see how many games have been played (40 million when we took this screenshot!), which virtual clubs are hot and how they rank. The site also links to Twitter and shows football related tweets on the FIFA Buzz section – together with their geo location. We were told that there are plans already to enrich FIFA Earth with more data and functionalities that will blur the borders between the on and offline world of football even further. And it thus sounds like a very promising new Nike+like brand utility.
Bavaria drop comes to those who… catch it
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
This beautiful commercial for Bavaria is created by Selmore, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen (the legendary Dutch film maker) and post produced by 8VFX. It should be no surprise that it immediately made us think of the legendary Noitulove campaign for Guinness by AMV/BBDO (Grand Prix, Cannes 2006) – “Good things come to those who wait”. And if you’re asking yourself why the drop, after its epic journey, is disrespectfully being swallowed by a bull dog, you need to know that Bavaria likes to position itself as a down to earth beer, also meant for the man in the street. So even though Bavaria likes to make big budget productions – especially since it has been working with Selmore – and is the “only beer brewed with pure mineral water”, it also comes to those who accidently catch it.
Royal Club: Soft drink for the advanced
Monday, October 19th, 2009“There comes a moment when you’re ready for something new” is what this commercial is telling us in quite a complicated way. The reason for this is explained by the pay-off: ‘Royal Club, soft drink for the advanced’. It is made by Alfred. And although the concept of the traveling garden gnome is clearly copied from the movie ‘Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain’, we still appreciate the sympathetic little fellow and think the commercial is quite skillfully made.
Domino’s makes Ding Dong the hero
Friday, October 16th, 2009Brilliant in its simplicity. This ad by Indie for Dominos doesn’t need much explanation. And that’s a smart thing when you’re talking to hungry builders about pizza. If it’s up to us, prize winning already.
VEA persuades teenagers into advertising
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
It has probably been done before, but that doesn’t matter, because this online ad agency (‘Papercut’) simulator is very well executed by real life agency Qi. It was initiated by the VEA (Association of Advertisers) to give secondary school students a peek into the world of advertising. The site takes them by the hand in learning the ins and outs of the advertising process; there’s a difficult client – lingerie brand Guilty – a briefing, a timeline and a team of typical ad people. There are phone conversations, difficult questions, brainstorms, strategic positioning diagrams, sketches, traffic problems, deadlines and client presentations. Thoroughly done and very educational. It must have been a time consuming project! So either Qi got heavily underpaid or the VEA is very rich. In any case, a good way to persuade teenagers towards advertising at a relatively young age.
