Just like in Cannes this film by Tribal DDB won a Grand Prix in the TV/Cinema category at Eurobest in Amsterdam, last Friday. The commercial, only distributed through the internet (how could it win in TV/Cinema?), advertises the new Philips cinematic widescreen standard in a mind blowing way; a violent bank robery filmed in freeze frame and done in one single take. Cinema 21:9 also won Gold in the category Interactive – on the dedicated website you can (among other things) influence the speed and direction of the timeline of the film. The DDB network also won the best network award. At the awards ceremony, DDB asked Gary Raucher (VP Head of Integrated Marketing Communication) to accept this prize on behalf of DDB, which was a nice gesture given the fact that Philips trusted DDB with such a big budget to advertise a TV that is still in a very early stage of its product lifecycle. In general, compared to last year, the Netherlands (read: Amsterdam) did quite well. It won 22 prizes, of which 1 grand prix, 3 gold, 8 silver and 10 Bronze. Compared to the European competition, however, we didn’t. Belgium and Sweden for example – with a lot less inhabitants – scored significantly better. Amsterdam interactive agency Kong (N=5’s online agency) won Gold in the Media category for Stanislav, a short video spread through Hyves (Dutch Facebook), using your profile details to show how personal information shared on internet can easily fall in the wrong hands. Another favourite of ours, the IDFA films “You cannot make up reality” by TBWA\Neboko, won gold. ‘It’s all about the suit’ by Selmore for Van Gils won Silver in the Media category. Looking at the competition in this category, it easily deserved Gold in our opinion.
Archive for November, 2009
Philips ‘Cinema 21:9’ wins Eurobest Grand Prix
Monday, November 30th, 2009Shoptalk: Modernista! Amsterdam bankrupt
Friday, November 27th, 2009
The Amsterdam office of Modernista! (based in Boston) has gone bankrupt this week – this will make 7 employees jobless. According to the agency it was mainly due to the collapse of General Motors in the States. Early October Cadillac announced it was looking for another agency (today Bartle Bogle Hegarty NY, Publicis NY and the Martin Agency Richmond are still in the race) to recapture sales, following its emergence from bankruptcy. Hummer was sold to Tengzhong, a Chinese company – ironic when you realize Hummer more or less symbolizes America’s robust love for warfare. With these important account losses, Modernista! wasn’t able to support the Amsterdam office anymore. Modernista! Amsterdam opened its doors in 2006. Though the only local advertising we ever spotted from the Amsterdam office was for Comedy Central, we’ll miss them.
Source: Adformatie
Eurobest; first day seminars
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
Yesterday we visited the opening day of the Eurobest festival in Amsterdam. The first seminar we attended was given by Paul Lavoie from Taxi Europe. He talked about ‘trust’ and explained that ideas can only grow big if people give them trust – from the creative director to the client. To illustrate this, he invited a Dakar Rally driver, a female porn producer and a knife thrower. They all had to trust the people around them or the other way around. We very much liked the unconventional character of his presentation – especially the circus-like show with the knife thrower was spectacular! – and the fact that Lavoie put his ego aside to let other people talk about his subject.
After Lavoie, Jeff Kling from Wieden+Kennedy took the stage and started his talk by making sure that everybody understood he was not responsible for the slight change in the title of his talk: ‘Show me the ad, you motherfucker’. It had been changed in (…) Motherf*****. He loved the word ‘fuckin’ and used it several times to make this point.
Volvo C30 DRIVe around the world
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
EuroRSCG4D created this Facebook page – together with LBi Göteborg – for the Volvo C30 DRIVe. The new Volvo can drive 1333 kilometer on a full tank, thanks to the start/stop system and regenerative charging. Surprisingly enough these technologies are not mentioned on the website, which is a different approach from Volkswagen that recently introduced a special ingredient brand: Blue Motion Technologies. Instead, Volvo chose the playful route. On the dedicated Facebook page you can invite your Facebook friends to virtually drive around the world in as few stops as possible. So for example, if you live in Amsterdam you virtually drive to Berlin, where a Facebook friend drives the next lap to Moscow, from there another friend drives further east, until the car has completely circled the earth. To win the game, every single lap has to be as close as 1333 kilometers as possible. If you win, Volvo donates € 15,000 in your name to a project that fights global warming. Since we couldn’t play the game (the site told us “Oops, something went wrong. We are working on fixing this problem”), it’s difficult to judge it properly, but we wonder whether this prize gives the consumer enough incentive. We know, global warming is ‘hot’ and all, but consumers are still very opportunistic. So if you want them to play a game online, it either has to be very engaging or give away great prizes – a C30 DRIVe for example.
McDonald’s reprimanded by Ad Code Authority
Thursday, November 19th, 2009The more you know, the better you eat, is the pay-off of this commercial made by TBWA\Neboko. It explains that McDonald’s burgers are made out of 100% beef – and not out of 10% kangaroo. What’s more, only the best part of the cow is being used! The Stichting Reclame Code (Dutch Advertising Code Authority) has judged this commercial misleading. De NGO Wakker Dier (Animal Alert) submitted a complaint that the commercial suggests that only free range cows are ‘used’. And according to Wakker Dier the fast food chain has never negotiated the conditions in which the cows have lived with the meat suppliers. According to a Mc Donald’s spokesperson, the company never wanted to give the impression that it’s talking about a 100% free range guarantee. Though we question the credibility of the whole ad, we think McDonald’s has a point here; it’s advertising, dummy!
Update: Michael van Os (the former chief editor of Adformatie) kindly informed us that Wakker Dier’s spokesman Sjoerd van de Wouw told him today that the film shown here is NOT the one against which their complaint was lodged. In a previous version the voice-over said the McDonald’s cows were allowed to graze outside. So there’s nothing wrong with this version – from an Advertising Code perspective, that is.
Source: Adformatie
Treasure hunt for Vodafone’s mobiles
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
We ended our last post about Vodafone with ‘to be continued’. Why? Because we were surprised that Vodafone’s new, distinctive characters (the ‘mutated guinea pigs’) weren’t used at all in Achtung!’s brand activation, ‘Upgrade a stranger’. And while Vodafone internally is still being divided over the new ad property – created by THEY – Achtung! was asked to create yet another activation campaign for the (young) consumer. The principle is quite similar to the previous activation; through two different micro-sites Vodafone gives away more mobile phones. The first campaign is called BlackBerryHideout; phones (BlackBerry Curves) are hidden around universities, video clues are given by two students (in English) on the website and anyone can search for it – in real life. The other activation, is called TheYouFlickInMyHyveFaceChase; an online treasure hunt through social networks and blogs. This time the prize is a Samsung H1 (and some other prizes). We are not sure how many consumers are involved in these activations, but it definitely sounds like something that will cause a lot of rumour around the brand – this time mainly positive rumour…
Ambi Pur tickles the senses
Monday, November 16th, 2009
G2 Amsterdam, together with Perfect Fools, created a website (this is an English demo, in Dutch the site is called ‘fragrances from nature’) for Ambi Pur that tickles almost all your senses – unfortunately not smell. The site, beautifully made with a combination of photography and animation, shows where Ambi Pur’s new ‘National Geographic’ fragrances ‘Japan Tatami’ and ‘Nevada Desert Flower’, come from. The joint promotion together with National Geograhpic (NG) feels a little stretched. Certainly NG is the specialist in showing remote and wonderful sceneries, but what has that got to do with smell? On the other hand, NG is a very strong brand that will certainly give credibility to the sceneries shown. Unconsciously the consumer might very well believe that Ambi Pur’s fragrances are therefore more exclusive, natural and special than those of the competition. Let’s see if both brands can think big and produce the first mass market scent DVD: ‘a fragrant journey into nature’ – or something along those lines.
Shoptalk: Moseley and Dundas joining 180
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Al Moseley, partner and executive creative director at Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer (HMDG), has quit to join 180 Amsterdam. Though Mosley is responsible for the ‘M’ in HMDG, the agency won’t be changing it’s name. He will become part of the management of 180 together with Kevin Dundas, who’ll become managing partner. Before HMDG, Moseley worked at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and before that he worked for Mother. Dundas (ex Saatchi & Saatchi) was president and chief executive at Sapient Nitro and only joined the agency last January. Moseley and Dundas will work alongside 180 chief executive, Chris Mendola, and the chief creative officer, Andy Fackrell. Alex Melvin continues in his role as Chairman focusing on key clients and agency expansion.
Creative Lounge: Two worlds of advertising
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
Last Tuesday the VEA (Dutch Association of Advertising Agencies) and VCP (Dutch Association of Commercial Producers) organized ‘Creative Lounge’ – an initiative that brings the creative advertising scene together. The theme was ‘Two worlds of advertising’, referring to the clear distinction in Amsterdam between the typical Dutch agencies that make typical Dutch advertising and the international expat scene mainly working for international clients. One important difference between the Dutch professionals and the expats, as talent recruiter Keith White of Wieden+Kennedy explained, is the fact that the Dutch are used to work from 9 till 6, while the Wieden+Kennedy’s of this world live in a parallel world and often start their day when the Dutch go to bed. There’s a different work ethic. It helps of course that for expats social life is for the biggest part happening within their working environment. When the question was raised why the international agencies never work with Dutch production agencies, Clair Finn of U-Turn (180) said it was partly due to the lacking service level of the Dutch. White added to this that it’s not just within the agencies, but in general; Dutch restaurants, shops, the service is overall quite poor. Paul Lovoie (Taxi) suggested that you should do your advertising in Amsterdam, while outsourcing the service to the French. We’re not sure whether that’s a wise idea, but without a doubt learned that Amsterdam has to raise its service level.
Source: Adformatie