What a smart way to use last Friday’s draw for this summer’s World Championship football in South Africa as an opportunity to make some great guerrilla advertising for Nike – the orange team’s clothing sponsor. It was made overnight by Wieden+Kennedy on Amsterdam’s Dam Square and directed by Johan Kramer. The word ‘BEZET’ means ‘taken’ and is inspired by Queen’s Day (April, 30) when the Amsterdammers claim their street market stall space the nights before the actual event by taping off an area and writing ‘bezet’. The words ‘bloed oranje’ ask the Dutch to ‘bleed orange’ for their country. Usually the ‘orange’ advertising around big football (soccer) tournaments is overwhelming and not very subtle, which makes it difficult for an advertiser to stand out. This video – distributed through Nike’s websites – is therefore well timed and with its grassrooty character (reinforced by the catchy music by Dutch electro band ‘Daily Bread’) more sympathetic than your regular over-obvious ‘orange painting’. For those of you not interested in (Dutch) football; the guy at the end is Frank de Boer – assistant coach of the Dutch team.

This ad was created by Suit Supply, a company that knows its marketing! Not only do they have shops that run like clockwork – very smartly combining operational excellence with customer intimacy – they also have a good feel for advertising. And though this word joke is a little too obvious, the execution is perfect. The high level of sophistication – the shoot was done by house photographer Carli Hermès – combined with the provocative character give it its stopping power and word of mouth potential! In fact, the buzz has already started; Stivoro, the national anti smoking body, is not happy with it and looking into filing a complaint! And of course that is sexy news that travels fast. So ironically Suit Supply will love them for it.

What a catchy name for an activation campaign. And what a simple and strong idea from online agency Achtung! to engage prepaid callers – regardless their provider! It doesn’t need much more explanation than the name suggests. If you register yourself as a prepaid caller on the website, you can participate in the contest and receive one text message per day with a difficult question. The person that answers the quickest and closest to the answer, wins – voila! – 1 million text signs or mobile minutes. Questions are asked like, ‘How long can a cockroach survive without his head’ and ‘How many kilo’s of lipstick does a woman eat in her whole life’. And guess what, at the end of the day Vodafone has its database filled with fresh and eager consumers that very homogeneously fit within their prepaid target group!

A trailer should make you curious and reveal something of a storyline, suspense, action, drama, whatever. This trailer doesn’t really do that for us. However, we’re not the target group (Russian or Eastern European) and have never heard of the ‘Legend of Akhtamar’, nor from ArArAt – an Armenian brandy, with a beautiful name and ditto logo, owned by Pernod Ricard. Professionally though, we did get excited by the announcement of a 15 minute commercial that will be launched January, first and promises to make some interesting long form content. The short film is made by Amsterdam Worldwide. The agency hired some big names to make the project a success; Stephen Hilton wrote the score, ‘the award winning’ Shammasian Brothers directed it and Erwin Olaf (renowned Dutch photographer) shot the print campaign. It also features a handful of actors that are ‘world famous’ in the East. Yet another example of an advertiser that invests in content, rather than media, to tell a heritage based brand story. Recently we saw a similar concept for Martini; a 3 minute film distributed through YouTube, creating an atmosphere that perfectly conveyed the heritage, brand personality and tone of voice of Martini. For brands that want to tell a sophisticated brand story, the future of the 30 second commercial is a branded story, 15 minutes in length, rather than 15 seconds – regardless the picky and time deprived consumer.