This guerilla ad by Indie at Amsterdam airport Schiphol is created for the Belastingdienst (national tax collector). Rare species (or parts of them), like an elephants tusk, Ocelot fur, a Ridley turtle and Barrier Reef coral, are being displayed on the baggage belt as if they are souvenirs imported by tourists. All the packages carry the message ‘Something to declare’? It makes you wonder how many innocent tourists actually bring in these kind of goods. If this number is substantial, it will certainly raise the declaration awareness – if not, at least WFF will love them for it! Indie already did this for the Belastingdienst a few years ago. Back then fake lizard and crocodile tales were protruding from suitcases. Unfortunately this will be the very last ad Indie has made for the Belastindienst, since UbachWisbrun/JWT won this client in a pitch last year. Whatever the reason for changing agency, Indie did a great job in transforming the Belastingdienst in a unapproachable fortress to a sympathetic, human organization. And that is a big accomplishment!

This BMW ad adverises the new 8-Speed automatic transmission – “comes standard with the 1, 3, and 5 series”. It looks amazingly sexy and feels instantly right. What a great insight; BMW brings out the little boy in us. No further explanation required. And that makes it easily Cannes material. By the way, in this ad you see its full size; the Matchbox version times 43! Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.

In advertising beer brands are the most desirable accounts to obtain. So we can imagine Alfred has been popping some… um… Grolsch ‘beugeltjes’ when they found out they won one of the more sophisticated beer brands in the Netherlands. Grolsch, the past 7 years handled by DDB, is a beer for someone who prefers quality and good taste, rather than getting brainlessly drunk with friends. At least, that’s what it was always about. The best pay-off to illustrate that was: “One day you’ll stop drinking beer and start drinking Grolsch” (JWT). Sadly in the past years we haven’t seen any advertising with much aspiration anymore. The last one we can remember was ‘Everlasting love‘ – with the pay-off “Beer, the Grolsch way” (DDB). A few years ago Grolsch started to claim creativity in combination with music stars. Though a good idea in itself, the advertising was probably too complicated and therefore not picked up by the consumer. We can imagine that this made Grolsch go more mainstream, moving towards the other beer brands and away from its once unique positioning. The climax was the last commercial – shown above – celebrating the ‘pop’ sound, It felt so average that the pay-off “Beer that grabs you” sounded completely incredible. So, time for a change. We hope Grolsch allows Alfred to give the iconic brand back its exclusiveness. We wish them luck!

This film, asking people to wish for a brighter future of Japan, is launched a little late of course. The disaster that hit Japan on March 11th, has already disappeared from the news radar – JWT will probably argue that that’s exactly the reason for launching it 100 days after the Tsunami. Anyway, it’s a good cause and done by JWT International – based in Amsterdam, among other cities – and production agency Bang from London; reason enough to share it with you. Colin Firth lent his voice to this project and the Pixies their (existing) music. There’s also a website (bit clunky) built by De Franse Kamer that lists all the charities and institutions that take donations – a huge list.

The most entertaining part of a talent show on TV is the first few rounds when the amateurs without talent make a fool out of themselves. That’s most likely what inspired Indie to create these short TV ads for Domino’s. The ‘casting models’ were picked from the street and only got one single take for their 20 seconds of fame. But since “The Domino’s Perfect Pepperoni Deal [is] a deal so perfect that really everyone can sell it” even these talentless salesmen get the message across that Domino’s has a new pizza pepperoni. Very nice. If we would ever eat Domino’s, we would definitely now. Not just because €4 for a pizza pepperoni is dirt cheap, but also because we want to thank Domino’s for donating us this very entertaining piece of user generated branded content. On a dedicated YouTube channel you can watch all the one-takers – even the ones that didn’t make national television – and vote for the best entry. The winner gets one year of free pizza.

A nice concept to indirectly ask the visitors of a museum what the definition of art is – made us think of Banksy’s work smuggled into famous museums around the world. But we immediately thought, why on earth would KitKat want to expose its ‘art’ in a Museum in Twenthe – of all places? The only comparison between KitKat and abstract American art is…um… nothing. But of course it’s not about the people in the museum. They are just part of the candid camera show. The target lives on the internet and is so busy with checking their Facebook a zillion times a day, hoping to be entertained by random content shared by their friends and wannabee friends, that every now and then they might need a little break. Or even better, for most people the break is checking their Facebook. Tada; we have a match! Have a break, Have a KitKat – or ‘Have a Breakism’ as the ad was dubbed. We hope it’ll go as viral as KitKat Jesus – though we’re afraid our hope might not prove strong enough. Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.