After having introduced our new columnists last week, this week we’re introducing a new item called ‘Inspiration’; Amsterdam creatives sharing their inspiration on a weekly basis. In order of future appearance we found the following posse willing to show us what they like, what fascinates them, or what they admire on a regular basis: Jennette Snape, art director at Dolly Rogers; Jarr Geerligs, art director at Selmore; Joep Beving, creative at Massive Music; Rick de Zwart, designer at Meneer de Zwart (and responsible for AAB’s visual identity); David Snellenberg, copywriter at Dawn; Johan Kramer, director at 328 Stories; Martin Pyper, designer at MeStudio; Reuben Alexander, creative at Buutvrij for Life; and Christian Borstlap, art director at Part of a Bigger Plan. Of course these people do more than just what their often somewhat rigitd title suggests (in art, music, photography, etc.) but you can read about that on their profile page, once they’ve posted their first contribution. Today Jennette Snape kicks off with an art piece she created herself. The title is “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”; a nice kick off for this new genre, since it philosophies on what inspiration really is.
If you live in the Netherlands you probably know ‘Artis de Partis’; it’s an icon of the Amsterdam zoo and a cuddly doll for many Dutch kids. Two years ago Artis conceived an alien brother for Artis de Partis to promote Artis’ planetarium, called ‘Artis de Marsis’. The cyclope was a logical step to further exploit the success of Artis de Partis. When Dutchman André Kuipers – a big fan of the Artis planetarium – recently went into space with the ISS international space program, he decided to take Artis de Marsis with him, which led to this wonderful picture of Artis de Marsis in space. On top of this Dawn – Artis’ agency – created a goodbye film, a dedicated webpage where one can follow Artis de Marsis, and a special program in the Planetarium. The fans of Artis de Marsis will soon even be able to make an inflight call with Kuipers live from the planetarium. Engaging advertising in its truest form.
Though we’re always a bit wary of ‘commercials’ that show how the consumer is impressed by seeing an ad – it’s usually (art) directed – we very much like the idea of Triodos boldly using Nasdaq and Thomson Reuters’ tickertape on Times Square – probably the most expensive billboard in the world – to communicate that the stock market is about greed, instead of happiness. Quite a change from last year’s ‘Follow your heart, Use your head‘ ad – about which we said it wasn’t aggressive enough. What we like best about this ad is that it ironically shows that money makes the world go round; everything is for sale. Created by Dawn.
The Artis animal sticker campaign by agency Dawn was one of the better campaigns we’ve seen this year. This huge ‘sticker’, measuring 20 x 30 meters – on the former head office of Shell, next to the new futuristic Film Museum that seems to have problems with the white sheets that should cover it – follows it up with the text: “Before you know it they are too big“. It promotes the September discount entrance fee at Artis – which was introduced more than a century ago to allow the poor Amsterdammers to visit the zoo. It was difficult the get the council of Noord (the district north of the IJ river) to coorporate with this huge outdoor ad in the up and coming area of Amsterdam (where Dawn itself is located), but eventually they did after Artis threw in some of its goodwill. The photo was taken by Ronald van Weeren.
This spring a baby boom is hitting Amsterdam zoo Artis. To celebrate this, Dawn came up with outdoor stickers. The agency was inspired by the farm-animals-car-window-stickers from the 70s-80s. Since the stickers can be removed and reused elsewhere, it is the first outdoor campaign that can physically go viral. What an incredibly handsome idea.
