Everybody that lives in Amsterdam recognizes the human sized letters that spell ‘I Amsterdam’. So when the A and the M disappeared this week, people noticed that something was missing. Amsterdam Partners (AP) – the agency that exploits the city slogan – reported the letters as stolen. AP even stated they encountered the missing letters on Marktplaats (the Dutch eBay). But it was all a hoax. The letters were replaced by a (big) piece of origami. With this guerrilla action Sony tried to get attention for their new game ‘Heavy Rain’ – on sale as from yesterday. In this game there’s a character called the Origami Killer – hence the origami. The person selling the letters on Marktplaats was called Erik Gilliroam, an anagram for Origami Killer. Do they really expect gamers to buy this game after having seen such an incredibly far fetched example of bad guerrilla advertising?!

A few weeks ago Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool criticized Amsterdam’s city marketing, because it would lack creativity. Quite ironic when ‘creativity’ is supposed to be one of Amsterdam’s USP’s. The only thing that connects the city’s scattered marketing activities is the brand ‘I Amsterdam’. And though these two words are quite visible throughout the city, no one really knows what it means. Responsible for building this brand – or not building it, if you will – is Amsterdam Partners, an ‘agency’ solely responsible for the exploitation of I Amsterdam. One of the most recent I Amsterdam ads, is this film through the eyes of a tourist. It asks tourists to explain (in video or writing) how they would spend €1000. The best submission wins *tada!* €1000. Indeed, not what we’d call creative advertising. We do think however that the catchy film makes Amsterdam look sexy and exciting – though we wondered why the Red Light District is more representative than a coffeeshop, another very important USP. The ‘commercial’ was created by Big Shots, an online video production agency that put itself more or less on the map with their wonderful anti-O’Reilly (Fox News) video ‘The truth about Amsterdam’ – the best piece of city marketing we’ve ever seen.