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Archive for March, 2010

French national rugby team talks with stitches

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

The Six Nations rugby tournament has a rich tradition. France officially joined the tournament in 1910 – at that point there were only 5 nations – and the battle between France and England has always been the most fierce and respected match. Because France celebrated its hundredth birthday this year, Nike wanted to pay a homage to the tournament finale, also known as ‘The Crunch’. Before the match, on the 20th of March, Nike released a print ad, saying: “100 years of rugby. That leaves traces. We welcome our English friends”. The stitches said ‘Hello’. After winning the final 12-10 this print ad was released. It says: “Bye Bye. We thank our English friends for this great slam. Come back whenever you want”. It was – very skillfully – made by W+K Amsterdam.

Boards Summit Europe 2010; the insights

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Boards Summit Europe What an inspiring event it was. Here are the insights we took home. The first key note speaker, Ed Ulbrich from Digital Domain, talked us through the process of getting the multi-platform remake of Tron to market. He showed what looked like a trailer of the movie ‘Tron Legacy’, but later revealed it was ‘just’ a teaser to get Disney excited; they could make a movie, a game and a theme park ride out of this single concept. He called this a ‘transmedia content prototype’; a piece of content that mitigates the investor’s risk, because it provides a tangible window into the opportunities of the concept. Ulbrich founded a company, Mothership, that single mindedly builds these kind of prototypes. (more…)

Boards Summit Europe 2010

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

What an inspiring day, yesterday at the second Boards Summit Europe in Amsterdam, at the Beurs van Berlage. The day started with Jeff Kling’s (W+K) opening notes. With his eloquence and smart sense of humour he once more proved how he’s one of the best copywriters on the planet. Then Ed Ulbrich of Digital Domain talked about the remake of Tron, a very interesting example of building transmedia content prototypes. Cindy Gallop energetically took us on a rollercoaster ride through her vision on the future of advertising – entertaining and insightful at the same time. Charming Tali Krakowsky from the brand new agency Apologue presented a bunch of innovative and arty forms of communication. Scott Prindle from Crispin Porter + Bogusky talked a little on how the agency technologist (basically the geek that has embraced agency life) positively influences the continuity of digital platforms. Examples: CP+B’s Old Navy’s online and interactive coupon leaflet and Twelpforce, a merger of America’s Best Buy, Twitter and the best CRM imaginable. Then Richard Gorodecky (Amsterdam Worldwide) and Seyoan Vela (Grey) gave us some food for thought with an insightful story on ignorance as a Boon and a provocative story on positivity sucking, respectively. Philips and DDB subsequently presented the new Philips commercial that convincingly says ‘There are millions of ways to tell a story. There’s only one way to watch one’. Gary Raucher (Head of Marcom at Philips) explained that last year’s multi-prize-winning Carousel completely changed Philips’ attitude towards advertising. And the day ended with a very snappy series of Pecha Kucha styled presentations by an impressive panel of international agency leaders. A more elaborate story on the most important insights we took home, will be published later. Here are some impressions of the summit.

Shoptalk; Amsterdam international agency magnet

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

There are days that Amsterdam strongly feels like the international capital of advertising. Today, for example, with Boards Summit Europe being held in Amsterdam and bringing the crème de la crème of advertising together in the Beurs van Berlage. Then we’re also very happy to hear that Adformatie last week announced a few new international agencies that chose Amsterdam for opening new offices. First of all Strawberry Frog. The agency split up two years ago, and separated itself in Scott Goodson’s Strawberry Frog New York – that already existed – and Amsterdam Worldwide, lead by Brian Elliot. Maybe it was because Amsterdam WW is doing so incredibly well in Amsterdam that Strawberry Frog decided to re-open offices in Amsterdam. Hans Howarth founder of Media Catalyst was asked to lead the Amsterdam office. Then there is Iris International, an independent agency network that was founded in London in 1999, also feeling the Amsterdam attraction. Another aspiring title in the market, LBi International, will move its head office from Stockholm to Amsterdam soon – a consequence of the recent merger with Bigmouthmedia. And, as Adformatie put it vaguely, it is said that yet another big cross media agency will open its doors soon in the Dam. If this is the sign that the recession is over for Amsterdam advertising, then we’ll definitely hoist some Heinies at Boards Summit Europe tonight!

Never leave the water with Protest

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

This commercial semi poetically explains that 4000 million years ago our ancestors lived in the water permanently. So it’s only natural that some of us never want to leave it, once they’ve found the perfect surf spot. It is part of the new activation campaign ‘Never Leave The Water’ for surf and snowboard brand Protest – created by KesselsKramer. Last year Protest persuaded the fanatic surf crowd to ‘Drop it all’, when the surf was up. This summer Protest goes one step further and invites the surf dudes and dudettes to stay on ‘Island Protest’, a custom-built, floating sanctuary where you can stay in the water for as long as you want. The island is equipped with ‘comfortable couches, WIFI, a toilet [the Ocean?], a kitchen and even ping-pong’. It will travel to some of the world’s top surf events this summer. A smart combination of facilitating your customers in their needs and creating big ass guerrilla presence in the perfect umfeld.

Rise and Fall; Arty AR webcam experience

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

This trailer promotes the March issue of Boards Magazine dedicated to Innovation. The Canadian magazine on international commercial production asked Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille of Nexus Productions to develop an interactive cover to articulate this month’s theme. The result is Rise and Fall; an augmented reality (AR) webcam experience. By holding the magazine cover up and down in front of your webcam, a story unfolds that rises with the birds or falls down into the ocean with the fishes respectively, accompanied by little cryptic text cues. Amsterdam based MOST was responsible for the sound effects – that clearly contribute to the arty interactive experience. The technique of using the webcam for AR advertising is becoming more and more popular. Recently we saw an impressive AR Adidas Originals sneaker ad, made by Sid Lee Montreal/Amsterdam – here’s the teaser. For those of you that don’t have this month’s Boards issue, here’s a demonstration by Theo Watson himself. And if you want to see a live demonstration, and a peak behind the scenes, you should visit the upcoming Boards Summit Europe in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam on March 24.

YDA: For those who are born to create drama

Friday, March 19th, 2010

This great film for the Young Director Award (YDA) was created by TBWA Helsinki and directed by Rogier Hesp, who is part of L-A-D-A, a ‘production company for new creative talent’. Hesp is one of the young directors that last year made the festival’s shortlist. With the (already existing) pay-off ‘Born to create drama’, the film is pretty much on briefing.

Madame TreSesti can ‘read’ your social networks

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Vodafone TreSesti website - March 2010

Vodafone, with a seemingly unlimited budget for cross-media communication, has launched yet another online thingy. Last year Vodafone introduced Vodafone 360; the answer to how the hyper-connected consumer can manage its different online social tools, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Vodafone 360 integrates these different platforms – making itself a one-stop shop – and asked Achtung! and THEY to explain this service in a digestible and engaging way. The agencies created Madame TreSesti (phonetic: 360), a virtual crystal gazer who knows things about your love life, your ‘online health’ and your work/life balance by ‘reading’ your different social networks – with a specially designed API. The intro, with Madame TreSesti in a mystical room, promises an interesting experience. However, when the website asked us whether we allowed Vodafone to leave branded messages on our Facebook page, we had to answer ‘no’ – we don’t want to be used as advertising dummies. So unfortunately for us it ended there and then. And that’s a pity, cause we would have loved to see how Madame TreSesti was going to visually show us our online personality by sourcing from a database of 600 different audio and video snippets – especially recorded for this campaign.

Update: Achtung! changed the settings – Vodafone won’t ask if they can use your profile for spam anymore. So we gave it a go and it’s a pretty insightful experience.

Interview: Mischa Rozema

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Mischa Rozema, director and co-founder of PostPanic, is the kind of creative that completely forgets time when he’s in flow. Already as a teenager, he could practice his guitar skills for hours on end. Nowadays he loses his perception of time when making films. Mischa is fascinated by weird stuff, so it’s no surprise that among his favourite creators are Stanley Kubrick and Francis Bacon. On the question ‘when did you decide to work in advertising’, he poetically answers: ‘I didn’t choose advertising, advertising chose me’. He loves football, so his favourite moment in advertising has been teaching Ronaldinho a football trick during a Nike shoot. And outside advertising, he loves to play football in the Vondelpark. Read the entire interview here.

DAY wins red dots, UXUS the Tate Modern

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Amsterdam design agency DAY won two red dot Awards this year for the in-store design of the Van Gogh Museum shop here in Amsterdam (click on picture to enlarge) and a Nike Store in Paris. Both designs also won the additional honours of ‘best of the best’ and ‘distinction for high design quality’, respectively. We’ve checked out the red dot design website and if you see how many categories and awards there are, it’s hard not to win any. Having said that, we very much like what the design agency did with the Van Gogh shop. And, while we’re at it, recently Dutch interior design agency UXUS has been appointed to design the shops for the Tate Modern. That is, both for the existing Tate Modern as well as the impressive Herzog & de Meuron extension.