“Erection? Veridian Dynamics is looking for test subjects with balls”. In this outdoor campaign Comedy Central teases its audience to watch the new TV series ‘Better off Ted’ about a dubious research institute called Veridian Dynamics. After a week the Comedy Central logo was slapped on top of it to reveal who was behind it. But of course that wasn’t clear from the start. No less than 4000 curious guinea pigs called the number to find out how they could earn some extra money – welcome to Holland. Other ads asked the Dutch test subjects to be deep frozen or launched by a rocket. Comedy Central also built a (bit of a crappy) dedicated website that links to the TV series on Comedy Central. The striking campaign was created by Dare.

Last June Comedy Central released a new series of commercials in which clowns harass Comedy Central’s headquarters for its “anti-clown policy”. It goes without saying that the attack by the “children’s party entertainment veteran” clearly spoofs the breaking news item on the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at George W in 2008 – this time a size 68 is being dodged. The commercial, created by Nothing and directed by Jonathan David, very smartly shows what kind of humour Comedy Central is made of – the format is the message, so to say; funny it is.

What we like best about this commercial for Comedy Central is the copy. Starting your commercial with “Comedy is serious business” does grab people’s attention. And ending the commercial with “Bunch of clowns” shows you know how to top things of in a subtle but catchy way. The metaphor of clowns attacking the Comedy Central head quarters is maybe a little too obvious and (in our opinion) not funny, but on the other hand; it does communicate a clear message: “Only seriously good comedy”. So all in all, Nothing and director Jonathan David did a good job in selling Comedy Central. Here’s another commercial that did make us smile.

This very pretty girl doesn’t seem as smart as the phone she is hypnotized by. But fortunately you only need MTV Mobile to get her into bed. We couldn’t decide whether this commercial is weird or attractive. So it’s probably both. And that makes it typically MTV. The only thing that annoys us a little is the over the top Dutch-American voice-over – though this might proof that we’re not the target group the commercial is aiming for. Created by Nothing and directed by Elwin Bles.

Last March we wrote about the beautiful idents director Mischa Rozema created with his production agency PostPanic and sound production agency Massive Music for alternative rock channel MTV Rocks. MTV liked them so much that Rozema was asked to make some more. Again the idents (Fly-by, Bugs, and Loop-the-loop) clearly carry Rozema’s signature; imaginary landscapes, surreal characters, and a visually stunning mix of live action and CG. It took PostPanic five months to create them. Which shows once more that the more creative freedom you give your agency, the more energy it will put in your project. Or maybe it’s just a case of: the less you pay, the longer it takes. It doesn’t matter, it’s great work anyway.

We didn’t know MTV has a sister channel called MTV Rocks – in fact, we didn’t even know that MTV has 5 more specialist channels; Classic, Dance, Base, Hits and Shows. MTV is rebranding these channels and commissioned a total of 32 TV idents, to be created by motion/audio studios from around the globe. Amsterdam based Post Panic (motion) and Massive Music (sound) created these surreal idents for MTV Rocks – currently MTV Brand New in the Netherlands. It is obvious that the alternative  character of the channel inspired script writer and director Mischa Rozema to make these five 12 second idents. He used surreal characters and moods to make people wonder what they are looking at – as if they were flicking the remote and coming across something really weird. Even though we’ve never watched MTV Rocks, this ident definitely gives us the impression that it does.