“Online gaming with mobile broadband, Vodafone is ready for it” is what the voice-over tells us. We like it. Finally. In June 2009 agency THEY won the Vodafone account together with Achtung! – the latter agency was primarily responsible for the digital work. Since then Vodafone has been all over the place with its advertising – as if they were drunk during office hours. But fortunately Vodafone didn’t (only) blame their agency – after all, a client always gets the advertising it deserves. And we’re also glad to see that the brand finally found a proposition that is both relevant and executed in an attractive way.  There are also two other commercials that show that if you like partying or yoga, fast internet can be handy. The commercials were directed by Wouter Stoter – whose production agency Comrad (sharing offices with CZAR) lent its building for the ‘OZAR’ party in one of the commercials. Let’s hope Vodafone stays off the booze and follows a steady course for a while.

For those of you not following what’s happening in Dutch football: there is (or was?) a fight going on between two former Ajax Amsterdam coaches. Van Gaal and Cruijff both want to reorganize the love of their life, Ajax, but in their own way. And they have more in common; they both grew up in Amsterdam Oost and coached FC Barcelona. But since they have their separate visions and are quite narcissistic, they are not best friends. But Ajax’ current shirt sponsor Aegon, or probably rather its agency THEY, convinced Louis Van Gaal to congratulate Cruijff with his 65th birthday in this newspaper ad (click = full picture) last week. A smart move, since a stable Ajax means a more profitable sponsor contract. And whatever you think of Johan Cruijff, the man is a living legend who deserves credit for his big career – both as a player as well as a coach. The print ad was trending topic in the Netherlands and even integrally read out loud on TV by the biggest news channel. Some nice free publicity for Aegon – and Van Gaal, for that matter. Hopefully it will even stir Ajax towards a more stable era. Though we must say that all the rumour hasn’t really bothered Ajax, cause it will most likely become the National champion for a second time in a row.

We were invited to Digital Dinner at Rainarai, an Aglerian restaurant in Amsterdam. Though the food was wonderful, the portions were a bit meager. And since there was plenty of alcohol, we’re writing this piece a bit hungover. But the good news is that the evening was packed. Achtung!’s Dick Buschman did the introduction, explaining that Emerce initiated the event to connect with the Dutch creative industry. The organization (Achtung!, Bert Hagendoorn, and Pop The Campaign) then asked Creative Social to select some interesting speakers. Marc Chalmers (Perfect Fools), founder of Creative Social explained how members of Creative Social have to introduce theirselves; they have to show what they are working on and finish their presentation with the words “That’s me that is.” So we had the honor to witness the introduction of the 10 new Creative Social members.

Some of the new members showed a case film, which made things paradoxically a little less personal. That’s probably why the person we remember best didn’t need a voice over to introduce himself; James Cooper, Chief Innovation Officer at JWT New York, presented the first ‘bad ass’ ping pong clothing brand, called Thompson Punke. He loves ping pong, but hated the fact that there are no cool ping pong clothing brands. Not very digital, but very funny. Anders Gustafsson, from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, shared his Chevrolet Sonic campaign which was launched during the Super Bowl with the OK Go clip. In the next stage the Sonic is doing stunts, like bungee jumping, and the online community gets initiate the stunts by Liking them. Achtung! shared its Volkswagen Fanwagen case, a virtual VW Minivan turned into a real life ‘wagen’ – here’s the very smooth animated casefilm. Volkwagen’s briefing was; give us 30.000 Likes. Thanks to the Fanwagen VW is now the no.1 Dutch car brand on Facebook. Another new member, Cris Baylis from Tribal DDB, shared what seemed to us the most techy concept; ‘Obsessed by Sound’. A website for Philips that took Tribal a full year to build and allows you to single out any of the 51 members of the Metropole Orchestra. The other new Creative Social members are Sam de Volder, These Days; Tony Högqvist, Perfect Fools; Liz Sivell, Start JudgeGill; Alessandra Lariu, She Says; Rogier Vijverberg, SuperHeroes; Sam Ball, Lean Mean Fighting Machine. Thanks, Digital Dinner, for inviting us, an inspiring night it was!

A bit of a bipolar ad this. It starts quite art directional with some beautifully directed images and a subtle sound design (Studio de Keuken) that makes it feel special and easily draws you in. And then, about half way down, when the sleepless consumer (wearing the art director’s beard) tweets to @VodafoneNL that he cannot sleep, the commercial all of a sudden changes into a corporate commercial with a shitty tune that can only come from a company where employees wear spotless white shirts and a constant tan. Don’t get us wrong; we think 24/7 webcare is a smart brand utility. It’s just that the art directional contrast struck us; as if an arthouse movie changes into a Hollywood blockbuster. Created by THEY, directed by Bill Pols (hazazaH), and shot by Gabor Deak.

When we first saw this commercial for the ‘Meer Dan Voetbal’ foundation (bonding society through football), we thought ‘this has already been done’, but after a brief discussion we realized we mixed it up with this Nike “Take it to the next level” commercial. Speaking of taking things to the next level; the view from the ball (with a camera inside the ball) makes the footage even more dynamic. After Dutch ex international Giovanni van Bronckhorst (it probably helps to use a celeb) kicks off, the ball is passed on and the voice over speaks from the ball’s perspective, saying things like “I am the reason that people go outside”, “I give children their excercise”, “create friendships”, etc. The film ends with “a ball can accomplish a lot”. True that. Created by THEY and directed by Bill Tanaka (328 Stories).

Last year we were invited to the Digital Podge, an informal get together of digital minds. Now there’s yet another digital dinner in Amsterdam, held on the 21st of March, literally called ‘Digital Dinner’. It is organized by Emerce, Achtung! (that also initiated the Dutch Podge), Bert Hagendoorn, and our colleagues from Pop The Campaign. What is different from the podge is that there will be some great speakers from here and abroad sharing their work and experiences in digital creativity. The evening, moderated by Dick Buschman (Achtung!), will be enlightened by – among others – Anders Gustafsson (CD at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), James Cooper (Innovation Officer at JWT), Tony Högqvist (Founder of Perfect Fools), and Sam Ball (Creative Partner at Lean Mean Fighting Machine). The complete list of speakers (partly selected by Creative Social, another organizer of digital get togethers) can be found on a very nicely designed website – see also screenshot above. The bad news is that the evening is for the largest part invite only. The good news is that we’ll share what we learn and, more importantly, that as from Monday there is a small amount of tickets publicly available – €250 a piece. We recommend to put up a tent in front of the website.