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!
For some brands gathering Likes on Facebook is simply a way to be able to spam your wall, we once said. For other brands it’s a smart way of creating customer intimacy. The latter actually try to have a conversation and – if they are smart – give something back every now and then. For example, last February we saw Heineken (physically) liking its customers back (in a bar). Dutch booming fashion brand Scotch & Soda is doing the same now, but digitally. That is, physically digitally; on a digital window display in its flagship store in Amsterdam the Facebook fans’ names will be animated (as from today) in a handwritten style across black and white Scotch & Soda images selected from the current season’s collections. A sympathetic gesture of S&S – and its agency Perfect Fools. Though the image displayed here does make you wonder whether Willemijn Valk will be happy to be portrayed as a man. If we may shoot from the hip; why not ask Willemijn (and some other fans) to wear the new collection, do a photo shoot, and then display her in your store. We know, way more expensive, but then you will make her really happy and on top of that even create something that her friends will most definitely like on Facebook.
This Citroën DS5 Twitter Race is the first race ever (as far as we know) via Twitter. The concept is quite simple; you can navigate the DS5 towards yourself via Twitter and win it. We’ve seen a similar concept by Volkswagen and Achtung!, but using Twitter as the navigation tool is new. On the dedicated Facebook page Citroën constantly gives the Twitter crowd a choice (e.g. left or right) and the ‘wisdom’ of crowds decides where it should go. A count down clock decides when the race is over and (this feels as a bit of an anti-climax) when the time is up, the car pulls over and a sign is held up with a message. The first person to tweet this message wins the DS5. At the time of publishing this post there’s about half an hour to go and the car is near Bussum – if you live there start looking out for it. We always wonder what kind of people have time to be engaged in a game that consumes most of your day, but since it’s trending on Twitter (NL) it does get the needed exposure. It was created by EuroRSCG and Perfect Fools.
Since the Coolpix AW100 is shock, water and freeze proof and has a camouflage look, having someone in a bear suit doing outdoor sports and thus going ‘Into the wild’ is maybe a little obvious. But we have to admit that this film clearly conveys the camera’s USP and makes it look extremely cool – to the extend that we all felt like checking out the camera’s specs. The sportsmen that play the ‘Cameo Bear’ are French freestyle skier Julien Lange, champion Portuguese BMXer Daniel Americo, and Lisbon-based surfer Miguel Fortes. The film was created by Perfect Fools Stockholm-Amsterdam.
We hope that by posting this case film Perfect Fools‘ PR machine will stop sending us e-mails. And though we’re always a bit wary about posting case films – they often have nothing to do with reality – this shoe-machine does look pretty cool. It is made with craftsmanship and love for creativity. So maybe we should say that we’ve posted it, despite Perfect Fools’ persistent PR pressure. Anyway, it is called ‘The Canvas Experiment’ and made for Converse. Apparently the classic Chuck Taylor basketball shoe is the perfect shoe for being experimental (read: hip) and/or playing the drums. More info can be found in our previous post on the teaser that was released in May.
