What do you do as a digital agency when you are asked to translate the shittiest commercial ever into a digital ‘thingy.’ Well, you create this awesome online (Facebook) ‘Remix Machine’ with which you can remix DJ Calvin Harris’ track – made especially for the commercial. We were a little too busy to give it a serious go, but what we find really smart about it is that it works quite similar – though of course simpler – to your professional mix software. So the consumer can use all the different elements of the original track and remix it into a better one. The crowd will judge the work and the best entries can win a ‘Dance Music Production Workshop’ at the SAE Institute or – the main prize – a 6-day trip for two to Ibiza with – tada! – a VIP meet & greet with Calvin Harris. We congratulate Red Urban for turning bullshit into relevant digital activation.
We weren’t physically there when last night no less than 30 ‘Spins’ (rings, either gold or silver) were awarded to the best digital work of the Benelux at the SpinAwards. Instead, we were mingling with the lesser gods at the NewWork Pre-Party. After ten, though, when the SpinAwards opened their doors for the after party, we were able to congratulate all the winners in person. First of all, Tribal DDB. The big winner with three golden awards; two for Obsessed with sound and one for KLM Tile & Inspire. On top of that Tribal won the agency of the year award. Lemz also won big with five Spins. Three Silver Spins went to Taskforce Tracing Bomb makers, targeted at teenagers making their own bombs around New Years and showing the impact proudly on YouTube. The Taskforce downloaded the videos and re-uploaded them with a warning to the bomb makers. Lemz also won two silver spins with KLM Live Reply. And – not much of a surprise – KLM became advertiser of the year. Buutvrij For Life won two awards with their ‘Pass it on day’ – they asked all their Facbook friends to form a line through Amsterdam to pass on their office interior when they were moving offices. Unofficially they also won a third award together with Cote d’Azur for ‘Everything smells like chocolate.’ Boondoggle won two awards with ‘Cordeals’ for Cordaid and with Medi-Plaza.nl for the government. The latter case is slightly similar to the Taskforce concept; consumers who were buying medicines online were led to Medi-Plaza, when about to make the transaction they were confronted with the message that buying medicines online is a dangerous affair. Red Urban won two awards with the Russian Roulette app for Duyves and their ‘Like’ campaign for KPN. Click on picture to see the entire list of winners.
In March we wrote about the ‘Friends share everything’ ad, a funny film that showed how mobile phone provider Hi allows you to share a crazy night on Facebook. In the slipstream of this commercial Hi launched a Facebook tool that creates an infographic of your Facebook behaviour. It aggregates statistics like; how many posts did you upload, who are your biggest fans, and which post were rewarded with the most Likes? The infographic is accompanied by a personalized and richly animated film, which subtly communicates the message that mobile phone uploads are more appreciated by your friends – it wouldn’t surprise us if Hi is thinking wishfully here. Anyway, of course this is not the first campaign that uses (semi) open source social network data – Stanislav being the mother of all examples – but it shows we’re moving in the direction of consumer friendly data dashboards – something online researchers love to use already for some time now. Created by Red Urban.
Last week the Esprix awards were divided between the Dutch campaigns that were most persuasive in changing the consumer’s behaviour. Originally the Esprix was a direct marketing and sales promotion award, but since these terms sounds old school nowadays, the institute changed its proposition – already a few times in the past years. In any case, there were 31 winners. Etcetera and Red Urban (sister agencies, both owned by the DDB network), performed best. They won 5 awards each! Jointly Etcetera and Red Urban won gold for Bol.com – recently awarded advertiser of the year. The Dutch Amazon advertised its study books in outdoor (see picture). Subsequently, a fictional student hijacked the campaign by slapping his own, personal print ads on top of them (“50% cheaper!”), selling his second hand study books on Bol.com. A smart idea, with impact; Bol.com saw its study book sales increase with 15%, and its second hand study book sales with 29%. The other golden award went to N=5 – recently awarded agency of the year – and Kong (N=5’s online sister) for the Ministry of Justice. The message; be careful in sharing your personal details online. Very smartly the agencies created two pieces of content; one ‘traditional’ TV commercial for the parents and one personalized online video, called Stanislav – going viral through social network site Hyves – for the digital generation. Though it seems hard to measure the success of this campaign on behavioral parameters, it surely must have had impact in terms of awareness. Our favourite (read: most original) campaign was ‘Alex, who follows?’ (silver) created by Dawn. Alex is an online broker that facilitates ‘do it yourself’ trading. To persuade potential customers to try it out, it asked its existing customers to share their experiences online – both positive and negative – through a webcam. Talking about transparency of financial services! Here you can find all the winners.
Source: Adformatie
“There comes a moment when you’re ready for something new” is what this commercial is telling us in quite a complicated way. The reason for this is explained by the pay-off: ‘Royal Club, soft drink for the advanced’. It is made by Alfred. And although the concept of the traveling garden gnome is clearly copied from the movie ‘Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain’, we still appreciate the sympathetic little fellow and think the commercial is quite skillfully made.
