Last month we wrote about the next edition of Digital Dinner Amsterdam. Today the speakers are officially announced; Maximilian Madile (Google Creative Lab, London), Ted Persson (Great Works, Sweden), Carl Waldekranz (Tictail, Sweden – “Start your free online store”), Elizabeth Valleau (R/GA, NYC) en Benjamin Palmer (Barbarian Group, NYC) – all part of the digital collective Creative Social. The evening, organized by Emerce, held on 20 March in Het Pompstation, and moderated by Mervyn ten Dam (Achtung!), will revolve around the central theme: “What and who’s next in digital.”

Christian Borstlap proudly presents 5 (out of 7) bulbs to the press – photo by Matthijs Immink. 

Unfortunately it took us half a week to recover from the ADCN (Art Director Club Netherlands) awards (read: the party afterwards). Which is why only now we’re able to do a write up. Anyway, unlike last year the venue (Gashouder, instead of Concertgebouw) and James Bond-inspired opening show were quite impressive; sexy girls, wearing tight latex suits (apparently a special desire of Etcetera’s Peter van Leeuwen), entered a box-ring stage accompanied by pumping music and a light show. It even made us feel a little proud about our industry: “Yeah, we work in advertising, baby!” The English-speaking presenter, Juan Señor, who also does the awards in Cannes, made the chitchat-interviews on stage with the different Jury presidents – just like last year – feel somewhat bipolar. Though we very well understand that the ADCN wants to include the international agencies, most Dutchies were either hard to follow, because of their not so fluent English, or simply doing their speeches in Dutch. But enough about form, let’s talk about the awards. Then again, form won Big last Wednesday.

Art director Christian Borstlap’s Part of a Bigger Plan won 7 out of 28 bulbs in design related categories: 3D design, Motion graphics, and Art Direction. Here’s one for Louis Vuitton. His agency’s impressive amount of bulbs made ad magazine Adformatie wonder whether Christian Borstlap – with his “mini studio” – is simply the best or whether the competition is mediocre. It’s not either/or; if Borstlap rules – and he does in our opinion – he automatically makes the rest mediocre. What it does show is that his formula works. In other words, nomen est omen; small really is the new big, because ‘Part of a bigger plan’ is able to hire the right talent for the right job. It makes the agency nimble, without having to make concessions on quality. Indie did also well with 4 bulbs for Domino’s. If you talk about true advertising ideas, but in unexpected forms, these are your examples. Here are two: One Phrase Serenade and Safe Sound Scooter. Indie and Domino’s really deserve a consistency award for winning every year at the ADCN awards with truly original work for Domino’s – is what one jury member told us. Three agencies won 2 bulbs: Dawn (for Artis and Triodos), Achtung! (for Volkswagen and Skoda), and Havas for very innovatively turning Twitter into a musical instrument: Tweetphony. The very best idea of the evening was awarded a Grand Prix; Woedend and WeFilm created an interactive film, directed through Twitter – we interviewed the makers about the project last August. All in all, an inspiring list of winners proving that even in times of crisis creativity in advertising doesn’t need to suffer.

Last Thursday the SpinAwards were awarded to the most digital clients, agencies, and ideas. Achtung! was the big winner with one Gold (Das Interland for Volkswagen) and three Silver (‘Tour dus Sofa’ for Skoda – an interactive game around the Tour de France). On top of that Achtung! became agency of the year – for the third time. KLM also won one Gold (Meet & Seat by Tribal DDB) and three Silver (Meet & Seat and Must see map by Code d’Azur), and became client of the year. Apart from these winners, our favourite cases were: Tweetphony (create your own 140-character symphony) by Havas – two Silvers – and the Twitter-directed film Under Control by Woedend!, winning Gold and Silver. Both ideas are simple, but at the same time quite innovative, using Twitter in a smart and unorthodox way. Finally, we were charmed by FHV/BBDO’s Holland’s Next Octopus Paul, winning Silver. You can find the complete list here.

Maximilian Madile about Google Creative Lab’s ‘Science Fair’ (Photo by Merten Snijders)

Thursday night we were invited to Digital Dinner Amsterdam, a dinner where some of the finest digital minds from the creative industry gathered to eat and share their knowledge. Unlike last year, there was enough room in restaurant Het Pompstation, which meant we actually had our own chair to sit on – nice one. Mark Chalmers, since very recently ECD at Tribal & DDB (replacing Chris Baylis), from Creative Social, introduced the speakers. He also casually told the audience that Creative Social is looking for fresh blood – that is, only if you have ‘Innovation’ in your title you’re welcome. The first speaker, Ted Persson, from Great Works showed us how he collaborated with Absolut to introduce a new unorthodox packaged vodka, called Our/Vodka. Though the vodka was quite pixeless, his story did confirm the trend of creative agencies making their own stuff.Carl Waldekranz then shared Tictail, his new online service that is so intuitive that anyone can start an online store with it – even his mom. Wired dubbed it ‘The tumbler of e-commerce.’ Waldekranz said that it would have been the perfect invention for Phil Knight – when he was still selling his Nikes from the back of his car. Jim Haven followed with Cheapstaprint, a service he founded with his agency Creature. This ‘Polaroid meets mobile’ start-up turns photos from your mobile into prints. Simple and smart. Robert Bader from Unit9 shared the interactive “Find your way to Oz” experience for the movie Oz. What is special about it is that the 60-frames-per-second animations are rendered ‘live’ in-browser, made possible with a new technique WebGL – from Chrome. The last speaker Maximilian Madile, Google Creatieve Lab, inspiringly explained how his Lab is there to make Google as a brand loved. The Lab’s Google Science Fair, cradling the proposition ‘You’re never too young to change the world,’ for example facilitated a 17-year old girl coming up with an idea to discover breast cancer. It instantly gave us an optimistic rush about the future – or maybe it was the third bottle of wine that hit us. A great way to end the (official part of the) evening.

Earlier this week we asked the speakers how they they are seeing the future of digital communication. You find their answers here.

Alistair Campbell, Carl Waldekranz, Jim Haven, Maximilian Madile and Ted Parsson

Tonight is Digital Dinner Amsterdam, an evening that revolves around the question “What’s and who’s next in digital“. The event, held at Het Pompstation and organized by Emerce, Achtung!, Bert Hagendoorn, and Pop The Campaign, has some great speakers, from some of the leading digital companies in the world; Alistair Campbell, ECD at Agency Republic, London (“A digital creative agency”); Carl Waldekranz, CEO and Co-founder of Tictail (“Start your free online store”); Jim Haven, Chief Creative Officer and partner at Creature, Seattle (“We choreograph brand experiences across the media channels”); Maximilian Madile, Team Lead at Google Creative Lab, London (“responsible for marketing Google’s products”), and Ted Persson, Co-founder of Great Works, Stockholm (“digital agency creating marketing and product design”). To get in the mood, we asked these digital heavyweights three questions about their ‘favorite piece of digital advertising’, ‘the next big thing in digital communication’, and ‘how the world of advertising will change in the future’.

What’s your favorite piece of digital advertising?
Alistair Campbell:
Changes all the time. If pushed either Gatorade Replay or Will It Blend. Simple. Engaging.

Carl Waldekranz:
iTunes, a service developed to launch iPod.

Jim Haven:
Because I know I couldn’t think of it in terms of being a nonsequitor and its sheer simplicity the Uniqlock still ticks across my mind. It’s more closely related to art than advertising.

Maximilian Madile:
This is such a tough question! I am going to go with a classic. Burger King’s Subservient Chicken from 2004 (!) is the first really big digital viral campaign I can remember. It made me laugh really hard and I remember I forwarded it to plenty of friends. It’s still online. Perhaps it’d be time for a remake?

Ted Parsson:
The first time I saw subservient chicken it blew my mind. But obviously that was a long time ago. I’m also impressed that Nike+, which was launched in 2005, still is a reference people are talking about now, 8 years later. That’s impressive. Lately, Small Business Saturday by American Express stands out to me. But maybe that can’t be defined as digital advertising. I also like the Chrome experiments from Google Creative Labs. And I think there are a lot of interesting things going on in the technology and startup worlds.

What will be the next big thing in digital communication?
Alistair Campbell:
3D printing, because it means you can print real things. And who doesn’t want to do that?

Carl Waldekranz:
Product development; software such as Nike Running, iTunes, Bank of America’s Keep the change and onwards!

Jim Haven:
It feels like personal voice amplification will be the next thing. We love to shout, wave our arms and be famous for 15 seconds. What is that worth to you? A lot I bet.

Maximilian Madile:
I think there are some constant factors in digital communication that won’t change for a while: engagement, usefulness and execution. We are still on a steep learning curve exploring the possibilities of all the social platforms around, but I guess there is consensus that mobile is becoming a top priority.

Ted Parsson:
I think more and more brands will realize there doesn’t necessarily have to be a big difference in between their products and their marketing (they could be two sides of the same coin), which to me opens a lot of interesting opportunities. I think of this as the next kind of integration.

How will the world of advertising change in the future?
Alistair Campbell:
Brands will increasingly be built online, and ATL will become increasingly focused on driving sales.

Carl Waldekranz:
The problem with advertising traditionally is that it has made its living selling ideas, and ideas are worth very little in a world where everything changes all the time. What companies need today are strong teams. I believe the best companies will integrate communications in their service offering and in their product in the future (in fact, a lot of companies are already doing this). I believe the creatives of the advertising industries are the perfect match to create new departments within companies of intrapreneurs, where creativity will be applied as much to communicate the offering of your clients as to define and create it. Entrepreneurs and ad men share many traits. Advertising will also become data driven. A more agile process will take over, where assumptions are tested and iterated upon on an ongoing basis. A lot of people say advertising is dead, and a lot of them mean different things. I believe the value of an idea is dead. Someone will already have had that idea; today you need to be able to execute on that idea, change it – optimize it!

Jim Haven:
Agencies that call themselves ‘digital’ are essentially agencies that call themselves obsolete. The same can be said for their counterparts.  The consolidation of agencies in terms of digital and traditional is just natural selection and other bits of Darwinism. The most effective agencies concentrate on what is best for a brand. And brands don’t care about silos. Those agencies that once were “digital agencies” should stop calling themselves digital and refocus their offering towards innovation. Unless they only listen to Kraftwerk 24 hours a day. Then they can keep their digital title with pride and honesty.

Maximilian Madile:
At Google we say: “If you focus on the user, all else will follow.” That’s true for advertising too. If advertisers keep the user’s needs in mind, respect their time and offer them something relevant, they will strive and succeed.

Ted Parsson:
My view is that there has been a constant change since I started working in digital back in ’96 and there will be constant change moving forward (until the Mayans eventually will be right). That’s what makes it fun, that something that wasn’t possible yesterday suddenly is possible today. One of the most interesting themes right now, I think, is how agency on the one hand and brand marketers on the other have to adjust to an always on, realtime world dictated by the people we sometimes patronizingly call consumers. There are many ways to adapt to the new landscape, setting up editorial teams, working in agile ways etc, and as always, there is no one size that fits all. I believe this might be the biggest shifts for how brands and agencies work since the birth of the ‘big idea’.