Selmore was founded in 2004 by two of most awarded teams in the Netherlands, Diederick Hillenius and Poppe van Pelt (ex TBWA) and Michael Jansen en Bas Korsten (ex DDB, currently Nothing). So it is no surprise that the agency is known for its flawless feeling for great advertising. This has resulted in a big amount of highly qualitative work (both concept and execution-wise). Their most impactful work in 2008 was for Van Gils (It’s all about the suit), a conceptual gem that generated an impressive amount of free publicity.

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Octopus Paul has become world famous with his ability to predict World Cup matches. For the same reason he became a national enemy when he predicted Spain to win the final - probably because the poor animal simply likes the colour yellow. Selmore communicated this collective emotion through fried squid - introducing a special edition Bavaria can that honours 'Oranje'. The copy reads: “Thanks, Oranje. And Octopus Paul too”. The print ad is a strong sociological translation of the superstitious Dutch during the tournament. All of a sudden people had rituals to influence the matches. They always say the Dutch are down to earth. Well, if so, not during the World Cup of Football we’ve learned.

World Cup: Bavaria's Dutch Dress babes arrested in South Africa It almost sounds like a hoax, but through the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, we learned that a group of girls showing off their Bavaria Dutch Dress (created by Selmore) were arrested from their hotel in Johannesburg last night. Since Budweiser is the exclusive WC sponsor, no other beer brands are allowed in the stadium. The girls (getting paid by Bavaria) were disguised as Danish supporters when entering the stadium to see Holland-Denmark play. Once they were in, they revealed their sexy dresses and started to draw attention from the crowd. Ambush marketing in its purest form! And ironically, thanks to the arrest this news will travel the world!

New: design agency Ground Floor opens doors Ground Floor, a sister agency of VBAT – one of the better design agencies in the Netherlands – recently opened its doors. The new agency, managed by Herman Verhoeff, will be specialized in design implementation. And with a unique proposition it wants to cater a market that needs quicker and cheaper design solutions. Their mantra is “faster, better and cheaper”. We’ve always learned that 99% of the service agencies can only do two out of three; quality and cheap (but not fast), quality and fast (but not cheap) or cheap and fast (but no quality). In any case, the message is clear.

Cannes: Massive Music celebrates 10th aniversary in Cannes Massive Music is throwing its 10th anniversary party in Cannes this year. In this relatively short period Massive has grown impressively. In 2005 it opened offices in NYC, in 2008 in LA, and last year in Shanghai. And the cherry on top of its birthday, as Hans Brouwer put it, is that the agency got elected to create the music for the epic Nike campaign ‘Write the future’ last month.

New York Festivals: UbachsWisbrun/JWT takes home 6 awards UbachsWisbrun/JWT won 6 awards at the NY Festivals last week; 4 for ‘MINI Christmas Box’ and 2 for ‘Kit Kat Jesus’. EuroRSCG4D (what a name!) and Kong won 2 each for Volvo and Stanislav respectively. Achtung! and FHV/BBDO won 1 each for Public Polo and 8mm Bush, respectively. We really like the MINI Christmas Box, but we’ve seen it used before as a Heineken walk-in fridge box. We’re not sure who was first though. Anyone? Check the entire list of Dutch winners here.

Thanks to Bavaria’s sexy ‘Dutch Dress’ the steward in this film will finally enjoy watching the audience when the Dutch lions score an important goal during the World Cup of Football in South Africa next month. A relatively stylish premium, created by Selmore and made solely for women, in close collaboration with Supertrash - “a girl label for independent women with great sense for fashion and style”. When you realize that most sales boosting premiums – free with a multi-pack of beer - make you look like a moron, this one will fashionably stand out in the orange-premium craze that accompanies the World Cup. It thus fits well in Bavaria’s strategy to become a more premium – no pun intended - lager. And, amazingly, it will make both men and women run to the supermarket to buy Bavaria beer.

This commercial for Bavaria 0% featuring Mickey Rourke, took us a while to appreciate. It was probably because we had to get over the joke at the end - shocking alright, but not very tasteful. The film was created by Selmore and directed by Jonathan Herman. Conceptually it does make sense of course; thanks to Bavaria 0% Rourke only throws his minibar out of the window of the prestigious Waldorf Astoria…phew. Well (type) casted. And we don’t know what it costs these days to hire Rourke for an ‘European’ commercial, but asking him buys you a guaranteed amount of exposure. It makes even more sense if you know that Bavaria has a tradition of using Hollywood stars to sell its non-alcoholic beer. This one for example with Don Johnson – who at the time had just finished his successful Miami Vice career and drinking habit – made the brand instantly famous in the Netherlands. The big difference between Johnson at the time and Rourke today, is that Rourke has reached some sort of a cult status – for a big part thanks to his brilliant role in The Wrestler. Maybe that’s the reason why we like the commercial after all.

We don’t show too many commercials of banks. Usually they are quite boring or meant to be ‘funny’. This one, for a new savings bank, called LeasePlan Bank, is pretty o.k. Not because it introduces a new bank. Not because the copy tells us that this bank is honest and transparent. Not because it explains that we can do different things with our savings - we knew that already. And not because the interest rate is matched with Euribor. If today we would have some money left to put on a savings account, we probably would simply compare the interest rates of different banks, to decide where to put it. What we like about this commercial is that it's ingeniously made and visually distinctive. We would even trust this bank for its clean look and feel. It was created by Selmore and (post) production agency The Ambassadors. The latter developed software especially for this commercial to get the (virtual) 50 Euro bills to make all the different shapes and visualize the narrative. The effort has paid off. If you sell a commodity, you better make it look sexy.

This is a commercial for the Maffe Marathon (Mad Marathon); an annual sales frenzy at de Bijenkorf (‘the Beehive’), an upmarket department store chain in the Netherlands. We very much like how the agency, Selmore, integrated the idea of a Beehive and the typical honeycomb hexagon – part of the visual identity – in the commercial. The Mad Marathon was launched a few years ago. The other big sales event of de Bijenkorf in October, the Drie Dwaze Dagen (the Three Mad Days) is an institute in the Netherlands; women go crazy buying branded stuff for cheap during these three days. Since it always generates a big part of the department store's turnover, de Bijenkorf invented the Mad Marathon.

Wow! It doesn’t get much juicier in advertising! It all started when Dutch bank ING felt they were in need of a new agency. In the past years there had always been a lot of criticism on ING’s advertising, created by Leukwerkt Worldwide (Funnyworks), but ING kept defending it as being effective. We have to admit, Leukwerkt’s merger campaign that integrated Postbank’s and ING’s corporate identities was quite successful. But still, a ‘funny’ image is not appropriate in a time when most consumers heavily mistrust banks for their greedy nature.  In any case, a few months ago ING organized a pitch and invited four agencies; Selmore, UbachsWisbrun/JWT, Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt. At the same time TBWA\Neboko was working for ABN AMRO - the other big Dutch bank. And things were looking good for TBWA, they were in the middle of developing their new campaign. In the ING pitch Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt both retreated prematurely – the latter, because it was still proud of its work and didn't want to change it. So now only two agencies were left, Selmore and JWT. But last Monday something very curious happened, ABN announced ending its relation with TBWA and continuing with Selmore! Which means both ABN and Selmore were already talking with eachother, while being involved with another partner! This also makes JWT automatically the ING pitch winner and leaves TBWA empty handed. Unless, of course, TBWA will join the ING pitch after all. To be continued...

Update (22 Jan): Yesterday in Adformatie: TBWA's Simon Neefjes says that ING invited TBWA in December to the pitch, but decided to stay loyal to ABN - after having shared the invitation with ABN and after a satisfactory answer on how ABN saw the future collaberation between TBWA and ABN.  Also, last week TBWA presented creative work to ABN that was strongly appreciated. He confirms that it must be someone on the board that decided to break with TBWA.

Update (28 Jan): Today on Adformatie: TBWA wants to discuss terms of termination with ABN. According to the contract, ABN was legally not entitled to pull out instantly without paying any compensation. At least 15 people were working on the ABN account at TBWA.

Update (9 Feb): UbachsWisbrun/JWT officially wins ING pitch - while being the only participant left .

Just like in Cannes this film by Tribal DDB won a Grand Prix in the TV/Cinema category at Eurobest in Amsterdam, last Friday. The commercial, only distributed through the internet (how could it win in TV/Cinema?), advertises the new Philips cinematic widescreen standard in a mind blowing way; a violent bank robery filmed in freeze frame and done in one single take. Cinema 21:9 also won Gold in the category Interactive - on the dedicated website you can (among other things) influence the speed and direction of the timeline of the film. The DDB network also won the best network award. At the awards ceremony, DDB asked Gary Raucher (VP Head of Integrated Marketing Communication) to accept this prize on behalf of DDB, which was a nice gesture given the fact that Philips trusted DDB with such a big budget to advertise a TV that is still in a very early stage of its product lifecycle. In general, compared to last year, the Netherlands (read: Amsterdam) did quite well. It won 22 prizes, of which 1 grand prix, 3 gold, 8 silver and 10 Bronze. Compared to the European competition, however, we didn’t. Belgium and Sweden for example – with a lot less inhabitants – scored significantly better. Amsterdam interactive agency Kong (N=5’s online agency) won Gold in the Media category for Stanislav, a short video spread through Hyves (Dutch Facebook), using your profile details to show how personal information shared on internet can easily fall in the wrong hands. Another favourite of ours, the IDFA films “You cannot make up reality” by TBWA\Neboko, won gold. ‘It’s all about the suit’ by Selmore for Van Gils won Silver in the Media category. Looking at the competition in this category, it easily deserved Gold in our opinion.

Yet another brilliant campaign by Selmore for the Dutch suit brand Van Gils. It started a few weeks ago when this ‘home video’ of Carmen Electra appeared on the internet. The acting, the handheld camera, the background music, it all looked very authentic - especially the boob, a definite no go in US advertising. The only thing that made us doubt the video, was - ironically enough - that the guy filming Carmen was wearing the wrong trousers and shoes - not hip enough for Carmen, we thought. Anyway, this week the hoax was revealed with the above video and the pay-off ‘It’s all about the suit’. Selmore introduced this proposition in 2008. The agency hired models like Pamela Anderson to appear with the mysterious white (latex) man in the well cut suit at fashion shows and other celeb infested parties. The press went nuts in trying to find out who this mysterious man was – Michael Jackson maybe? – which generated a fair amount of (international) free publicity. After revealing the truth behind the suit, ‘traditional’ advertising was used to further exploit the proposition. This hoax has taken things one step further and generated about 8 million hits so far. Lesson learned? It’s all about the agency.

This beautiful commercial for Bavaria is created by Selmore, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen (the legendary Dutch film maker) and post produced by 8VFX. It should be no surprise that it immediately made us think of the legendary Noitulove campaign for Guinness by AMV/BBDO (Grand Prix, Cannes 2006) – “Good things come to those who wait”. And if you’re asking yourself why the drop, after its epic journey, is disrespectfully being swallowed by a bull dog, you need to know that Bavaria likes to position itself as a down to earth beer, also meant for the man in the street. So even though Bavaria likes to make big budget productions – especially since it has been working with Selmore – and is the “only beer brewed with pure mineral water”, it also comes to those who accidently catch it.