They was founded by a group of successful advertising professionals with different backgrounds; commercial, creative and strategy. That’s probably why the agency is so well balanced. And with the brainy head of strategy, Roland van der Vorst (ex FHV/BBDO), most of the advertising is based on strong insights.

www.they.nl

Paul van Vlissingenstraat 6C
1096 BK Amsterdam
+31 (0) 495 3200
info@they.nl

Amsterdam won 5 silver Lions in Cannes yesterday. Big winner was Kong with 3 silver Lions for Stanislav – 2 for Promo & Activation and 1 for PR. Not really a surprise, since the online viral, that used people’s photo’s from social network site Hyves in an online film, already won several national and international prizes - though Cannes, of course, is the Wimbledon of the Grand Prix shows. Salient detail, according to Adformatie, Zwier Veldhoen, ECD at THEY and part of the P&O jury, said the case probably would have won gold, if submitted better. DDB also won silver in Promo & Activation for Centraal Beheer (CB), the insurer, known for its pay-off ‘Just call us’, created 3D outdoor spectaculars with typical accidents. The consumer could photograph itself in the accident and upload it on a dedicated website. The best ones – judged by the online audience - were used in a (2D) outdoor campaign. The fifth silver Lion went to MINI’s Christmas Box (see picture), by UbachsWisbrun/JWT. The message; only €99 per month. That is what we call, a big idea.

Vodafone, with a seemingly unlimited budget for cross-media communication, has launched yet another online thingy. Last year Vodafone introduced Vodafone 360; the answer to how the hyper-connected consumer can manage its different online social tools, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Vodafone 360 integrates these different platforms – making itself a one-stop shop - and asked Achtung! and THEY to explain this service in a digestible and engaging way. The agencies created Madame TreSesti (phonetic: 360), a virtual crystal gazer who knows things about your love life, your ‘online health’ and your work/life balance by ‘reading’ your different social networks – with a specially designed API. The intro, with Madame TreSesti in a mystical room, promises an interesting experience. However, when the website asked us whether we allowed Vodafone to leave branded messages on our Facebook page, we had to answer ‘no’ – we don’t want to be used as advertising dummies. So unfortunately for us it ended there and then. And that’s a pity, cause we would have loved to see how Madame TreSesti was going to visually show us our online personality by sourcing from a database of 600 different audio and video snippets - especially recorded for this campaign.

Update: Achtung! changed the settings - Vodafone won't ask if they can use your profile for spam anymore. So we gave it a go and it's a pretty insightful experience.

Here’s another example of Vodafone’s ‘Life Insights’ campaign  - made by THEY. A campaign that revolves around insights on mobile phone usage. With these insights Vodafone creates products that match its different consumers. Last time we showed an ad that talked about accidentally sending text messages to the wrong person (read: sending dirty text messages to your grandma). This time we see a lady that angrily throws a glass of wine in your face. Why? Because 107.440 Dutch men (only men!) check sports results on their phone during a date. How rude! Although emptying a glass of wine because of that certainly isn’t normal behaviour either. In fact, if that happens, you know straight away that a relationship with this person is probably not such a good idea. So thanks to Vodafone’s thorough research, we can now get a mobile contract that allows us to find the right partner. We still like the design of these ads, for that matter.

Normally we wouldn’t have noticed this ad, but since Vodafone has surprised us many times in the past half year by introducing so many different styles of advertising, we wanted to share this one with you. Agency THEY introduced yet another visual identity for Vodafone's communication. We like the looks of it; it is clean, designy and distinctive. If they are able to stick to it for a while, we would say it’s a keeper. However, we don’t understand it. It says: “325.205 Dutchmen have sent intimate text messages to the wrong person”. Interesting market insight, but what’s in it for us? Is Vodafone going to intercept dirty text messages to our grandmas or something? The bodycopy reads: “However you use your telephone, we have a contract that fits your behaviour. The call+text contract for example. With two times as much text messages. Handy if you need to make up with someone”. So let us get this straight. If you send your grandma a text message saying “Look forward to tonight…I’m horny as hell”, then this contract allows you to send a second text message saying: “I am so sorry grandma, that was meant for someone else”. Is that what Vodafone is trying to tell us? We’re confused. Can anyone explain?

This distinctive print ad was created by THEY (and photographed by Ilja Meefout) for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. It says “I can” and then sums up some random talents: “fishing, carpeting, conducting [an orchestra] and calculating”. A strange combination it seems. But as we all know Asian people are really good with fish, calculators and crowds - only carpentry should have been replaced by ping pong or something. Anyway, the message this ad tries to convey, is that the online ‘talent translator’ translates your talents into a job. A great idea. Although we wonder whether people are really too dumb to translate their own talent into a job. What would have been really awesome, if this online tool combined your talents and offered you a job as a doorman at a strip club, if you told it that you’re verbally strong, like naked women and enjoy the outdoors.

THEY is not having too much trouble with the recession. In fact, it just announced to open a second office in New Delhi, India. As far as we know this will be the second Amsterdam agency opening an office in New Delhi – Wieden+Kennedy already has one, especially to service its client Nokia. THEY Consult (THEY’s strategic arm) partner Tjaco Walvis will be leading the new agency. THEY got a foot in the door in India through its client Indira Ghandi International Airport – opening a brand new terminal next year. Roland van der Vorst – head of strategy – told Adformatie it started with a workshop THEY organized for the management of the airport. One led to the other. Van der Vorst sees lots potential in India. Though you don’t need to be visionary to see that, we congratulate the agency for taking the big plunge!

Source: Adformatie

We ended our last post about Vodafone with ‘to be continued’. Why? Because we were surprised that Vodafone’s new, distinctive characters (the ‘mutated guinea pigs’) weren’t used at all in Achtung!’s brand activation, ‘Upgrade a stranger’. And while Vodafone internally is still being divided over the new ad property – created by THEY - Achtung! was asked to create yet another activation campaign for the (young) consumer. The principle is quite similar to the previous activation; through two different micro-sites Vodafone gives away more mobile phones. The first campaign is called BlackBerryHideout; phones (BlackBerry Curves) are hidden around universities, video clues are given by two students  (in English) on the website and anyone can search for it - in real life. The other activation, is called TheYouFlickInMyHyveFaceChase; an online treasure hunt through social networks and blogs. This time the prize is a Samsung H1 (and some other prizes). We are not sure how many consumers are involved in these activations, but it definitely sounds like something that will cause a lot of rumour around the brand - this time mainly positive rumour...

This commercial by THEY for Vodafone, is the talk of the (advertising) town at the moment. No wonder, the mutated guinea pigs are kind of odd. But we think it’s very brave of Vodafone to adopt such a distinctive ad property and respect THEY for being able to sell it. And since it is always hard to judge a completely new concept, we can only say we didn't expect it from Vodafone. It is actually a campaign we would expect from a completely new player in the market – that needs to build up awareness in a short time - or one with a niche target. The brand proposition ‘Power to you’ sounds a bit like marketing talk. On the other hand, it should give a creative agency enough inspiration to come up with an ‘empowering’ campaign. And the phrase ‘life is too short for hasty calls’ seems illogical (we always keep our calls short for the same reason), but makes sense when used in different ways - ‘Life is too short to search for Wifi’ etc. The campaign is accompanied by a set of banners, made by Achtung! And there’s also a ‘Power to you’ website (also made by Achtung!) dubbed ‘Upgrade a stranger’. Complete strangers, filmed with a hidden camera, can win different gadgets (a mini laptop, a mobile phone, etc.) when the visitors of the website vote for them. We wonder why the mutated guinea pigs don’t play a role in this. You want to push your ad property through different channels, right? And didn’t Vodafone choose for the partnership THEY/Achtung! to enrich the market with truly integrated advertising? To be continued...

Bystanders always judge the advertising scene as being so vein; there’s an award for every fart being aired. Here’s another one; Advertising Age’s ‘Small agency of the year’! We have to admit that AdAge’s goal is noble: “to help uncover some of the great but not enormous agencies that too rarely get recognition, and to celebrate some of their best work, which rarely seems to make it through the big awards-show machinery”. Amsterdam based THEY became ‘international’ (= outside the US) agency of the year. The jury said that THEY “has both the small-shop creative dexterity that can transform unlikely media into ad canvas and the brand-steward chops to win big pieces of global business”. The ‘Small agency campaign of the year’ went to LA/Amsterdam-based 72andSunny for its ‘Next Level’ campaign for Nike - a fast-paced two minute commercial directed by Guy Richie, shot from the athlete’s first-person view. We wonder whether this award show is the answer to the problem at hand. If Charles Leadbeater is right in predicting that boulders will become pebbles over the next decades - meaning that the amount of small agencies will increase strongly at the expense of the big ones - the better solution is to make the international awards shows cheaper and thus more accessible. Then every fart, regardless the size of its agency, has the same chance to get awarded.

Finally UbachsWisbrun/JWT seems to have taken the big turn. Through Adformatie we learned that the agency has won the prestigious Belastingdienst (National Tax Collectors Office); a several-million-account. DDB, Publicis,  Roorda and Imagine were also involved in the pitch. Through the grapevine we learned that at JWT the champagne has been flowing abundantly. In the last two years the office has only been loosing (important) accounts. After having been ditched by Vodafone (went to They/Achtung!) and Rabobank (went to N=5) the agency shrank from 188 employees to 50. Belastingdienst came from Indie, who owned the account for five years and produced some very smart advertising. Indie literally gave the tax collectors a sympathetic face, which is - if you look at the nature of their 'business' - not an easy task. 15 employees were made redundand, because of the loss. Anyway, congrats JWT.