Dawn was founded by David Snellenberg, Jaap Boender, Pepijn Rooijens and Greo Belgers. The agency likes visual friendly advertising. In other words its advertising is always of high art directional quality. No surprise that Dawn’s old brand logo won a Reddot Design Award right at the start in 2008. What’s more, the agency likes design so much that in 2009 it already introduced a new logo. But this doesn't mean that Dawn neglects the importance of building a campaign on a strong insight. In 2009 it won a golden Effie for Maandag.

www.dawn.nl

Kraanspoor 34
1033 SE Amsterdam
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info@dawn.nl

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

We are all pretty similar when it comes down to buying an insurance, that’s why this new insurance brand Izio – founded by Delta Lloyd – keeps it simple. On its website it just asks whether you are single, have a partner, a family, etc. And you can choose a bundle accordingly. The different t-shirts show the phrase ‘Long live Average Joe’. Today this is quite an original campaign line in insurance country. Most insurers teach us that we are all individuals. This sounds tempting, but makes choosing a lot harder. Izio wants to keep it simple; ‘click and ready’ is what the tagline tells us. Sounds good. The only thing that struck us, is that we initially thought this commercial was about health care insurances. Through the website we had to find out  it’s about liability/travel insurances, etc. Anyway, a sympathetic and distinctive ad, made by Dawn.

Already in January we called this commercial about the Big Bank Theory by Dawn 'state of the art storytelling'. Last weekend the beautiful animation, made by Postma Graphics and Motions, won a Dutch design award for best motion design. A good excuse to show it again.

Dawn won a golden Effie last Wednesday for its introduction campaign for Maandag© (Monday), an interim recruiter that only hires people that love Mondays - instead of dreading them. And since the Effie stands for effectiveness, this should make the client very content. In the end, he didn’t ask for creative mambo jambo, he just wanted to sell more cars…toothpaste…or let’s say interim candidates. But obviously it’s not that simple, a perfect case also needs creativity to distinguish itself. And that’s what this case embodies; both strategy and creativity. It began with a strong insight; one that is simple, but explains the subtleties of the market and its players instantly. Dawn came up with a name that reflects the ambition of the client and - more specifically - its candidates. And to stand out in the grey clutter, it made this pleasant film about someone that enjoys going to work. And although Effie cases are often about writing skills and manipulated research results, we can imagine why this case was awarded. There’s also a second film; less serious, but with the same message. See you on Monday.

This state-of-the-art example of great story-telling, was made by Dawn. With all our big banks in trouble these days, the timing for introducing the 'Big Bank Theory' couldn’t be better. Interesting is that Alex seems to have borrowed its ‘small bank’ brand positioning from its parent company, Binck Bank. After all, it was Binck who introduced 'big bank bashing'. Either way, we love the sympathetic tone of voice of this animation ("Once upon a time..."). Hopefully this new advertising property will not prove too successful though; before you know it Alex will grow BIG!