Neboko was founded in 1999 by Simon Neefjes, Cor den Boer en Diederick Koopal. Because of its instant success the agency was bought by Campaign Company (part of TBWA) already after 3 years. Neefjes is still managing partner, while Den Boer and Koopal stepped back in 2008. Because the agency employs so many creatives, the creative direction is divided between 4 directors: Bas Engels, Ernst Jan van Rossen, Matthijs Slot and Pim van Nunen. Neboko is one of the biggest and best agencies in the Nehterlands and known for its funny and brilliantly executed commercials. And it’s not just the consumer that loves Neboko’s work; in 2009 it was the most successful agency at the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Netherlands) awards.

www.neboko.nl

Prof. W.H. Keesomlaan 8
1183 DJ Amsterdam
+31 (0)20 571 5500
neboko@tbwa.nl

Quite spectacular this outdoor ad for the Adidas F50 Adizero. Not only did Adidas change the tram stop benches, the real boots were also incorporated in the outdoor furniture. Created by 180, TBWA\BEC and JC Decaux.

While the Pletterpet has not been the most successful premium Heineken ever launched – at the supermarket you’ll still find big piles of  Pletterpet boxes - Heineken yesterday made a big come back during the national team's canal parade. Heineken's agency TBWA\Neboko – also responsible for the Pletterpet - came up with the idea to spoof  the well known Heineken pay-off Biertje? (Beer?) – not in use anymore, for that matter. By leaving the ‘i’ out, it spells ‘Bertje!’, referring to the Dutch football coach Bert van Marwijk. During the last days of the tournament the Amsterdam brewer spread Bertje! t-shirts and flags through supermarket Albert Heijn and its own bars. By the time the Dutch team was hounoured with a canal parade - as if they had become world champion - it was impossible to miss ‘Bertje!’ Picture: the Heineken Brewery Museum; fan waiting for the Canal Parade; newspaper ad; and Dutch top scorer Sneijder holding a Bertje! flag. Though we are very impressed by the amount of (free) publicity this must have generated, we still preferred to look at the Bavaria Dutch dress girls.

On Saturday the last Cannes Lions were awarded to Amsterdam agencies in the categories Film and Film Craft. Silver went to the intelligent commercials made by TBWA\Neboko for IDFA - international documentary festival Amsterdam. Though we liked the previous concept a little better, the one showed in this post brings the message ‘You can’t make up reality’ in a similarly convincing way. 180 Amsterdam won silver in the 'Film Craft' category for their Adidas film ‘Every team needs the spark’. Indeed, a lot of craftsmanship. XXS and N=5 won bronze for their Dierenbescherming (animal protection) and Live Interactive Billboard ads respectively. The latter is an aggression awareness campaign that shows a billboard with ambulance personal being harassed. Bystanders that watch the billboard are being filmed and integrated in the film - so they watch their selves being inactive. Quite smart, though in our opinion this case would have been better of winning in Outdoor or Cyber. Like last year Philips won a Grand Prix (this time in ‘Film Craft’) for The Gift, "a sci-fi thriller in a dystopian future" that shows quite some skills being brought together. It was created by DDB London in assocation with RSA Films. We mention it, cause Tribal DDB Amsterdam was responsible for the overarching Parallel Lines campaign that included the 5 short films - of which The Gift was one. O.k., enough chest pounding already. Let's get back to work!

An exquisite example of (true!) storytelling. The ‘Pletterpet’ is the best WC premium we’ve come across so far – the Netherlands probably has the highest football-premium-density in the world. This instruction film shows the package you buy in the supermarket in its full glory - €11, including 8 cans of beer. We do feel slightly embarrassed for all the Dutch morons wearing one at the WC football in South Africa and hijacking two South African traditions – the Makaraba and the Vuvuzela (horn). But letting our political (over) correctness aside for a second, the commercial is well made and when you realize that Heineken, or rather its agency TBWA Amsterdam, needs to come up with a new premium every football tournament, we have to say it's quite original. Nice detail: the guy at the end really is the inventor of the Makaraba. In this film you can see all the previous premiums TBWA created for Heineken - though the film is a bit lame, it shows how much fun both advertiser and agency must have had creating all those premiums. And it’s that fun exactly that is translated in the smiling e’s in the Heineken logo at the end of the Pletterpet commercial.

This commercial by Amsterdam agency N=5 for LOI – a private education institute – was awarded a Dutch ‘SAN Accent’ last week. The SAN Awards is the only award festival organized by advertisers. With the pay-off “Holland gets smarter and smarter”, the commercial tells the story of a family visiting an Italian restaurant. The waiters are talking not very respectfully (in Italian) about the ‘blond’ daughter, her mother and the ‘ugly’ dad. Then the dad says in fluent Italian ‘Hey, pasta face, if you’re finished talking with your girlfriends, can you please give us some of your time?’ Three other N=5 campaigns were also awarded, but the most important award for N=5 was ‘Agency of the year’. An understandable choice. The agency is known for keeping a strong balance between esthetic and strategic advertising – though in the past years they’ve somewhat neglected this unique positioning. Bol.com (the Dutch Amazon) was elected advertiser of the year. Its catchy campaigns, created by Etcetera, all communicate the message ‘Another reason to buy at Bol.com’. Albert Heijn - the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands - was awarded the ‘Consitency award’ – the smartly integrated and very succesful campaigns are created by TBWA. Among all the winners, our favourite campaign was created by Brand New Telly for LG. The LG Renoir, the first mobile phone with a 8 megapixel camera, was hyped by shooting the entire campaign with the camera itself. The agency asked renowned photographer Carli Hermès to follow and photograph world famous DJ Armin van Buuren during a 24 hour long stay in Jakarta. The beautiful black and white pictures were used in print, for Van Buuren’s new album cover and for an exclusive photo book for LG dealers. Some short films of the project were spread online. With this truly original approach the LG Renoir became both the medium and the message.

All around the globe Heineken is known for its premium character - even James Bond drinks it.  In the Netherlands however, Heineken is pretty mainstream. Therefore Heineken’s Dutch strategy is to approach men as not very sophisticated creatures that simply like to be entertained. That’s exactly what this commercial communicates. While the girls are waiting to see ‘top models singing on ice’ – a mash-up of all the talent crap TV produces nowadays – the men get very excited by Men with Talent. After the big success of the Heineken walk-in fridge, the beer brand asked TBWA\Neboko to come up with a follow-up with the same kind of humour and the same level of likeability among the target. A difficult task given the uniqueness of the walk-in fridge concept and the amount of awards it won. But we think TBWA did a good job. Just as the walk-in fridge, the over the topness of this new commercial made us laugh out loud – and that doesn’t happen very often. Not very sophisticated, but very entertaining.

This great film for the Young Director Award (YDA) was created by TBWA Helsinki and directed by Rogier Hesp, who is part of L-A-D-A, a ‘production company for new creative talent’. Hesp is one of the young directors that last year made the festival’s shortlist. With the (already existing) pay-off ‘Born to create drama’, the film is pretty much on briefing.

Normally we don’t show typical Dutch commercials, because the humour is often culturally challenged and thus not very funny for an international (and critical) crowd. But this guy telling his girl she still owes him money for the burger he bought her during a ‘romantic’ dinner at McDonald’s made us laugh. Especially because it highlights one of the most famous preconceptions about the Dutch; they are all stingy bastards! And since McDonald’s – with its think global act local strategy – sells a 'Dutch Deluxe' this week (on a brown bun, yuck!), the execution is spot on briefing; “deliciously Dutch”. Created by TBWA\Neboko and produced by CZAR.

Holland won 18 Epica awards - four times gold - last week in Belgrade. It ended fifth after Germany, France, Sweden and the UK.  Our favourite gold went to Kit Kat Jesus. Kit Kat pretended as if Jesus had been spotted in a Kit Kat bar and this news spread as quick as only internet can spread news. We didn’t just like it because we are atheists (or at least agnostic), but more so because we love simple (but great) ideas that generate tons of free publicity. We found it a little odd that this was in the category ‘technique’, but apparently their was no better category available - the category 'big idea' would have been more to the point. It was done by UbachsWisbrun/JWT. Heineken's Walk-in fridge also won gold in ‘film’ – it was submitted by TBWA’s production company CZAR. 180 won gold for Adidas with ‘Every team needs the spark’. And Grey won gold in print for Pink Ribbon.

Source: Adformatie

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 .