According to PEFC we’ve lost already half of the tropical forest in the world in little over a century. PEFC, a label that ensures wood to be sourced through sustainable management, asked JWT to draw some attention to this. Not just for Brazil, but also for other countries – that maybe once chose to represent their abundance of green in their flags – like Mexico, Cameroon, Congo, and Gabon. Striking.

We’ve really seen way too many flashmobs in the past years. But when the most important museum of Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, is about to re-open after having been closed for 10 years, you need to be somewhat lenient. Besides, the final shot, showing the Rijks’ most important piece, De Nachtwacht (Night Watch), as a tableau vivant – accompanied by the text “Our heroes are back” – is (almost) worth watching the film. Don’t think it’s a commercial for the Rijksmuseum though; it’s for ING, the main sponsor of the Rijks. With a renovation that took twice as long as planned and costing almost 400 million euros, you can imagine that ING wants to participate in the massive media attention. Anyway, we can’t wait to see the museum in its full glory again – and cycle underneath it, for that matter. Created by JWT Amsterdam.

During Rio’s Carnival both tourists and locals always face the same problem when visiting a street “bloco” (parade party): where to piss? The lack of public toilets makes that the city becomes impregnated with urine for days. The situation became so serious that last year the local authorities decided to detain people who were caught urinating out in the open. Afro Reggae, an NGO and musical group linked to the “favela” culture, asked JWT Sao Paulo to solve this problem in a more friendly way. The result is symbolic, but distinctive: ‘Electric Pee,’ a urinal turning pee into electric energy through a hydro-electric dynamo. The urinal working as a battery fed right into Afro Reggae’s Trio Eléctrico, parading down the street along the famous Ipanema Beach.

Opel introduces a new car, named ADAM – inspired by a Fiat 500? Apparently it’s the world’s most customizable city car. And to illustrate this JWT Rotterdam – an annex of the Amsterdam office, solely servicing Opel – put the car on display in its own customizable two-level “concept store” in the heart of Amsterdam.

Agencies creating their own products is becoming a trend. Here’s another one. JWT Amsterdam created the packaging for a paraffin block to light your fireplace; The Greatest Fires in History – “Now in your living room” – depicting five different cityscapes on fire; Rome, Tokyo, Chicago, London, and San Francisco. The press release: “Though back in the year 66 AD, Rome burned for 6 long van days, you can now have it burned to ashes in just 3 hours. Whilst enjoying a good book and a fine glass of wine.” Ha!

What a great idea; instead of offering WiFi Kit Kat simply offers the opposite. The ambient advertising that can be found throughout Amsterdam, was created by JWT Amsterdam and designed by Kyoko Takeshita. It pretty much speaks for itself as it seamlessly fits in Kit Kat’s famous brand proposition ‘Have a break, have a Kit Kat.’ What’s interesting to add is that JWT made this “free” No-WiFi zone possible by actually blocking all signals within a radius of 5 meters. (via Pop the Campaign)

Today is Sinterklaas (‘Saint Nicholas’). A Dutch tradition inspired by the bishop of Myra who visits the country with his Black Piets from the end of November until the 5^th of December to spread presents and tell children to listen to their parents. JWT Amsterdam created a Tweet machine for candy store Jamin. On a dedicated website, called ChocoTweets, one can write a poem (which is part of the tradition) to be judged by a jury. The best poem receives the words in chocolate letters (that are also part of the tradition). We don’t really know what this machine has to do with Twitter – except that you only get 140 characters – but 140 chocolate letters, sounds like a treat.

This one made us laugh. “Because you want to be able to continue your way carefree after a case of car damage.” Followed by the explanation of Insurance #1 that gives you 4 months of insurance premium back if not 100% satisfied. We are guessing that JWT Amsterdam didn’t come up with the name of the product – as if Nationale Nederlanden resides in a communist country. Anyway, the film at least is quite an attractive piece of advertising. For a large part thanks to director Sam Cadman (Station) and DOP Franz Lustig.

This summer we wrote about BMW initiating a pitch after having worked with JWT Amsterdam for 29 years – the longest relationship in the Dutch advertising history. Eight agencies were invited to the pitch. JWT, Kingsday, and Lemz made it to the shortlist. Eventually JWT rewon the prestigious BMW account. Kingsday didn’t end up empty handed, though, since it is awarded with the Mini account. BMW elected Kingsday for Mini because the car brand believes that a small and relatively young agency matches better with Mini’s marketing challenges. The car brand expects that Kingsday’s online and activation qualities will be able to address these challenges.

Amanda Fève has been appointed as Planning Director at Anomaly Amsterdam. She joins the agency from Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam where she ran, among other brands, the global Coca Cola account. Before that she spent five years at BBH London and six years at JWT London and New York. Apart from these agencies Fève is a planner with a record, having won IPA Effectiveness award and having helped BBH to win the IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year 2008 and the APG Strategy Agency of the Year 2009. The hiring of Fève follows that of ECD Mark Sloan – who came from Media Arts Lab in LA, AD Nick Kettelhake from Nike UK, and Gaston Serpenti from Boondoggle. It seems like the Anomaly team is now fully equipped to conquer the European market.

This is what we call a technology driven idea, which means that especially the technology behind the idea is worth sharing. With a briefing from car brand MINI that more or less read ‘How can we reach Dutch managers’ JWT came up with a concept of a specially equipped MINI that links driving behaviour to the way you drink your coffee. With the question ‘How do you drive your coffee?‘ and a specially designed coffee bar, the car brand visits companies in the Netherlands and invites employees to test drive a MINI and afterwards enjoy a nice cup of coffee – and, of course, discuss with MINI’s sales people what a wonderful car a MINI is. We don’t see how driving behaviour represents taste – is it true that an agressive driver prefers a ristretto? – but at least it makes a nice excuse to park your cars in front of someone’s office.

JWT Amsterdam built a new website. Not a big deal, you’d guess. But they seem to be quite proud of it. That is, you get that impression when watching this viralesque video of the agency concept testing their own website. The website does indeed look pretty state of the art. Though we can also imagine that people are slightly disappointed after JWT raising the expectations maybe a little too high with this video. Then again, JWT might argue; it’s advertising, stupid.

BMW Netherlands has initiated a pitch with around 8 agencies on the longlist. JWT Amsterdam, BMW’s current agency, has been servicing BMW already for 29 years; the longest advertiser-agency relationship in the Dutch industry. The official reason for pitching is the German car manufacturer’s policy to switch agencies every four years. So why had JWT – starting out as PPGH – always been spared? Probably because BMW Netherland’s local power and the agency’s success. According to Peter Haug, head of marketing BMW Netherlands, it is the changing behavior of the consumer that was the primary motive for this pitch – “We need to do something with that damn internet” is what we are reading between the lines. JWT will most likely end up on the shortlist, Haug confirmed. And since JWT ECD Bas Korsten recently swepped the creative flour and hired Dom Nash en Esin Cittone (both ex EuroRSCG4D and Achtung!), with a strong track record in digital, there’s still hope for JWT to celebrate its 30th BMW anniversary.

It always feels a bit awkward when a government is trying to speak youthful – or worse, with a ‘rappy’ tone of voice – to teenagers. Especially when communicating that you shouldn’t use a knife in personal conflicts, but your voice; ‘spreekwapens’ (speaking weapons) instead of ‘steekwapens’ (pointed weapons) – making a good pun in Dutch. A bit of a Catch22 from a communication perspective; if the target is willing to engage, it’s probably not the target. And those who are the target are probably not willing to engage – they just see it as a rap video, at best. The reason why we posted it anyway, is that we like the technique that is being used for the 360° video; you can actually turn your viewpoint around with your pointer and see Sticks and Rico (from Opgezwolle and Fakkelbrigade) rap into the camera and skateboarders and BMX’ers perform tricks in a skate park – a form of navigation that we all know from gaming, but is not yet very often used in advertising. On the YouTube site the target can upload a self-made ‘spreekwapen’ (read: video). Created by JWT Amsterdam and produced by Electric Zoo.

Dutch insurer Nationale Nederlanden introduces the damage manager. He (or she) makes the handling of your damage cases so personal that you’ll easily build up a special relationship – “Hey, Joost, it’s Merel. This time it’s my car.” In fact, Nationale Nederlanden could start a dating platform on the side – “What am I doing tonight?” he asks her. Attractive, well directed, and strategically apt we’d like to label it. Created by JWT and directed by Werner Damen.

We were invited to Digital Dinner at Rainarai, an Aglerian restaurant in Amsterdam. Though the food was wonderful, the portions were a bit meager. And since there was plenty of alcohol, we’re writing this piece a bit hungover. But the good news is that the evening was packed. Achtung!’s Dick Buschman did the introduction, explaining that Emerce initiated the event to connect with the Dutch creative industry. The organization (Achtung!, Bert Hagendoorn, and Pop The Campaign) then asked Creative Social to select some interesting speakers. Marc Chalmers (Perfect Fools), founder of Creative Social explained how members of Creative Social have to introduce theirselves; they have to show what they are working on and finish their presentation with the words “That’s me that is.” So we had the honor to witness the introduction of the 10 new Creative Social members.

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This BMW ad adverises the new 8-Speed automatic transmission – “comes standard with the 1, 3, and 5 series”. It looks amazingly sexy and feels instantly right. What a great insight; BMW brings out the little boy in us. No further explanation required. And that makes it easily Cannes material. By the way, in this ad you see its full size; the Matchbox version times 43! Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.

In advertising beer brands are the most desirable accounts to obtain. So we can imagine Alfred has been popping some… um… Grolsch ‘beugeltjes’ when they found out they won one of the more sophisticated beer brands in the Netherlands. Grolsch, the past 7 years handled by DDB, is a beer for someone who prefers quality and good taste, rather than getting brainlessly drunk with friends. At least, that’s what it was always about. The best pay-off to illustrate that was: “One day you’ll stop drinking beer and start drinking Grolsch” (JWT). Sadly in the past years we haven’t seen any advertising with much aspiration anymore. The last one we can remember was ‘Everlasting love‘ – with the pay-off “Beer, the Grolsch way” (DDB). A few years ago Grolsch started to claim creativity in combination with music stars. Though a good idea in itself, the advertising was probably too complicated and therefore not picked up by the consumer. We can imagine that this made Grolsch go more mainstream, moving towards the other beer brands and away from its once unique positioning. The climax was the last commercial – shown above – celebrating the ‘pop’ sound, It felt so average that the pay-off “Beer that grabs you” sounded completely incredible. So, time for a change. We hope Grolsch allows Alfred to give the iconic brand back its exclusiveness. We wish them luck!

This film, asking people to wish for a brighter future of Japan, is launched a little late of course. The disaster that hit Japan on March 11th, has already disappeared from the news radar – JWT will probably argue that that’s exactly the reason for launching it 100 days after the Tsunami. Anyway, it’s a good cause and done by JWT International – based in Amsterdam, among other cities – and production agency Bang from London; reason enough to share it with you. Colin Firth lent his voice to this project and the Pixies their (existing) music. There’s also a website (bit clunky) built by De Franse Kamer that lists all the charities and institutions that take donations – a huge list.

A nice concept to indirectly ask the visitors of a museum what the definition of art is – made us think of Banksy’s work smuggled into famous museums around the world. But we immediately thought, why on earth would Kit Kat want to expose its ‘art’ in a Museum in Twenthe – of all places? The only comparison between Kit Kat and abstract American art is…um… nothing. But of course it’s not about the people in the museum. They are just part of the candid camera show. The target lives on the internet and is so busy with checking their Facebook a zillion times a day, hoping to be entertained by random content shared by their friends and wannabee friends, that every now and then they might need a little break. Or even better, for most people the break is checking their Facebook. Tada; we have a match! Have a break, Have a Kit Kat – or ‘Have a Breakism’ as the ad was dubbed. We hope it’ll go as viral as Kit Kat Jesus – though we’re afraid our hope might not prove strong enough. Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.

Amsterdam won two Grand Prix in Film and Design at Eurobest in Hamburg, last Wednesday. Wieden+Kennedy was awarded the prestigious award for its epic Nike ‘Write the future’ commercial – alledgedly the most expensive commercial ever made. And for the same film it won bronze in Film Craft. Amsterdam Worldwide earned a Grand Prix in the category Design for the Onitsuka Tiger ‘Tansu sneaker’. Other than that Amsterdam did not do extremely well, we have to admit. In interactive Pool Worldwide won silver for its brilliant StarWars branded TomTom viral. In the same category 180 Amsterdam won bronze for Adidas’ Match Tracker and NRG3 won bronze for an interactive banner for the EA game Need for Speed Shift. N=5 was awarded silver in the category Media with a ‘Live interactive billboad’ – an aggression awareness campaign. BSUR got bronze in Film for MINI’s Flow, Publics won bronze in Print for KIKA, and JWT bronze in Promo and Outdoor with the MINI Christmas box.

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.

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!
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Wim Ubachs and Ralph Wisbrun (chairmen of the VEA, the Association of Ad Agencies) met each other in court last Friday, we learned from Adformatie. The two founded UbachsWisbrun, one of the most successful independent Dutch ad agencies in history. The agency merged with JWT in 2007 to become UbachsWisbrun/JWT. JWT (formerly known as PPGH/JWT) was huge in the 80’s and 90’s, but lost its mojo in the 00’s. It thus needed the merger to buy fresh, creative blood and regain its dominant position – Amsterdam was regarded as a flagship city within the international JWT network. Though recently the agency finally found its way up again, by winning several big accounts, the first few years of the merger were unsuccessful. The agency shrank from 188 employees to 50. For Wim Ubachs it was tempting to leave the agency to pursue a career in music at that point. Since officially he was still partner, he only needed to make a proper settlement. Instead of a friendly deal he got fired on the spot. The official reason: he was not putting enough energy in the agency anymore and was too much preoccupied with his own sidelines. That is very said news. But maybe a good moment to change UbachsWisbrun/JWT into JWT Amsterdam.

Update (June 10th): The judge ruled that JWT didn’t have enough reason to fire Ubachs. Both parties now have to come to an agreement on the payment of Ubachs’ managment fee and the call-option on Ubachs’ shares (20%). If not, they have to go to court again.

Last week the Dutch Art Director’s Club (ADCN) awards, or simply the ‘Lamps,’ were divided between the most creative Dutch agencies. DDB was the big winner, with 3 silver Lamps – and 29 nominations, out of 204 nominations. DDB’s best silver Lamp went to its commercial made for Ziggo. DDB’s digital sister, Tribal won two times gold with Carousel for Philips, which is no surprise after having won already so many international prizes. Indie won 2 golden and one silver Lamp; all for Domino’s pizza. Indie’s golden awards both went to ‘Delivery Point‘ (outdoor and activation), silver went to ‘Builders‘. Kong won 2 golden lamps for Stanislav (interaction and activation). Out of the 7 golden and 15 silver Lamps, our most favourite Lamp (gold) went to Kit Kat Jesus by Ubachs Wisbrun/JWT. It’s brilliant in its simplicity and shows you don’t need an incredibly big budget to come up with a great idea.

These three different styled websites all try to sell the same ‘lots-of-cash-in-no-time’ job. At the employment agencies ‘BigBigBucks‘, ‘SnellePegels‘ and ‘Vlugge Flappen’, students are persuaded to subscribe for the most easy job in the world; it makes on average € 250 for half an hour work! They only need a little work experience (a simple student job is enough), they can work at home, and start today! When you click through the website, you enter the website of the Belastingdienst (National Tax Collector). Though the Netherlands is one of the countries with the highest taxes in the world, students often receive money back. The only thing they need to do is fill out an online tax return form. The Belastingdienst must have thought; once they’re in the system… The campaign, hyped through banners and radio, was created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT. Of course it’s not the most difficult thing to sell a product that virtually gives away money, but if you consider the target, the look and feel and tone of voice are spot on.

What an inspiring event it was. Here are the insights we took home. The first key note speaker, Ed Ulbrich from Digital Domain, talked us through the process of getting the multi-platform remake of Tron to market. He showed what looked like a trailer of the movie ‘Tron Legacy’, but later revealed it was ‘just’ a teaser to get Disney excited; they could make a movie, a game and a theme park ride out of this single concept. He called this a ‘transmedia content prototype’; a piece of content that mitigates the investor’s risk, because it provides a tangible window into the opportunities of the concept. Ulbrich founded a  company, Mothership, that single mindedly builds these kind of prototypes. (more…)

A great week for UbachsWisbrun/JWT. The agency won two major clients; both Nationale Nederlanden (insurer, owned by the ING group) and ING bank – the latter after an exciting pitch with three combatants pulling out. The trouble started when UbachsWisbrun, one of the most succesful indpendent Dutch agencies at the time, merged with PPGH/JWT in 2007. With this acquisition JWT wanted to buy fresh, creative blood and put itself back on the creative map. But of course merging two different cultures into one agency always needs some time. And then the credit crunch hit the advertising market. UW/JWT went through a very deep dip. Last year it lost two important clients, Vodafone and Rabobank and shrank to 50 employees – coming down from 188 employees just after the merger. The way back up was the win of the Belastingdienst (National Tax Collector) account in September. And after this week UW/JWT can seriously start hiring again. Whether the agency will also finally make its creative comeback, is still to be answered.

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.

This guerilla ad by Indie at Amsterdam airport Schiphol is created for the Belastingdienst (national tax collector). Rare species (or parts of them), like an elephants tusk, Ocelot fur, a Ridley turtle and Barrier Reef coral, are being displayed on the baggage belt as if they are souvenirs imported by tourists. All the packages carry the message ‘Something to declare’? It makes you wonder how many innocent tourists actually bring in these kind of goods. If this number is substantial, it will certainly raise the declaration awareness – if not, at least WFF will love them for it! Indie already did this for the Belastingdienst a few years ago. Back then fake lizard and crocodile tales were protruding from suitcases. Unfortunately this will be the very last ad Indie has made for the Belastindienst, since UbachWisbrun/JWT won this client in a pitch last year. Whatever the reason for changing agency, Indie did a great job in transforming the Belastingdienst in a unapproachable fortress to a sympathetic, human organization. And that is a big accomplishment!

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.

After having worked for 7 years with UW/JWT, Vodafone this February announced it wanted to reconsider its communication strategy. The brand that facilitates communication had noticed that its target group had changed its way of communicating (well spotted!). No less than 7 agencies participated in the pitch for 2 different parts of the account; theme and online. This seems to be the best of both worlds; THEY is known for its solid brand strategies, while Achtung! is one of the best online agencies around. But how will they work together? Hopefully not like many agencies still do today; one agency comes up with a superb offline idea, while the online partner is asked to translate it into a flashy website.

Let’s start with the good news. Internationally renowned production agency Hungry Man opened an office in Amsterdam. Director Hein Mevissen – who has already worked with HM for a few years now – will lead the Amsterdam office together with Denise Stork en Diederikje Bok. Mevissen and Bok already own John Doe, one of the more creative agencies in town. And the bad news is: after recently having lost big clients Vodafone and Rabobank, Ubachs Wisbrun/JWT is in heavy weather. A second round of lay-offs took effect last week. The agency fired another 36 people and has now a mere 50 employees. In 2007, directly after the merger of Ubachs Wisbrun and PPGH/JWT (JWT basically bought UW to incorporate fresh creative blood), the agency counted 188 employees. It seems that all the international network juggernauts are being brought back to more flexible sizes in these times. A curing trend, really. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs…

Heineken’s walk-in fridge spoofed by Bavaria. The pay-off ‘Zo’ basically stands for ‘after this great accomplishment, I deserve a Bavaria’. The ad was brilliantly conceived by Selmore. The message is clear; Bavaria is not for sissies. The execution could have been done better, but Selmore’s Oliver Koning assured us they had very little time to shoot it. This is not the first time Bavaria borrows a competitor’s advertising property; it used a character from the immensely popular ‘Amstel-friends’ commercials that ran in 2003. Here’s an example (“Hey, guys… Haven’t you started yet?”) – awarded with a Golden Loeki. In 2004 Bavaria made a commercial with two of these friends, just after Amsel had announced to ‘kill’ them. Bavaria put them on a bounty island and made them open a bottle of Bavaria (‘Zo’). Amstel (also owned by Heineken) was not amused. And talking about actors that work for different beer brands: the Bavaria actor in this spoof is Marc Bennink, creative director at UbachsWisbrun/JWT. Earlier he played in a Dommelsch beer commercial that also won a Gouden Loeki (in 2000).

Amsterdam Worldwide was asked last month to introduce the beer brand Hoegaarden (Anheuser-Busch) internationally. The agency is doing well. Recently it also won the Asics EMEA and Russia account – it already works for the Asics brand Onitsuka Tiger. Vodafone Netherlands last week announced it is looking for a new agency. Its current agency, UbachsWisbrun/JWT, is invited to pitch – other agencies still have to be selected. And while most agencies are struggling to keep their business afloat, some are still optimistic: Rich advertises with “No budget, No problem. We’re rich”.

Adformatie reported last week that according to research conducted by Synovate 63% of the Dutch advertisers believe that the added value of advertising agencies will diminish. The reason is that more and more advertisers obtain agency expertise in-house. The same research clearly shows that agencies are pessimistic about the future – no news really, when you look at the worldwide stock markets. For TBWA it is business as usual though; this week it announced a new online agency: \Neboko Flow. Floris Hülsmann and Stephan Gonnissen (previously working as a team at JWT) will form the creative management. Another new agency, Nothing, was recently founded by Bas Korsten and Michael Jansen (ex Selmore, ex DDB). Although the agency’s name is not very promising, the team itself is ranked within the top 10 most (Dutch, not international) awarded creatives. At the same time Lowe Amsterdam is struggling; MD Ed Stibbe is leaving the agency. He is the fourth and last member of the management to leave the agency within one year. It wouldn’t surprise us if the agency merges with Draftfcb (also part of Interpublic) in the near future.

Created by UbachsWisbrun/JWT.

UbachsWisbrun/JWT developed the very first interactive test drive to promote the brand new BMW 3-series. Via a dedicated micro-site www.interactieveproefrit.nl one can follow two BMW’s live via webcam and via a map that provides you with the exact GPS location. One can also call the driver and ask him specific questions. And with only a slight delay you can follow the conversation inside the car – or if no one is talking the car stereo. It is really exciting to see how well it works. We gave one of the driver’s a call to test things out and he - that’s right, mostly men test drive BMW’s - was very helpful in telling us about the price (around € 50,000) and the special features on the car. He even voluntarily drove a route that we chose for. Talking of a great driving experience!