After Chris Baylis announced to swap Tribal DDB Amsterdam for London, it must have been a difficult task to find a worthy replacement. After all, Baylis helped Tribal to its growth and international fame with the multi-awarded work for Philips and KLM. But with Mark Chalmers on board as the new ECD, DDB and Tribal seems to be in good hands again. Chalmers will be creatively leading the agencies together with Joris Kuijpers and Dylan de Backer. Chalmers was previously Creative Partner at Perfect Fools and co-founded Creative Social with Daniele Fiandaca in 2004. Just as Baylis Chalmers is keen to make truly creative advertising: “Creativity is the only significant business driver today. It is no longer restricted to communications; creativity must be an inherent part of a brand’s offering. Through creativity these guys have consistently delivered results at scale.” Word.
DDB & Tribal Amsterdam hire Anneli Rispens to manage the agency’s Content & Community department. This state of the art department is based on the ‘always on’ principle, offering social media strategies, monitoring, moderation, and crisis management, and, finally, corporate storytelling – which is, we’re guessing, the often lame content posted on Facebook by brands. Apart from Anneli, the department now consists of three content and community planners, a social media strategist and three community managers. Anneli Rispens has more than 5 years of social media and community management experience. For the last two years she has been working at KREM, a media consultancy working for NS (Dutch railways) – if there’s one brand in the Netherlands that needs crisis management, it’s them. Before that Anelli worked at Favela Fabric where she worked as community manager on KLM – if there’s one brand that takes community management seriously, it’s them. So, all in all an interesting hire, which shows that the gap between traditional and dedicated digital agencies is getting smaller everyday.
Another very fine piece of advertising by DDB for Volkswagen. A dog mimicking a Volkswagen. Nothing more, nothing less. But with viral potential galore. They better makes some space on their award shelves… Directed by Mattias Schut (CZAR), shot by Mark Bliss, sound by The Ambassadors, and music by Sizzer.
The Centraal Beheer commercials have a long tradition in the Netherlands – the first one was made in 1985! Always with production value, sometimes subtly humorous, sometimes not very funny – though we have to admit that we’re not the average consumer. The film this time is pretty handsome and well directed, but the concept a little thin. Can you imagine how they briefed the director? “Guy flirts with girl on speedboat. He lets her drive; they fall out. And, guess what? There’s a paraglide attached to the boat.” Ha! Created by DDB, directed by Hein Mevissen, and produced by Bonkers.
Weird, but with mileage is how we judged this concept for Autodrop (‘car liquorice’) in October 2010. Last week we came accross this one; ‘secret passage.’ Compared to the first one it feels slightly more accessible. And we like it. Created by DDB Amsterdam and directed by Hans Knaapen (Electric Zoo).
