If you live in the Netherlands you probably know ‘Artis de Partis’; it’s an icon of the Amsterdam zoo and a cuddly doll for many Dutch kids. Two years ago Artis conceived an alien brother for Artis de Partis to promote Artis’ planetarium, called ‘Artis de Marsis’. The cyclope was a logical step to further exploit the success of Artis de Partis. When Dutchman André Kuipers – a big fan of the Artis planetarium – recently went into space with the ISS international space program, he decided to take Artis de Marsis with him, which led to this wonderful picture of Artis de Marsis in space. On top of this Dawn – Artis’ agency – created a goodbye film, a dedicated webpage where one can follow Artis de Marsis, and a special program in the Planetarium. The fans of Artis de Marsis will soon even be able to make an inflight call with Kuipers live from the planetarium. Engaging advertising in its truest form.
Yet another cool online activational piece of advertising by KLM, created by Ice Mobile; the KLM Passport app, an app that turns traveller’s journeys into movies. This film, developed by Muse, shows more or less how it works: you choose a theme (adventure, around the world, island hopping, in the snow, etc.), select the best pictures and videos on your iPhone taken during your trip, and the app creates a need little movie. It all looks very smooth. The only downside of the concept is that most people still use a camera instead of their phone to collect travel memories, so the question is how many people will actually use it seriously. Nevertheless it shows once again that KLM understands that travelling is more than just buying a plane ticket.
Recently Achtung! created quite an unusual campaign to communicate Vodafone’s fiber internet; in the small town of Roggel (Limburg) a real race track was laid out around the center, where celebrity Jenson Button raced his Formula 1 car against the locals – who were racing in a simulator. The entire town was involved and a documentary was made of the event. The event was to bring Vodafone and its proposition (high speed internet) as close as possible to the user. To learn more about the story behind this campaign we asked Dick Buschman, MD and Head of Strategy of Achtung!, a few questions.
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This Citroën DS5 Twitter Race is the first race ever (as far as we know) via Twitter. The concept is quite simple; you can navigate the DS5 towards yourself via Twitter and win it. We’ve seen a similar concept by Volkswagen and Achtung!, but using Twitter as the navigation tool is new. On the dedicated Facebook page Citroën constantly gives the Twitter crowd a choice (e.g. left or right) and the ‘wisdom’ of crowds decides where it should go. A count down clock decides when the race is over and (this feels as a bit of an anti-climax) when the time is up, the car pulls over and a sign is held up with a message. The first person to tweet this message wins the DS5. At the time of publishing this post there’s about half an hour to go and the car is near Bussum – if you live there start looking out for it. We always wonder what kind of people have time to be engaged in a game that consumes most of your day, but since it’s trending on Twitter (NL) it does get the needed exposure. It was created by EuroRSCG and Perfect Fools.
Beginning of this month we wrote about the weird, but attractive MINI Coupé films made by BSUR. The theme of the films was ‘Find your adventure’. This was translated into an activation by Fel Concepts into the good old message in a bottle. The bottles are dropped in Thorpe Bay, Essex and to be found on the other side of the Channel on the beach of ‘Dutchy’ land. If you find one, you get to test drive the Coupé. Um, we don’t mind this concept, but when you compare this Coupé in a bottle with the BSUR commercials, you all of a sudden remember why they always used to talk about ‘above’ and ‘below the line’; the two have nothing to do with each other – except for the phrase ‘find your adventure’. Come on, MINI, if you spend so much money on the introduction of a new car, you really should go for an integrated campaign.
Roggel is a rustic town with only 4100 inhabitants. And this short film, directed by Andreas Pasvantis (328 Stories), wonders whether they are ready for Vodafone’s speed. Normally, you would relate this question to the speed of Vodafone’s network, but when you ask Achtung! to come up with something entertaining, you end up measuring the speed of a race car. Why? First of all, because Vodafone sponsors the McLaren team and secondly because the speed of a race car is easier to comprehend for the average consumer than the speed of a mobile network – we’d guess. So they asked Jens Button to battle against the fastest person of Roggel. A race car versus a race simulator. And to find the fastest person of Roggel, Achtung! set up some small competitions with a very local feel to subtly illustrate how Vodafone’s speed can even be experienced in the country. The Grand Prix of Roggel was ‘aired’ yesterday on RTL’s Grand Prix microsite, which today heralds “Jens Button beaten in the Grand Prix of Roggel”. You can say about it what you like, but original it is.
Philips is obsessed with sound. At least, that’s what they try to communicate through this ingeniously made, interactive website that allows you to single out any of the 51 members of the Metropole Orchestra – known for its non-traditional attitude towards music – and ‘hear every detail’. On top of that you can also read about each musician’s musical preferences and find out more about them on their personal blogs and Twitter. Since every digital campaign nowadays requires an activational element, Philips also launched a competition in which its target audience is to submit home made compositions – in the jury: Steve Lillywhit (ex producer Talking Heads) and Benjamin Herman (New Cool Collective). The winner will see his composition played and recorded by the Metropolitan, which sounds like a serious incentive to us. Created by Tribal DDB.
We hope this ad – that prevents your wine glass from dripping – will at least make some money for the famine in the horn of Africa, cause we find it incredibly tasteless. Created by Villa DM.
Wherever you are in the city, you’re favourite sport should always be with you is Nike’s thought behind this dressed up ad ‘peperbus’ (pepper mill) that can be used as a sports attribute – click on image to see the entire picture. Here and here two more. There’s a URL on each peperbus that refers to a short film in which a successful athlete talks about his/her sport (in Dutch) and demonstrates how to use the outdoor furniture. Another great example of a medium turning into the message. Created by Undog, Goedbezig! Producties, and Centercom.
Lowleaks, a combination of Lowlands and Wikileaks, was claimed by Grolsch to ‘leak’ some extra tickets for the Dutch festival that was sold out this year in a mere 2 hours. Every leak represents a task for the ticketless Lowlands fans. The result is a Facebook page full of people posing and acting weird in photo’s and films. And of course the Facebook mechanism makes sure the submitters share the content with their friends to get as much votes as possible. This ‘Leak #12’ is not about UGC, but a simple hunt for a few bottles with red stickers in the Grolsch brewery. The campaign doesn’t really move us, but surely generates enough of exposure for the Dutch beer brand as one of the official Lowlands sponsors. The campaign was created by Isobar.
