A new Amsterdam city guide, called Zero20 – the Amsterdam area code – was launched this week. The online platform helps tourists and expats to spend their spare time by showing what’s on in Music, Film, Art, Food and Shop(ping). The navigation works fairly intuitive through a calendar that primarily shows big pictures of the events. It was conceived by Italian-born Stefano Xotta and created by Grey Amsterdam. Though there are already quite a few similar initiatives, this one might be more successful due to its catchy look.
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.
Everybody that lives in Amsterdam recognizes the human sized letters that spell ‘I Amsterdam’. So when the A and the M disappeared this week, people noticed that something was missing. Amsterdam Partners (AP) – the agency that exploits the city slogan – reported the letters as stolen. AP even stated they encountered the missing letters on Marktplaats (the Dutch eBay). But it was all a hoax. The letters were replaced by a (big) piece of origami. With this guerrilla action Sony tried to get attention for their new game ‘Heavy Rain’ – on sale as from yesterday. In this game there’s a character called the Origami Killer – hence the origami. The person selling the letters on Marktplaats was called Erik Gilliroam, an anagram for Origami Killer. Do they really expect gamers to buy this game after having seen such an incredibly far fetched example of bad guerrilla advertising?!
We were invited by the VEA (Association of Ad Agencies) to attend the second edition of Creative Lounge on Monday in Pakhuis de Zwijger. The night was hosted by Jelani Isaacs (Brenninkmeijer and Isaacs) and Claire Finn (U-Turn). Guests of the evening were Matthew Atkatz (Riot, digital arm 180), Romke Oortwijn (N=5), Raphael Mazoyer (Asics) and – Skyping in from London – Florian Schmitt (Hi-Res). And this night’s topic was the controversy between digital agencies and non-digital agencies; is digital part of the idea or is digital the idea itself? A promising question, though it did take a while before the discussion stopped to bounce all over the place. We do understand why it did though; there’s no unambiguous answer to the question what the exact role of digital is in advertising. Some big ideas can only exist thanks to the technology behind it, while some ideas merely use existing digital tools to execute it. (more…)
First we thought about not showing this website. We think it’s corny and it embarrasses us a little. Even if you ask a cool character with smoky voice and countless tattoos to sing ‘Happy 2010′, it’s not cool. But then we realized it advertises Amsterdam – or at least, that must have been the objective. And if your blog is called Amsterdam Ad Blog, it’s not something you can ignore. It was made by Amsterdam agency Beyen Meyer. We preferred their Queen’s Day poster.
Just like in Cannes this film by Tribal DDB won a Grand Prix in the TV/Cinema category at Eurobest in Amsterdam, last Friday. The commercial, only distributed through the internet (how could it win in TV/Cinema?), advertises the new Philips cinematic widescreen standard in a mind blowing way; a violent bank robery filmed in freeze frame and done in one single take. Cinema 21:9 also won Gold in the category Interactive – on the dedicated website you can (among other things) influence the speed and direction of the timeline of the film. The DDB network also won the best network award. At the awards ceremony, DDB asked Gary Raucher (VP Head of Integrated Marketing Communication) to accept this prize on behalf of DDB, which was a nice gesture given the fact that Philips trusted DDB with such a big budget to advertise a TV that is still in a very early stage of its product lifecycle. In general, compared to last year, the Netherlands (read: Amsterdam) did quite well. It won 22 prizes, of which 1 grand prix, 3 gold, 8 silver and 10 Bronze. Compared to the European competition, however, we didn’t. Belgium and Sweden for example – with a lot less inhabitants – scored significantly better. Amsterdam interactive agency Kong (N=5’s online agency) won Gold in the Media category for Stanislav, a short video spread through Hyves (Dutch Facebook), using your profile details to show how personal information shared on internet can easily fall in the wrong hands. Another favourite of ours, the IDFA films “You cannot make up reality” by TBWA\Neboko, won gold. ‘It’s all about the suit’ by Selmore for Van Gils won Silver in the Media category. Looking at the competition in this category, it easily deserved Gold in our opinion.
Last Tuesday the VEA (Dutch Association of Advertising Agencies) and VCP (Dutch Association of Commercial Producers) organized ‘Creative Lounge’ – an initiative that brings the creative advertising scene together. The theme was ‘Two worlds of advertising’, referring to the clear distinction in Amsterdam between the typical Dutch agencies that make typical Dutch advertising and the international expat scene mainly working for international clients. One important difference between the Dutch professionals and the expats, as talent recruiter Keith White of Wieden+Kennedy explained, is the fact that the Dutch are used to work from 9 till 6, while the Wieden+Kennedy’s of this world live in a parallel world and often start their day when the Dutch go to bed. There’s a different work ethic. It helps of course that for expats social life is for the biggest part happening within their working environment. When the question was raised why the international agencies never work with Dutch production agencies, Clair Finn of U-Turn (180) said it was partly due to the lacking service level of the Dutch. White added to this that it’s not just within the agencies, but in general; Dutch restaurants, shops, the service is overall quite poor. Paul Lovoie (Taxi) suggested that you should do your advertising in Amsterdam, while outsourcing the service to the French. We’re not sure whether that’s a wise idea, but without a doubt learned that Amsterdam has to raise its service level.
This year Amsterdam is hosting the Eurobest festival, so as Amsterdam Ad Blog we thought it would be appropriate to pay a little more than average attention to it. As you you’ve been able to see in the banner on our website – that has probably become a little annoying by now – the festival will be held on the 25th until the 27th of November. Yesterday the jury was announced. The following Amsterdam Creative Directors have the privilege to judge the best of Europe’s advertising: Chris Baylis, Tribal DDB (traditional); Sicco Beerda, Euro RSCG (jury president interactive); Coen Weesjes, Downtown (direct & sales promotion); Eugene Bay, VBAT (design); Andy Fackrell, 180 Amsterdam (jury president integrated) and Magnus Olsson, Saatchi & Saatchi (integrated).
This ad in the Amsterdam Vondelpark reads: ‘The park used to be so pretty’. It asks us ‘Amsterdammers’ to clean up our junk when we use the park. Good point. It is amazing to see how many people don’t clean up their picnic spot. We were surprised though by the polluting character of this humongous ad. Indeed, the Vondelpark used to be so pretty…
This poster for PICNIC, the three day (September, 23-25) cross media conference, was made by Los Design (= loose design). PICNIC is described by the organization as “three inspiring days of ideas, fun and sensory stimulation in media, technology, entertainment, art and science”. We describe it as an event where Charles Leadbeater and Clay Shirky discuss the future of collaborative creativity, while Woody Harrelson gives a yoga workshop. The spirit of PICNIC thus resembles the spirit of Amsterdam; the hottest place for cross media innovation, combined with a high level of recreation. Indeed, not your ordinary PICNIC.
Last Tuesday the VEA (Dutch Association of Advertising Agencies) and VCP (Dutch Association of Commercial Producers) organized ‘
This year Amsterdam is hosting the 
