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.
Last night at the SpinAwards – the awards for digital advertising – Achtung! regained the title ‘interactive agency of the year’ – in 2008 the online agency also won the prestigious title. A logical choice, since Achtung! was the most nominated and awarded agency around. It won 3 silver ‘rings’ for Catch the Polo (cross media), Chocomel snowball fight (best game) and Skoda Octavia introduction (best interactive video concept) respectively. For the first time this year Belgium agencies could also send in their cases. So we found it a little rude that the organization strongly branded the event ‘Made in Holland’ – were the Belgiums really welcome, or was it just their money? Fortunately Boondoggle Leuven went home with one golden ‘Made in Belgium’ ring for a blog that closely followed the birth of a baby elephant in the Antwerp Zoo. An online campaign that generated 200.000 extra ‘physical’ Zoo visitors – which is 2% of the entire Belgium population. The Albert Heijn supermarket Appie, by Muse (recently launching a 1.5 version), also won a golden ring (mobile). Stanislav (made by Kong), the viral web video that uses social network content to show the dangers of cyber criminality, went home with two (silver) awards. The only other agency that won two (silver) awards was the through-the-line agency 2010 with Zonneradar (sun radar) for Wieckse Witte and Amstel teamlink for Amstel beer – both Heineken brands. 2010 very inconveniently changes its name every year to show that it’s always up to date, but with these two ‘brand utilities’ (concepts that go beyond entertainment by being useful in a brand related way) 2010 lives up to its choice of name. We saliently have to mention though that one of the founders of 2010, and big brain behind these concepts, Jeroen de Bakker, left 2010 this year to found Lab 1111, taking Heineken with him. Guess which agency will be winning some awards next year…
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.
Amsterdam design agency DAY won two red dot Awards this year for the in-store design of the Van Gogh Museum shop here in Amsterdam (click on picture to enlarge) and a Nike Store in Paris. Both designs also won the additional honours of ‘best of the best’ and ‘distinction for high design quality’, respectively. We’ve checked out the red dot design website and if you see how many categories and awards there are, it’s hard not to win any. Having said that, we very much like what the design agency did with the Van Gogh shop. And, while we’re at it, recently Dutch interior design agency UXUS has been appointed to design the shops for the Tate Modern. That is, both for the existing Tate Modern as well as the impressive Herzog & de Meuron extension.
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.
Yesterday we were talking about the Golden Loeki. Today we are talking about the opposite prize, the raspberry for advertising; the Lead Lion. It is awarded once a year straight after the Golden Loeki, by Dutch consumer awareness program Radar. The first prize was won by KPN’s mobile phone brand Hi. It’s about a girl that looses her ‘pokkie’ (the Surinam word for mobile phone) and goes nuts – luckily though she saved all her numbers on her Hi-account. In the commercial she screams so loud that it irritated the crap out of the consumer. According to Hi, the commercial did well among the target: 18 to 24 year olds. We believe that, but still concur with the award. An adapted Axe (Lynx) commercial, with a guy that can role his eyes to look at his own sweaty armpits, ended second. This surprised us, it is a pretty mellow ad. Maybe it was the annoying voice-over that didn’t fit with the commercial very well. The Vodafone commercial by THEY that we discussed earlier ended third. Mutated guinea pigs try to imitate normal people and talk a language that no one understands. Interesting detail; in the most recent commercial, Vodafone kept the characters, but changed the voices. So what can we learn from the Lead Lion? Don’t use loud, annoying or unintelligible voices or strange, unattractive characters in your advertising.
In the Netherlands every year the public is asked to choose the best commercial of the year. Not a bad idea, when you realize that eventually advertising is made for them. The award is called the Golden Loeki. Until 2004 ‘Loeki de Leeuw‘ (Loeki the lion) was the bumper icon of the STER, the organization selling the advertising clusters on the public channels; Netherlands 1, 2 and 3. Though officially the prize is awarded to the most ‘likeable’ commercials, it almost always goes to ads that use humour to get the message across – which says something about the average consumer, for that matter. This year the award goes to Heineken’s walk-in fridge, made by TBWA\Neboko. Indeed, a funny commercial. It was very successful this year. It already won a golden ADCN (Dutch Art Director’s Club) award. And internationally it also did well. A few weeks ago it was awarded a Silver Eurobest award and this summer a Silver Lion in Cannes. And that’s interesting. Usually there’s a big gap between what international ad pundits appreciate and what the consumer likes. Not only do the experts prefer smart, esthetical or sophisticated advertising (instead of simple jokes), Dutch humour is often culturally challenged – i.e. nobody outside the Netherlands understands it. So TBWA\Neboko made a very effective ad, it sells beer to the consumer and the agency abroad.
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.
Yesterday we visited the opening day of the Eurobest festival in Amsterdam. The first seminar we attended was given by Paul Lavoie from Taxi Europe. He talked about ‘trust’ and explained that ideas can only grow big if people give them trust – from the creative director to the client. To illustrate this, he invited a Dakar Rally driver, a female porn producer and a knife thrower. They all had to trust the people around them or the other way around. We very much liked the unconventional character of his presentation – especially the circus-like show with the knife thrower was spectacular! – and the fact that Lavoie put his ego aside to let other people talk about his subject.
After Lavoie, Jeff Kling from Wieden+Kennedy took the stage and started his talk by making sure that everybody understood he was not responsible for the slight change in the title of his talk: ‘Show me the ad, you motherfucker’. It had been changed in (…) Motherf*****. He loved the word ‘fuckin’ and used it several times to make this point.
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).
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.
