Last night we were at the annual Jonge Honden (Young Dogs) Portfolio Night at Spaces. Upcoming advertising talent presented its portfolios to the best agencies in town. The eager creatives showed a combination of unrestrained enthusiasm and anxious awareness of a very tight advertising market. Check the photos here.
We were invited by the VEA (association of Dutch advertisers) 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…)
“In his whole life, Average Joe waits two weeks for a traffic light” is what this commercial is creatively trying to tell us with a guy in his car eating from a can, pissing in a bottle and washing himself in the rain. It’s nicely done by KesselsKramer and should direct people to a website called jachtopjanmodaal.nl (hunt for Average Joe). On this website you can upload a picture. From all the pictures a portrait of Average Joe will be created at the end of the campaign. You can also fill out a list of questions to see how normal you are. And if you’re asking yourself, why the f*** should I do this? Then the answer is: it should make you curious to visit the exhibition Niet Normaal (Not Normal) in the Beurs van Berlage (the same venue where Eurobest Amsterdam took place two weeks ago). This exhibition answers the question ‘what is normal’ from an artistic perspective. Here’s an example of one the striking pieces, called übermensch created by Jake and Dinos Chapman.
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.
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.
Source: Adformatie
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).
At the IMC Awards the Heineken ‘Trompet’ (a drum disguised as a hat for football fans, which was a follow-up of the speaker hat – a hat disguised as a speaker) by TBWA\Neboko won a golden IMC Award. Upload Cinema for De Uitkijk by Lowe/Draftfcb, also won gold. The Heineken Trompet was distributed around the European Championships 2008 as a premium – together with 8 cans of Heineken. We earlier wrote about Upload Cinema – creating long form content for a cinema, by making a compilation of long tale, short form content from the internet. All in all Amsterdam scored very well. And with 16 prizes in total, the Netherlands was the best awarded country in Europe.
We saw the premiere of this beautiful trailer for the international Playgrounds Festival on Wednesday at Press Play, a special launch for the festival, held at hybrid studio PostPanic. We have to admit that we had never heard of the festival before – maybe because it’s held in Tilburg – but learned it shows the best of digital audiovisual art in the world – music videos, animations, commercials, character design, VFX and games. The event at PostPanic gave the Amsterdam creative community a taste of what’s to come next year when the festival relocates to the city. There were four artist talks on the night; UVA (London), Pleix (Paris), Dvein (Barcelona) and PostPanic’s Mischa Rozema. This trailer, combining live action with animation, was directed by Onesize and produced by Revolver Media. It conveys the essence of the festival; creating a 3D fantasy that looks so authentic that it becomes reality.
Yesterday was the last day of the Amsterdam cross media conference PICNIC. In our opinion the most inspiring event of the year, for giving a mind blowing peek into the future of digital media, communication and interaction. Advertising-wise the main message at the three day conference was: people don’t need advertising anymore (Jessica Greenwood, Contagious Magazine). It is your online (social) network that will tell you what is good and what is not. In other words; one-way communication from a non trusted source will become useless (Gerd Leonhard, Media Futurist). And this means that advertisers cannot buy attention anymore; they have to deserve it. Which will change the role of the advertising agency. Over the next decade, advertising will change into an industry that adds value to brands, by creating entertaining or useful content.