To fully appreciate this it helps if you have seen the commercial ‘The Date’ – in which a man takes his date on a spectacular night out. ‘The Serenade’ is a Valentine’s Day inspired follow up. It comes with a Facebook app that allows you to create a Valentine serenade to be performed by the same band that plays the catchy song Jaan Pehechaan Ho in the original commercial – in a personalized way as you can see here. The climax is this Wednesday – on the 9th of Feb. – when Heineken will host ‘Serenade Live’, an 8-hour YouTube event during which you get the chance to ask someone out on a date in an unforgetable way; performed by the ‘Serenade Band’. On top of that the performers will react live to the online audience. Created by Wieden+Kennedy.

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.

We were invited to Fitzroy’s New Year’s Bash last Friday and we have to say it is already one of the better parties of 2012. Why? Because they served fantastic mojito’s at the huge bar supplied by Fitzroy’s client Bacardi, they had a great show going with leggings, organised by a former intern who is now part of Legguns, and the tunes rocked our eardrums with Teenage Lady Killers and The Pony Peaches behind the decks. Thanks, Fitzroy.

What a great clip, showing the grand opening of Massive Music’s fifth office in London – after Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai – which will be run by Paul Reynolds and Nico Steiger. The clip was directed by Oscar Verpoort (Bananaz) and the song is ‘Sleeping Dogs’ by Big Smoky (a ‘Massive Talent’).

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.

What did the initial Vodafone briefing say?
Village-by-village rollout of fiber internet throughout the Netherlands is mainly dictated by small local players. For a big international brand as Vodafone it is not easy to enter this market. The question was: how do we get close to our new potential clients? As an international brand, Vodafone is used to think big and push the message, but for this product they could not get away with that. So our mission was to get close to the local community, activate them, and win their sympathy.

How was the race set up?
We chose Roggel, because it is one of the smaller towns in the Netherlands with only 4000 inhabitants. To get them involved we gave all of them a chance to race against Button. We made a selection by asking local clubs (football, orchestra, etc.) to organize speed contests. 10 of them did. Out of the 10 winners, 3 eventually went through to the Formula 1 simulator. The simulator, racing against Button’s physical car, showed an exact 3D copy of the streets.

Logistically it sounds like a bit of a nightmare
It proved difficult, yes, but we also had a lot of fun. A smart move was involving the mayor, who organized ‘hearings’ and actively asked the inhabitants’ participation – I think he saw it as a good PR opportunity for his town. But, yes, it did require a huge team to pull it all off. We started with concepting 6 weeks prior to the race. As the idea involved the participation of the local community, a dedicated team of 6 people worked from Roggel. But the total team was much bigger. A team of Vodafone did the overall planning and coordination. 328 Stories lived in Roggel for almost 5 weeks to make the documentary. Then there was DNA Events, who prepared the actual race, with all the logistics. And, finally, a team of RTL was involved. The total crew was over 60 people.

This is the documentary directed by Andreas Pasvantis (328 Stories)

O.k., so you got Roggel involved. How about the rest of the Netherlands?
We published small teasing videos of the local preparing activities on the dedicated website (www.grandprixvanroggel.nl) and Facebook page. Apart from that we were able to make a deal with sports channel RTL 7, who broadcasted the race live on national television. Two weeks later the documentary was released online and, again, on TV.

How did the locals react to this brand circus?
The preparations, to select the 3 local heroes, and the physical Grand Prix really connected the town – and I don’t mean that in Vodafone’s language. What I mean is that the entire town was truly involved and excited about the race; we still receive letters and pictures that show true enthusiasm. That’s how Vodafone instantly became a local friend. And that’s not easy in a small a town, especially when you’re a global brand like Vodafone. But it worked. Vodafone has won a serious market position in Roggel.

I can imagine that. How were the results nationally?
Well, as said, we reached the rest of the Netherlands through online and TV. Both the Grand Prix and documentary reached 2.4 million people on national television. The videos and trailers posted on our website and Facebook before, during and after the event spread through weblogs and reached over 250.000 unique viewers. And the footage that was spread clearly communicates Vodafone’s local touch.

Which town is next to be put upside down?
I am not sure whether this will get a sequel. But we just released a new app for Vodafone, called Appstein; it searches for the Einstein of apps. The campaign targets prepaid callers and tests their knowledge about smartphone apps – normally they do not use apps a lot, since most prepaid phones are not exactly ‘smart’.

Last Wednesday the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Nederland) hosted a session in ‘De Kring’ on the Rembrandtplein dubbed ‘XXX Expat’ (XXX is part of the city’s shield), with the noble aim of bringing two parts of the Amsterdam ad industry together; the Dutch and the expats. Some would say these two groups are surely two sides to the same coin, others would say these are separate entities with little or nothing in common other than geography. The somewhat lacking relationship between these two communities has been well documented over the years, yet despite this, nothing has ever quite bridged that gap, except of course – modest as we are – Amsterdam Ad Blog. Lode Schaeffer (ECD at Indie), new chairman to the ADCN is determined to branch out and readdress the balance. The idea was simple; get five speakers from leading agencies in Amsterdam to each give a presentation about the experience of living and working in Amsterdam as an expat.

The evening kicked off with Chris Baylis (ECD at Tribal DDB, British), Baylis talked about “Dutch optimism”, something he applauded as one of the great positive cultural traits of the city. He continued, however, by showing how this optimism has a downside when applied to the work place, and quickly becomes a laissez-faire attitude to deadlines and overtime. He explained how shocked he was upon arrival that Dutch employees as a rule refuse to work weekends, a delinquency he had thankfully managed to stamp out of the agency by hiring more international folk who were prepared to sacrifice their free time and days off. So the thing you initially like and champion in a culture becomes the thing that you don’t like and try to change. This insight came up a few times throughout the evening.

Next up was Eric Quennoy (ECD W+K, Australian) who took us on a leisurely, sprawling train of thought following his journey of experience in Amsterdam during the five years that he’s worked here. This talk was more free-form than lecture, and all the better for it. The last 5 years of his career have been “the most productive and the most satisfying so far”, which he puts entirely down to the city itself. The “nurturing environment” and “oasis of calm” allows all the chaos to go into “your work instead of your life” and the “beautiful backdrop of the city” affects you positively as a creative person. He pointed out that in other cities you spend half your time competing with other companies, watching what they are doing, trying to stay ahead “keeping up with the Joneses”. Whereas here he feels free to do his thing. Just as great artists retreat to epic landscapes to create their final opus, “we ad people do our best work out of Amsterdam” – well said Eric.

Jennifer Skupin (Creative, KesselsKramer, German) started things off by unwittingly, but comically, reinforcing a certain national stereotype when asking to “be in control of her own slides”. The idea of structure and control versus fluidity was evident in her presentation as she contrasted German ways of defining things versus the Dutch way. The prime example being KesselsKramer, which is branding meets design meets advertising. This idea of blurring the lines between different disciplines would be all but impossible in her native Germany. She admired the Dutch “strong sense of design” and the importance attached to “corporate identity”. She made an interesting point by contrasting Dutch police cars and fire engines with German ones. Dutch design won, hands down. However not all aspects of life in Holland were equally pleasing and she termed Amsterdam a ‘stop-off place for the International crowd’ populated by the transient.

The following speaker was Ron Smrczek (ECD TAXI, Canadian) who was the freshest blood on stage with only ten months in Amsterdam under his belt. Therefore – as he admitted himself – some of his observations were “rose tinted”. His main points were about Amsterdam being beautiful, old, multicultural, yet English speaking and how the city stays true to its roots and history. TAXI merged with a local agency, so there’s a strong Dutch culture at the office, he joked about the way everyone took lunch together, which was great, but “WHY does it have to be exactly the same every day?!”
His final observation was that on the surface there doesn’t appear to be a huge ad or design industry here, but if you scratch away you can find little pockets of magic.

Finally, Stephen Hancock (Creative Director 180, British) set up his well thought-out presentation by observing that 180 still feels quite isolated “in our own spaceship” as an international agency – even after 13 years here. What attracted him to the ad scene in Amsterdam was the random mix of people and nationalities in the mix, as opposed to London, for example, which seems to churn out “one type of person, quite wanky.” He agreed with previous speaker Jennifer Skupin that it was easier to blur the lines here and many disciplines under one roof and noted that historically Amsterdam has always been progressive, global, outward looking. Another typical thing about the Dutch is that the way of thinking is far more polarized; you either “love or hate” something – which he literally quoted from the invitation – as opposed to the lukewarm “like or dislike” (see picture). The combination of a “no nonsense” approach and wanting to have “everything under control” is translated in Dutch design; it all looks so well ordered and linear. Designer Dick Bruna, famous for creating Nijntje (or Miffy), was mentioned as a product of this sense of restriction and discipline. His final point was the town and its industry is small enough that “everyone in this room knows each other by default” so there was no more excuses in bringing the Dutch and the International audiences closer together.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the speakers were on the whole positive about Amsterdam. Their insights were largely shaped by the amount of time they’d spent in the city and the experience of living here; as opposed to any really deep insights into Dutch culture – perhaps Stephen Hancock’s design references came the closest to this. Ultimately the event worked best as a rallying call and reminder to the Dutch ad community as to just why so many international folk move over to work in Amsterdam. In fact it’s sometimes far too easy to take the good life for granted.

Here some more pictures.

Zarb – French slang for bizarre – is a champagne brand brought to market by Amsterdam agency THEY in 2009. The idea behind the brand is that the bottle is used as an artistic medium. In December last year Zarb opened a pop-up store in Amsterdam to show its collection. This year the brand is a little more ambitious by having its new designs exhibited in gallery Joyce in Palais Royal in Paris. 20 different artists were given complete freedom to create their own Zarb bottle. Amongst them Dutch Fashion Designer Jan Taminiau (in pic), Andrea Crews, PP from Longwy (in pic), Chaotic Bastards, Hedi Ferjani, Emeline Piot, Mini Mercredi, Paul Hamy, Deux d’Amsterdam, Nina Naustdal (in pic), Antoine Bouillot and Hanna Hermans (in pic). We’re glad to see that THEY is keeping up the good work.

A part of us was at Lowlands this year and the most entertaining thing we saw – apart from the bands of course – was the mobile Patattoo service, using the good old potato as a tattoo stamp. Created by Natwerk.