Amsterdam Central Station has been a building site already for we don’t know how many years – just like Damrak, Rokin, Ferdinand Bol street, etc. Thanks to the new subway line connecting the North to the South of Amsterdam – taking longer to build than the Chinese wall – and thanks to our ‘wonderful’ poldermodel (read: everyone has a voice in governing the city). But, sorry, we’re drifting off (politically). The Dutch Railway probably thought it was time to do something back for its traveler, so it disclosed its royal waiting room that is normally not open to the public – together with a bunch of information about the details. Here‘s another screenshot. You can wonder through them in 3D and there’s also an app for when you’re waiting for one of their delayed trains. They’ve also disclosed the waiting room of Den Haag HS. Soon more waiting rooms will follow. Created by Yune.

Lab 1111 created a new iPhone app, called Boodschapp (literally: grocery), which allows you to scan products in Dutch supermarkets (for now just AH, C1000 and Jumbo) and compare them with similar products on price and quality. Out of a total of 16 different parameters (calories, fat, sugar, etc.) the product also receives an overall grade and the intuitive colour green, yellow or red. Lab 1111 worked with an independent team of professional food specialists to make sure the app is reliable. Since there are many different (quasi independent) ‘buy sensible’ logos on packaging nowadays this new ambitious project has the potential to become the overarching new standard.

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.

When it comes to location based – i.e. geo-tagged – shopping there are roughly two kind of benefits (apart from telling people where you are); either you can proudly tell the world you’ve become the virtual mayor somewhere or you get an instant discount – or both. Now there’s a new web app, created by THEY, that tells you through live data where you don’t want to be shopping. The app that sources Foursquare check-ins and tweets is built to avoid the crazy X-mas shopping crowds. Since it only services a few areas in Amsterdam (like ‘Centrum’ and the ’9 Straatjes’) and most people don’t have the luxury to go shopping when nobody else does (unless they shop online), it seems more of a PR builder than an ambituous project that is to conquer the world. But whatever you think of it; it does show that THEY is thinking forward and likes to experiment.

With a track record like Tribal DDB it’s hardly a surprise that they became interactive agency of the year at Eurobest this year. Throughout the year they’ve been making great and award winning work for KLM and Philips. The climax of their award victory march has been Eurobest this week; out of the 12 nominations they won 9 awards – for Philips Obsessed with Sound 4, for ‘Wake up the town‘ 2, and for KLM Tile & Inspire 3. What really took us by surprise was ‘The Legendary Making of The Date’ for Heineken by Wieden+Kennedy winning a Grand Prix in film. We already noticed that every big budget commercial nowadays gets a making of to create some relatively cheap content – and PR for the agency, for that matter. But actually winning a Grand Prix with the side project of a campaign is quite something. Back then we said: “Not your standard ‘making of’, but one made with ‘joie de vivre’ and lots of CG jokes. If we weren’t already, this would want to make us work in advertising”. The commercial itself, ‘The Date’, also won silver in film, and ‘The Entrance’ won gold. We were told that AKQA’s London office sent in the work of AKQA Amsterdam, so you could say that the Grand Prix and Gold in Mobile for Heineken Star Player (social betting on football matches), also went to Amsterdam. DBB and 180 won silver in film for ‘Old Lady’ (Volkswagen) and ‘Marked for Life’ respectively. We also had the Epica awards last week. W+K won 5 Epica’s plus a Grand Prix for ‘The Entrance’ and ‘The Date’ combined. Again W+K won an award (gold) for the ‘extra’s’ – some extra mini scripts around ‘The Entrance’. 180’s Marked for Life won gold and silver. Finally Lemz did well with 2 silver and 2 bronze for IKEA 365, KLM Live Reply, and ‘Children see things differently‘. In total Amsterdam won 22 Epica awards. One final note to Eurobest and Epica; can you guys please merge? There’s no reason to have two identical continental award shows – except making lots of money, of course…

So that’s what you get when a management consultant hires a digital agency; an ‘Appbook’. The book, titled ‘The Next Ten‘, shows us the expected challenges and opportunities of the coming 10 years by combining old skool press with an iphone (app), to be inserted in the center of the book. Some great Dutch thinkers like Robbert Dijkgraaf (on science), Rem Koolhaas (on architecture), Onno Ruding (on the economy) and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (picture) – founder of The Next Web – (on digital media) give their view on the future and provide insights on how our life, work, and the way we interact will change. This fine book was created by Fitzroy in collaboration with Accenture, celebrating its 10th anniversary with its clients.

Quite an integrated campaign this new work ‘See what light can do’ by Tribal DDB and DDB Amsterdam for Philips. A ‘lightover’ team – based on the successful home make-overs – visits 29 homes in 8 countries around the world to show how the right lighting can transform your house into a much more atmospheric environment – the insight behind it; light changes your mood. The results are presented online. This content is not exactly our kind of content, since we’re not big fans of home make-over TV, but we can easily imagine it will persuade enough consumers to start thinking about LED and – more importantly – see Philips as the thought leader in this field. Part of the platform is a ‘3D Home Lighting Designer’ app that helps consumers to choose between different lighting options and advises them on which (Philips) products to buy. There’s also a Facebook page where you get in contact with the experts on ‘light design’. To generate mass attention Tribal/DDB also created a (bit of a corporate) commercial in which Philips presents its platform as the future of lighting. Together with the recent Wake-up Light campaigns, Philips is firmly reclaiming its strong heritage of being the lighting expert.

This is a bit of a complicated one – especially when you don’t speak Dutch. Pool Worldwide made a series of 5 short commercials for ‘De Telefoongids’ (the white and yellow pages) to communicate the header in this picture “You can all find it with the free Search & Find app”. The short commercials – pretended to be made by the retailers to sell their businesses – watched in the right sequence (from left to right) create a story about a robbery. The first one shows a tailor (that sells suits), the second one a party store (that sells masks to disguise yourself), the third one a bag store (that sells Claudio Ferrici bags to carry the loot), the fourth one a van rental (so you can drive through a facade), and the fifth one the security at jewelry shop (to rob). The films are purposely made badly to illustrate that De Telefoongids is mainly used by small businesses. What we do like is that the different films form a sort of puzzle – we can even imagine that the pieces are creatively seeded on the web through banners or something. What we don’t like is that the itchy films make us a bit nervous. And though we understand that the commercials address the user of the app, rather than the retailer, this campaign shows how De Telefoongids looks at its customers – quite condescendingly. And then back to us, the target; do we use De Telefoongids to find a bunch of amateurs? Mmm…

Last Thursday the Spinawards were divided between the top digital agencies in the Netherlands and Belgium. In ‘Online’ there were two golden awards; ‘Philips wake up the town’ (A fantastic concept by Tribal DDB) and ‘Hi-Tec Liquid Mountaineering’ (a very strongly executed viral by CCCP – judged as the best mockumentary of 2010 by Adage). There was one silver in Online; KLM Surprise (see embedded case film) – this also won gold in ‘Cross Media’. KLM Surprise winning two Spins was indeed a surprise. The concept is quite thin; passengers at Schiphol airport using Twitter or Foursquare were given a special gifts that matched their travel plans – seeding the shaky film footage online didn’t make it a stronger concept. In our opinion the only fair award for this surprise would have been in ‘Social Media’. Speaking of social media, in this category Boondoggle won silver for ‘Take Mokum’ – “a great way to activate your audience” is how we judged it back in September. The three awards for Boondoggle made it digital agency of the year – regardless the surprise a fair decision. KLM – also winning a second golden award for iFly Magazine in ‘Content’, created by Born 05 – became digital advertiser of the year. Considering the amount of innovative stuff KLM has created in the past year, their award was entirely deserved. Muse & Ice Mobile won gold in ‘Innovation’ for their app ‘Appie’. Indeed one of the more innovative concepts we’ve seen last year. Another gold went to the addictive game ‘Noisia Infection’, created by Flavour – “playful branding”. A very strong Spinaward (gold) went to the Blurshirt for Beachmasters (party holidays for teenagers), in the category ‘Young Talent’. It was  created by Nik Sluijs and Nanette Visser of de Willem de Kooning Acadamy. The shirt has a shotcode underneath the collar so that, when embarrassing pictures are uploaded on social media, the face above the collar automatically gets blurred. Now there’s a concept that taps into a serious target group need.

Supermarket Albert Heijn (AH) has added yet another feature to its app; voice recognition. You can add groceries to your list by simply saying the words. As with the previous update of the app, AH is hiding some Easter eggs in the app (‘grappies’ – meaning jokes); this time products with musical connotations – ‘boodschappen wijsjes’. We’ve recorded the ‘drumsticks’ for you – there’s also bietjes (phonetically ‘beats’), popcorn, and nootjes (meaning nuts and ‘notes’). When you’ve found them all you can see them  perform together on AH’s website. There you can also create your own ‘grappie’ and win an iPad. Created by Muse.