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.

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.

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.

To be honest, we find this concept for the KNGF (royal Dutch guide dog federation), KNGF Maps a little thin. The reason why we’re featuring it anyway is that we like the insight supporting it; a guide dog for the blind sheds light in the darkness. You fill out your directions in Google Maps and a layer on top of it ‘illuminates’ your route. We can imagine that the KNGF’s ad budget didn’t allow for a more elaborate concept. Created by Selmore.

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.

For some brands gathering Likes on Facebook is simply a way to be able to spam your wall, we once said. For other brands it’s a smart way of creating customer intimacy. The latter actually try to have a conversation and – if they are smart – give something back every now and then. For example, last February we saw Heineken (physically) liking its customers back (in a bar). Dutch booming fashion brand Scotch & Soda is doing the same now, but digitally. That is, physically digitally; on a digital window display in its flagship store in Amsterdam the Facebook fans’ names will be animated (as from today) in a handwritten style across black and white Scotch & Soda images selected from the current season’s collections.  A sympathetic gesture of S&S – and its agency Perfect Fools. Though the image displayed here does make you wonder whether Willemijn Valk will be happy to be portrayed as a man. If we may shoot from the hip; why not ask Willemijn (and some other fans) to wear the new collection, do a photo shoot, and then display her in your store. We know, way more expensive, but then you will make her really happy and on top of that even create something that her friends will most definitely like on Facebook.

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.

Remember when we used to send digital Christmas cards with a tune inside? Very web 1.0. This is the 3.0 version; a Western Union platform that allows you to perform a virtual duet and produce a personalized music video with Snoop Dogg, Timbaland, Sunidhi Chauhan or K’naan – at the time of writing not all songs are released yet, for that matter. You upload a photo of yourself, pick an artist, and a song. Then you karaoke it – with the lyrics streamed on the screen – and your personal avatar singing the duet is sent to family and loved ones – together with the money, of course. Simple and sweet. Created by 180.

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…

It took us a bit of discussion to have an opinion about this teaser and website created by SuperHeroes. Some reactions: scary, gay, and stereotypical. Why show 6 men that demonstrate the different motions of an LG washing machine? Are women morons? Or are we taking this too seriously? Maybe we are. Maybe LG simply offers a good excuse – for some – to watch these hard bodies doing the laundry. We don’t really know. What do you think?