Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

In the land of the blind, Johnny Loco is king

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

In the past 5 years the Dutch bicycle scene has undergone a small revolution. Where a bicycle used to simply be a means of transportation, today it is a fashion item. Especially the fixed gear bicycle (or ‘fixie’) is beyond hip (Vans, tattoos, Chrome courier bag, rolled up trousers, funny hairdo, etc.). Ironically, the fixie lifestyle that comes with the single gear bicycle was imported from the US, a country where only the coolest couriers dare to defy the NYC traffic. The first brand to copy American styled bicycles and that started the revolution, was Johnny Loco. It was created in 2005 by advertising agency New Message. In the beginning the bikes were made in China and fell apart within no time, but nowadays they’re pretty reliable. And since no bicycle brand does fashionable advertising, Johnny Loco is the one eyed king in the land of the blind. We don’t mean that in a derogative way; we very much like the ads. We also came across another poster with former Elite “model of the year” Barbara Egeler. It is probably no coincidence that Loco means stupid in Spanish… Which reminds us; the ads are a more classy version of the “Be Stupid” campaign by Diesel that was banned in several countries, because it supposedly provoked ‘stupid’ behaviour. The photos were made by René Kramers.

Van Lamsweerde and Matadin in Foam

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Foam - June 2010This poster advertises the exhibition of world renowned photo duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin in Foam, the Amsterdam photography museum. Van Lamsweerde and Matadin, both born in Amsterdam and today living in New York, are working already for 25 years together. The couple, that  worked for fashion brands like YSL, Chanel, Gucci and Luis Vuitton, is known for crossing the border, or rather living on the edge of art and fashion. The exhibition is called Pretty Much Everything, because they are exhibiting all of their work, regardless whether it’s art, fashion or portraits. No chronological order is applied in the exhibition, but all pictures, side by side, are associatively related to one another. (picture: Anastasia, 1994)

Suit Supply asks consumer to start smoking

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Suitsupply Start Smoking - Dec. 2009This ad was created by Suit Supply, a company that knows its marketing! Not only do they have shops that run like clockwork – very smartly combining operational excellence with customer intimacy – they also have a good feel for advertising. And though this word joke is a little too obvious, the execution is perfect. The high level of sophistication – the shoot was done by house photographer Carli Hermès – combined with the provocative character give it its stopping power and word of mouth potential! In fact, the buzz has already started; Stivoro, the national anti smoking body, is not happy with it and looking into filing a complaint! And of course that is sexy news that travels fast. So ironically Suit Supply will love them for it.

ArArAt tells branded story; Legend of Akhtamar

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

A trailer should make you curious and reveal something of a storyline, suspense, action, drama, whatever. This trailer doesn’t really do that for us. However, we’re not the target group (Russian or Eastern European) and have never heard of the ‘Legend of Akhtamar’, nor from ArArAt – an Armenian brandy, with a beautiful name and ditto logo, owned by Pernod Ricard. Professionally though, we did get excited by the announcement of a 15 minute commercial that will be launched January, first and promises to make some interesting long form content. The short film is made by Amsterdam Worldwide. The agency hired some big names to make the project a success; Stephen Hilton wrote the score, ‘the award winning’ Shammasian Brothers directed it and Erwin Olaf (renowned Dutch photographer) shot the print campaign. It also features a handful of actors that are ‘world famous’ in the East. Yet another example of an advertiser that invests in content, rather than media, to tell a heritage based brand story. Recently we saw a similar concept for Martini; a 3 minute film distributed through YouTube, creating an atmosphere that perfectly conveyed the heritage, brand personality and tone of voice of Martini. For brands that want to tell a sophisticated brand story, the future of the 30 second commercial is a branded story, 15 minutes in length, rather than 15 seconds – regardless the picky and time deprived consumer.

Ambi Pur tickles the senses

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Ambi Pur Japan Tatami

G2 Amsterdam, together with Perfect Fools, created a website (this is an English demo, in Dutch the site is called ‘fragrances from nature’) for Ambi Pur that tickles almost all your senses – unfortunately not smell. The site, beautifully made with a combination of photography and animation, shows where Ambi Pur’s new ‘National Geographic’ fragrances ‘Japan Tatami’ and ‘Nevada Desert Flower’, come from. The joint promotion together with National Geograhpic (NG) feels a little stretched. Certainly NG is the specialist in showing remote and wonderful sceneries, but what has that got to do with smell? On the other hand, NG is a very strong brand that will certainly give credibility to the sceneries shown. Unconsciously the consumer might very well believe that Ambi Pur’s fragrances are therefore more exclusive, natural and special than those of the competition. Let’s see if both brands can think big and produce the first mass market scent DVD: ‘a fragrant journey into nature’ – or something along those lines.

Pink Ribbon dares to show the product

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Pink Ribbon

Though a lot of advertising is based on the principle that sex sells, ads never explicitly show frontal nudity. If you’re selling breast cancer awareness, however, it only makes sense to show the ‘product’ at hand. Grey Amsterdam created this ad with lots of stopping power for Pink Ribbon Magazine, a charity glossy from which all profits are directly donated to the Pink Ribbon Foundation. The work was shot by Rankin and executed with differently aged models – we chose the middle aged model. A very sweet poem about the breasts as a pair of friends, with names, is written across the body (the print ad we’re showing is a translation). And there is also a TV commercial (in Dutch), directed by Chris Palmer (Gorgeous). Interesting detail: a call was put out throughout the Netherlands, asking for volunteers of any age. More than 1000 women, aged 16-72, volunteered to be part of the shoot and show their breasts. Apparently in today’s world it is also charity that sells.

Protest against powder obstacles

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Here’s one of several mini films, made by by KesselsKramer (KK) for Protest Boardwear. KK asked different young and upcoming filmmakers to give their own interpretation of Protest’s brand proposition: “Every obstacle to the slopes is an enemy of Protest. Protest exists to help riders overcome these obstacles.” This kind of collaborative creativity, where agencies work together with small creative cells outside their own agency, is becoming a trend. Although the film in this post, called ‘Protest Sightseeing’, is the exception to the rule and made by two KK creatives; Ewoudt Boonstra en Zack McDonald. Other films are called Grocery shopping, Obstacles, Traffic jams and Bad weather. Older films can be found on the Protest website. The reason why we chose to highlight this film, is that the old 8mm footage that was used, makes us think of Erik Kessels’ (co-founder of KK) passion for abandoned photographs. Kessels already made several photo books with photographs that he found at flea markets. We were told however, that this is merely a happy coincidence. Boonstra already made a photo book himself with found photo’s, called Anonymous.

Suit Supply displays ambition

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Suit Supply AmbitionSuit Supply – the Dutch retailer, selling tailor made suits for a reasonable price – launched its new outdoor campaign, with photos from the renowned photographer Carli Hermès. Five years ago Hermès was asked for the first time to do a shoot and since then his photos are inseparably part of Suit Supply’s fashionable brand image. This year’s campaign is called ‘Ambition’ and shows ‘real’ South Africans. Real, as in, they were scouted in the streets and didn’t wear any make-up or props during the shoot – except of course for the suits. Interesting detail is that the owner of Suit Supply, Fokke de Jong, likes to boast about the fact that he doesn’t need a marketing plan, nor an advertising agency. He simply decides from the gut and shoots from the hip. But not without success; recently the fast expanding brand was awarded the Marketing Excellence Award 2008 (by NIMA, the Dutch Institute for Marketing).

Striking DJ portraits

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

Richie HawtinThis portrait is part of an outdoor exhibition, drawing attention to a book by Dutch photographer and art director Krijn van Noordwijk. Van Noordwijk is famous for capturing the essence of the personality of his portraits – something he probably picked up from his previous career in advertising. The book, containing 140 full colour studio portraits of DJ’s from all over the world, is a tribute to today’s musical hero’s.  The outdoor exhibition, created by Bureau Pindakaas, coincides with the Amsterdam Dance Event. The ADE is the world’s biggest club festival, with over 700 DJ’s and acts performing in 40 clubs, bars, record stores and galleries.