Amsterdam based 60 Layers of Cake opened a new franchise in Capetown this week. At the same time Blender 57 was founded by Colin Lyon. Both brands challenge the traditional agency structure and work with a collaborative model; for every creative job the right team of specialists is compiled. 60 Layers of Cake was founded in 2006 by Rodger Beekman. It already has offices New York, London, Tokyo and Istanbul. 60 Layers Capetown will be lead by Ben Wren and Michael van den Heerik – both formerly The Jupiter Drawing Room. Colin Lyon’s Blender 57 calls its model ‘fit-for-purpose expertise’. Among other entities, the agency will partner with One Big Agency (founded by Erik Wünsch and Peggy Stein), Tina Grace Research (product innovation) and Freedom of Creation (3D design). Blender 57 will focus on ‘go-to-market solutions’, which sounds a little vague. But when you think of it, the creative hub will be able to make any product a client asks for. If these kind of agencies will be able to successfully incorporate the social network trend into their business model, the creative industry will enter a whole new exciting era.
Archive for the ‘Shoptalk’ Category
Shoptalk: Collaborative creative industry?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Shoptalk: UbachsWisbrun/JWT is back
Friday, February 12th, 2010
A great week for UbachsWisbrun/JWT. The agency won two major clients; both Nationale Nederlanden (insurer, owned by the ING group) and ING bank – the latter after an exciting pitch with three combatants pulling out. The trouble started when UbachsWisbrun, one of the most succesful indpendent Dutch agencies at the time, merged with PPGH/JWT in 2007. With this acquisition JWT wanted to buy fresh, creative blood and put itself back on the creative map. But of course merging two different cultures into one agency always needs some time. And then the credit crunch hit the advertising market. UW/JWT went through a very deep dip. Last year it lost two important clients, Vodafone and Rabobank and shrank to 50 employees – coming down from 188 employees just after the merger. The way back up was the win of the Belastingdienst (National Tax Collector) account in September. And after this week UW/JWT can seriously start hiring again. Whether the agency will also finally make its creative comeback, is still to be answered.
Shoptalk; ABN AMRO ditches TBWA for Selmore!
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Wow! It doesn’t get much juicier in advertising! It all started when Dutch bank ING felt they were in need of a new agency. In the past years there had always been a lot of criticism on ING’s advertising, created by Leukwerkt Worldwide (Funnyworks), but ING kept defending it as being effective. We have to admit, Leukwerkt’s merger campaign that integrated Postbank’s and ING’s corporate identities was quite successful. But still, a ‘funny’ image is not appropriate in a time when most consumers heavily mistrust banks for their greedy nature. In any case, a few months ago ING organized a pitch and invited four agencies; Selmore, UbachsWisbrun/JWT, Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt. At the same time TBWA\Neboko was working for ABN AMRO – the other big Dutch bank. And things were looking good for TBWA, they were in the middle of developing their new campaign. In the ING pitch Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt both retreated prematurely – the latter, because it was still proud of its work and didn’t want to change it. So now only two agencies were left, Selmore and JWT. But last Monday something very curious happened, ABN announced ending its relation with TBWA and continuing with Selmore! Which means both ABN and Selmore were already talking with eachother, while being involved with another partner! This also makes JWT automatically the ING pitch winner and leaves TBWA empty handed. Unless, of course, TBWA will join the ING pitch after all. To be continued…
Update (22 Jan): Yesterday in Adformatie: TBWA’s Simon Neefjes says that ING invited TBWA in December to the pitch, but decided to stay loyal to ABN – after having shared the invitation with ABN and after a satisfactory answer on how ABN saw the future collaberation between TBWA and ABN. Also, last week TBWA presented creative work to ABN that was strongly appreciated. He confirms that it must be someone on the board that decided to break with TBWA.
Update (28 Jan): Today on Adformatie: TBWA wants to discuss terms of termination with ABN. According to the contract, ABN was legally not entitled to pull out instantly without paying any compensation. At least 15 people were working on the ABN account at TBWA.
Update (9 Feb): UbachsWisbrun/JWT officially wins ING pitch – while being the only participant left .
SocialMedia8; now in London, Paris and Madrid
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
‘Social Media’ is the buzzword at the moment. Clients don’t ask for virals anymore, they all want to use social media. And since most of these clients (and many ad agencies) haven’t got the slightest idea why building a profile page on Facebook isn’t quite enough, social media agencies have been popping up everywhere. It reminds us of the time when bannering seemed to be the holy grail, and ‘banner dealers’ ruled the market… Anyway, Amsterdam agency SocialMedia8 is doing so well that it is expanding its business to London, Paris and Madrid. The reason for this aggressive expansion are SocialMedia8’s international clients – with Nike as the jewel in the crown. And investment-wise, the fact that the company is part of WWP’s network doesn’t hurt either.
Source: Adformatie
Shoptalk: THEY opens office in India
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
THEY is not having too much trouble with the recession. In fact, it just announced to open a second office in New Delhi, India. As far as we know this will be the second Amsterdam agency opening an office in New Delhi – Wieden+Kennedy already has one, especially to service its client Nokia. THEY Consult (THEY’s strategic arm) partner Tjaco Walvis will be leading the new agency. THEY got a foot in the door in India through its client Indira Ghandi International Airport – opening a brand new terminal next year. Roland van der Vorst – head of strategy – told Adformatie it started with a workshop THEY organized for the management of the airport. One led to the other. Van der Vorst sees lots potential in India. Though you don’t need to be visionary to see that, we congratulate the agency for taking the big plunge!
Source: Adformatie
Shoptalk: Modernista! Amsterdam bankrupt
Friday, November 27th, 2009
The Amsterdam office of Modernista! (based in Boston) has gone bankrupt this week – this will make 7 employees jobless. According to the agency it was mainly due to the collapse of General Motors in the States. Early October Cadillac announced it was looking for another agency (today Bartle Bogle Hegarty NY, Publicis NY and the Martin Agency Richmond are still in the race) to recapture sales, following its emergence from bankruptcy. Hummer was sold to Tengzhong, a Chinese company – ironic when you realize Hummer more or less symbolizes America’s robust love for warfare. With these important account losses, Modernista! wasn’t able to support the Amsterdam office anymore. Modernista! Amsterdam opened its doors in 2006. Though the only local advertising we ever spotted from the Amsterdam office was for Comedy Central, we’ll miss them.
Source: Adformatie
Shoptalk: Moseley and Dundas joining 180
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Al Moseley, partner and executive creative director at Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer (HMDG), has quit to join 180 Amsterdam. Though Mosley is responsible for the ‘M’ in HMDG, the agency won’t be changing it’s name. He will become part of the management of 180 together with Kevin Dundas, who’ll become managing partner. Before HMDG, Moseley worked at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and before that he worked for Mother. Dundas (ex Saatchi & Saatchi) was president and chief executive at Sapient Nitro and only joined the agency last January. Moseley and Dundas will work alongside 180 chief executive, Chris Mendola, and the chief creative officer, Andy Fackrell. Alex Melvin continues in his role as Chairman focusing on key clients and agency expansion.
Amsterdam Ad Blog introduces ‘Jobs’ page
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Since we were getting ‘spammed’ with e-mails from creative professionals from all over the world, telling us that Amsterdam is their church and begging us to recommend them a decent ad agency in Amsterdam to work for, we introduced a new Job section. Twofish, 180 Amsterdam and Achtung! were the first agencies to eagerly accept our very special introduction subscription. So if you’re looking for a job, check out their vacancies! On the job page we also added an expat section with info about Amsterdam news, cultural stuff, blogs, working permits, etc. Any feedback on our new job section is welcome.
Marketing Tribune: Dutch ad agency survey
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Marketing Tribune just published its yearly Dutch ad agency survey, conducted by Intormart GFK. And because 180 Amsterdam scored so well, co-founder Chris Mendola (right) and Andy Fackrell were asked a few questions about the success of their agency. The results of the survey came from 865 advertisers, who answered questions about the awareness, preference and image of the Dutch agencies.
We were happy to learn that the respondents judged ‘coming up with original ideas’ as the most important feature of an ad agency. This basically means that if creativity is not leading in your agency, you have to change your proposition or your job. On this characteristic 180 Amsterdam scored best with 52% – which proofs that having 32 nationalities on board does induce creativity. The agency strongly climbed on the image ladder; last year it scored only 14% on this characteristic. On ‘enthusiasm’ (would that be hugging the client before selling your ideas?) 180 also scored best. Wieden+Kennedy, another very cosmopolitan agency, is the most trustworthy agency – The People’s Valley and McCann were second and third.
Advertisers with a one-million-plus budget, put DDB, N=5 and TBWA, respectively, on their shortlist for an above the line campaign. Not a preferable position when you realize that the interactive agencies (LBi Lost Boys, Clockwork, Achtung! and The People’s Valley) are gaining territory fast – this of course was already announced by the strongly shifting media budgets. And ironically Saatchi & Saatchi and Ogilvy have a very strong brain position – amazingly still profiting from the brand position they built up in the 90’s.
To us the most striking conclusion of the survey is the image leap made by 180 and Wieden+Kennedy among Dutch advertisers. Hopefully it means they will finally become an integrated part of the Amsterdam ad community. We know from the interview that 180 is working hard on it; the agency is looking for a Dutch new business director, who can build its local business.
Shoptalk: JWT wins Belastingdienst
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Finally UbachsWisbrun/JWT seems to have taken the big turn. Through Adformatie we learned that the agency has won the prestigious Belastingdienst (National Tax Collectors Office); a several-million-account. DDB, Publicis, Roorda and Imagine were also involved in the pitch. Through the grapevine we learned that at JWT the champagne has been flowing abundantly. In the last two years the office has only been loosing (important) accounts. After having been ditched by Vodafone (went to They/Achtung!) and Rabobank (went to N=5) the agency shrank from 188 employees to 50. Belastingdienst came from Indie, who owned the account for five years and produced some very smart advertising. Indie literally gave the tax collectors a sympathetic face, which is – if you look at the nature of their ‘business’ – not an easy task. 15 employees were made redundand, because of the loss. Anyway, congrats JWT.