Yacco Vijn leaves digital agency Kong (N=5′s digital sibling) to become Managing Creative Director at TBWA\Neboko alongside Bas Engels. It was a hard decision for Vijn, but the fact that TBWA has been so consistent in its creative success over the past decade and the fact that he leaves Kong in good shape, made him decide to accept this new adventure. By hiring Vijn TBWA wants to incorporate digital in its DNA, which is different from previous attempts to found separate digital agencies; first agency.com and a few years ago Flow – both attempts failed. When we asked Vijn what he thinks of becoming MCD at an agency known for being especially good in making (Dutch) TVC’s, he told us that ‘digital’ is becoming obsolete: “The term is slowly eroding; when I go to a shop to buy a camera, I’ll ask for a camera, not a digital camera. It’s obvious that it will be digital – everything is. I think the time is ripe to stop putting digital labels on agencies and go for integrated by default“. Wise words. Floris Hülsmann, who ironically enough left Flow last year to join Kong, will be taking over Vijn’s role until Kong has found a replacement.
Fltr: Carl Johnson, Hazelle Klønhammer, Marika Zijp, Colin Lamberton, and Seyoan Vela.
New York and London based agency Anomaly – in 2010 ‘Agency of the Year’ according to Adweek – has just opened a third office in Amsterdam. Carl Johnson, who also spoke at the Tomorrow Awards last week, says the agency opens a second European office so close to London, because “London is not as instinctively continental as Amsterdam.” Hazelle Klønhammer will be managing the Amsterdam office. Before, Klønhammer was group account director at W+K Amsterdam and most recently MD at Grey. At Grey she worked with ECD’s Colin Lamberton and Seyoan Vela. Lamberton and Vela recently left to Team Volvo and JWT Dubai, respectively. They are followed up by Marika Zijp, who previously worked at MRM and McCann Amsterdam, among other agencies. Zijp will work at Grey along strategy director Paul Sijtsma, digital director Peter Hoekstra, and managing director Patrick Joore.
About a year ago Massive Music decided to give away a custom designed Gibson – in the colors of its visual identity. The contest was simple; conceive a nickname for the guitar and the best name will win the guitar. Wouter Boon – strategist and editor at Amsterdam Ad Blog – won the guitar dubbing it ‘The Ripple’. Massive Music founder Hans Brouwer; “Out of 192 names, we chose The Ripple through a democratic process; all our agencies around the world were allowed to vote. It was a close call, but eventually ‘The Ripple’ was liked best.” The other finalists were ‘LollyRock’ (Heinrich Vejlgaard, freelance creative in Denmark), and ‘Rockwork Orange’ (Floris Cobelens, marketing director at Heineken). Massive asked Gibson to make 6 customized guitars in total, also one for each office – next weekend Massive is officially opening its 5th office in London. Boon: “It’s funny, when I saw the guitar I instantly knew ‘The Ripple’ should be its name, since it matched so well with the design. I am really glad I won and feel obliged to take some lessons now!”
Fltr: Alex Lavery, Chayenne de Witte, and Simon Robinson (click = full picture)
Since very recently there’s a new independent music agency in town, called P&S. That is, we’d simply call it a music agency, but P&S – meaning Pitch and Sync – will tell you it uses music, and the creativity that surrounds it, to amplify brands and their communication. The agency, that opened an office on Singel 146, was founded in London’s East End in 2005 and works for agencies like 180, W+K, Fallon, Sid Lee and also directly for clients such as Bacardi, Cadbury, Rafa and Wallpaper. We met up with the Amsterdam staff, being co-founder and creative director Alex Lavery, head of music Simon Robinson, and business manager Chayenne de Witte (previously producer at 180 Amsterdam), in café De Tuin in the Jordaan to find out what has brought them here.
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From left to right: Barney Hobson, Rick Chant, Alex Bennet Grant, and Jamie Kim (click = full picture)
There’s a new shop in town, called WE ARE Pi. It is located on the Herengracht, in the same building as production agency 328 Stories and theGirls™. It was founded by Alex Bennett Grant (account/strategy) and Jamie Kim (production) – both ex Wieden+Kennedy – at the beginning of this year. We already wrote about WE ARE Pi last April when they organized a fundraiser for the victims of the tsunami that hit Japan. A clear case of “practice what you preach” we said then, since the agency’s mission statement is to create ‘shared value’. In the first half year of its existence WE ARE Pi was in beta; Bennet Grant and Kim experimented with their proposition. As of last month, creative team Rick Chant (copy) and Barney Hobson (art), with whom Bennett Grant and Kim worked at Wieden, filled up the still missing positions. Now they are officially a full service agency. Enough reason to have a chat.
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After having been part of the Cyber jury in Cannes this year, Yacco Vijn has now been invited to join the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) and to be part of the jury of the 16th annual Webby Awards to be held in New York next June. Vijn co-founded Kong – the digital sibling of N=5 – in 2007 and helped to put it internationally on the digital map within no time. One of its biggest hits so far was Stanislav, an online campaign warning against cyber crime, winning all the important digital awards. It was one of the first campaigns – if not the first – in the world that aggregated data from a social media profile and use it in a campaign.
Edu Pou, CD at W+K, has found a new creative partner in Stuart Harricks (left in picture), after his former partner, Joakim Borgström, left for San Francisco to join Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Harricks joins W+K after leaving Y&R New York where he was Global CD for LG worldwide among other brands alongside Andrew McKechnie. Recent work for LG included the award-winning ‘Something Lurking’ film, created with Psyop. Before Y&R, Harricks worked as an Integrated ACD at Modernista!, Boston. And before that he spent four years at Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore. 24 year old Zabeti (right in picture) was born in Paris to parents of Persian origin and grew up in Germany. After graduating from the Miami Ad School in Hamburg, he received the ADC’s Student of the Year Award. In 2007 Siavosh joined DDB Paris and created the famous Tropicana billboard (powered by oranges), among other striking work. During his four years at DDB he impressively won 4 Cannes Lions, a ONE Show Pencil, 2 WEBBY awards, several Young Guns awards, and 2 D&AD nominations. We wish both Harricks and Zabeti all the best in Amsterdam!
180 co-founder Alex Melvin passed away peacefully in his Amsterdam home last Friday, August 12. He was 53. Alex, who bravely fought melanoma for three years, was comforted by family and close friends. He leaves behind his wife, Alison Melvin, and three loving children. For more than a decade, Alex played an integral role in the agency’s growth including his work with marquee global client Adidas. In 2007, he and the other two founders Chris Mendola and Guy Hayward launched a U.S. office in Santa Monica, CA. Alex was of enormous importance to the city of Amsterdam; not only did he found an agency that put the city internationally on the map, he also embraced the city as the true representation of his agency. In an interview with us in 2009, during the Boards Conference that he co-hosted with Indie’s Mark Aink, he explained that the resemblance was so strong, because just like 180 the city of Amsterdam has always been a city of talent, ideas and international trade. With a big smile he added: “and I also believe Amsterdam is home to 180 different nationalities, but you’d have to double check that with the chamber of commerce”. In that interview – and all the chats thereafter – we got to know Alex as a modest, good humoured, and overall amiable guy. We’ll miss him. There will be a memorial for Alex on Friday, August 19th at 3 p.m. at De Rode Hoed, Keizersgracht 102, Amsterdam. He will be buried in his native Scotland. His family has set up a Facebook page for people to post memories of Alex.
There’s a new kid in town; Kingsday, a EuroRSCG 4D break away, founded by Sander Volten, Bram de Rooij, Sicco Beerda, and Eric Ytsma (in the photo – taken by Jasper Zwartjes – from left to right). The name is inspired by Queensday, a day that turns Amsterdam into one big party and during which “openness, spontaneity, and entrepreneurship meet”. Since these guys always look ahead – digital is incorporated in their DNA – they are anticipating the succession of the Royal throne by Willem Alexander, who will be taking over from his mother, Queen Beatrix. Hence, Kingsday. The agency wants to merge advertising, PR, and digital, which does sound like the ultimate mix. After all, advertising is mainly good in building a strong message, digital mainly in using state of the art techniques, and PR mainly in seeding. Not many agencies master all of these qualities at the same time. Kingsday’s ambition is to work for both Dutch and international clients and to start playing ‘Champion’s League’ straight away. Though there’s not one big founding client, the agency is talking with many different potential clients, so we trust these talented admen to be back on the pitch soon enough. We wish them all the best!
In advertising beer brands are the most desirable accounts to obtain. So we can imagine Alfred has been popping some… um… Grolsch ‘beugeltjes’ when they found out they won one of the more sophisticated beer brands in the Netherlands. Grolsch, the past 7 years handled by DDB, is a beer for someone who prefers quality and good taste, rather than getting brainlessly drunk with friends. At least, that’s what it was always about. The best pay-off to illustrate that was: “One day you’ll stop drinking beer and start drinking Grolsch” (JWT). Sadly in the past years we haven’t seen any advertising with much aspiration anymore. The last one we can remember was ‘Everlasting love‘ – with the pay-off “Beer, the Grolsch way” (DDB). A few years ago Grolsch started to claim creativity in combination with music stars. Though a good idea in itself, the advertising was probably too complicated and therefore not picked up by the consumer. We can imagine that this made Grolsch go more mainstream, moving towards the other beer brands and away from its once unique positioning. The climax was the last commercial – shown above – celebrating the ‘pop’ sound, It felt so average that the pay-off “Beer that grabs you” sounded completely incredible. So, time for a change. We hope Grolsch allows Alfred to give the iconic brand back its exclusiveness. We wish them luck!
