Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam hired Adrien Bindi and Rick Herrera, two top creatives coming from San Francisco. Bindi previously spent three years as art director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, producing the award-winning ‘Battle for Milkquarious’, a bizar 70’s inspired and over-the-top 20-minute rock opera for Got Milk? Before GS&P Bindi worked at Taxi, Fallon and Leo Burnett. Herrera, copywriter, joins W+K Amsterdam from twofifteen – formerly known as TAG/San Francisco. One of the latest projects he worked on was Xbox ‘The Life’, according to the press release, one of the “most awarded pieces of TV work of 2010”. He also worked on the famous Halo 3 ‘Believe’ campaign – winning two (!) Cannes Grand Prix in 2008. Clearly a strong reinforcement for W+K. Make our city shine, guys.

Grey bought – or “integrated”, if you will – digital agency Blutarsky. Blutarsky is following its former MD Patrick Joore in the slipstream. Joore, previously MD at Blutarsky, started at Grey last month. Blutarsky’s eight-strong team will move to the Grey Amsterdam office. According to Wikipedia ‘Blutarsky’ is slang for a 0.0 quarterback rating in American Football, the lowest possible rating – it was derived from the movie National Lampoon’s Animal House in which John ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky (picture), played by John Belushi, scored 0.0. We’re not sure why the agency was inspired by this character, but hope the two agencies will ‘kick some ass’ – to stay in the verbal realm of football.

We received a press release from THEY telling us that the agency just won the assignment to roll-out the Polish vodka Sobieski in India. Sobieski is (in quantity) the sixth-largest vodka brand in the world, but we never heard of it. After doing some Googling we came across this Bruce Willis commercial. Apparently he’s not only Sobieski’s advertising property, like George Clooney for Nespresso, but also a partner in the company. The commercial made us laugh out loud. Having seen this, we’re sure THEY will do a better job in India. Though selling vodka in India still feels like selling Vindaloo curry’s on the Northpole – fortunately India is a little denser populated.

180 created a new font, called EcoDIN. The font is designed to use less toner when printed – which gives the impression that ‘Eco’ stands for ‘Economical’. The font was inspired by the Ecofont by Spranq (an ad agency in Utrecht) – using 20% less toner. 180’s font, based on DIN Mittleschrift, goes one step further. While in Spranq’s font holes are punched through the glyphs, 180 did the opposite (a nice case of 180 thinking); it just shows the holes. We would love to recommend 180’s EcoDIN, but instead we’re going to bring this yet another step further; we recommend you to start a paperless office, like ourselves; it uses no ink at all. And what’s really eco about it; it doesn’t require any dead trees.

Last week Hans Brouwer (right) from MassiveMusic won the Amsterdam Business Award 2011. Brouwer was nominated together with Duncan Stutterheim (middle) from ID&T (a music and entertainment company that among other things has franchised the Sensation White dance event in 17 different countries), and CEO Bert van der Leden (left) from IQCreative (a company that exploits the international Supperclub restaurant formula, as well as several other restaurants in Amsterdam, like Envy, Vyne, Nevy and Nomads). Brouwer and his MassiveMusic received the highest ratings in categories like strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainability. This photo was taken during a special award ceremony dinner at Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam. MassiveMusic is one of the world leaders in music composition and production, with offices in New York, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam. According to the company it publishes more than fifty music composers for commercials, Idents, TV promo’s, and console games, on a daily basis. But Brouwer gives Amsterdam more than digestible advertising tunes; he’s also the founder of the ‘Club of 12′, a group of creative ambassadors that aim to make the Amsterdam creative industry thrive and internationally visible. So we’re pretty sure Brouwer will use his prize money, €25,000, in a creative way.

Dutch Designer Christian Borstlap starts a new agency, called ‘Part of a Bigger Plan’. The agency offers branding, advertising, and design. In the past Borstlap worked for Wallpaper* Magazine, KesselsKramer, and FHV/BBDO. One of Borstlap’s most successful works in 2010 was his Children Stamps campaign for TNT Post – among other prizes it won a D&AD award and Dutch Design Award. We first thought that the name ‘Part of a Bigger Plan’ was referring to the way small, modern collaborative agencies work nowadays, but Borstlap explained to us that the name actually refers to the modern media landscape where communication is always part of a bigger plan. The name also conveys the agency’s strategic ambitions; it creates communication with a long term vision. Borstlap assured us that there’s enough work in the pipeline, so we’ll be looking forward to see that!

Good news for 180 Amsterdam; ASICS appointed the agency for its global communications around the London Olympic Games 2012 – after a competitive pitch that started last summer. 180 will also work with ASICS to launch key product ranges through 2011 and 2012. ASICS asked 180 to give emotional meaning to its ethos ‘Sound Mind Sound Body’ (Anima Sana In Corpore Sano) – an inspiring assignment when combining it with the idea behind the Olympics. 180′s big advantage in the pitch was its extensive experience on the Adidas account – 180’s founding client who left the agency in 2010. Next to 180 ASICS also works with Vitro in San Diego. Together with Vitro ASICS very recently developed a global campaign around the proposition ‘Sports releases more than just sweat’ – namely negative energy. It seems ASICS is working hard to capture some market share from Nike and Adidas.

Alfred and Lowe Amsterdam founded a new agency, Lowe@Alfred, that will solely service  Unilever’s brands. For Alfred this is a separate agency that will operate next to its existing agency. For Lowe it’s the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. The merger was initiated by Unilever who is a client of both agencies and asked for one strong local agency with an international network. Alfred is the strong local agency and Lowe has the network. What’s interesting about this merger is that Alfred is founded by ex Lowe employees Marcel van Wing, Aad Kuijper, and Patrick de Zeeuw. When they left Lowe, they took  Lowe’s (or Aad Kuijper’s, if you will) one trick pony with them; humorous advertising (mainly for FMCG’s) that makes parents feel good. Chairman Tony Wright from Lowe + Partners calls this “populistic creative ideas”, which sounds like a contradiction to us, but has proven to be a concept that sells Unilever’s products wonderfully well. For example, Alfred recently won the ‘Gouden Loeki’ (the only award that represents what consumers think is good advertising) for Unilever’s Calvé peanut butter. The commercial is practically a remake of an old Lowe concept from the 80s, but since the consumer loves it, the lack of originality it is not an issue for Unilever. For Lowe this merger seems to be the light at the end of the tunnel; in less than a decade it changed from one of the most successful agency’s in the industry to a handful of people subrenting some space at Interpublic’s sister McCann. And for Alfred it’s a big compliment; in exactly four years time it has grown so strong that today it is able to swallow Lowe Amsterdam – at least, that is what the name Lowe@Alfred suggests.

As from March Patrick Joore will be the new MD of Grey, replacing Hazelle Klønhammer. Joore comes from Blutarsky. Before that he was head of account at Lowe and CSD at JWT Amsterdam. Klønhammer joined Grey in 2009 – after having worked for W+K, TBWA, 180. Together with ECD’s Colin Lamberton and Seyoan Vela her task was to turn Grey Amsterdam in an international creative hotspot. Our question then was: “Here Today. Where Tomorrow?” Well, here are we now: it seems that by hiring Joore Grey decided that the international focus has no priority anymore. Lamberton and Vela will stay on board – though the question is, for how long.

After Wieden+Kennedy’s very successful ‘Write the future’ campaign for Nike (the commercial ended 11th in The Gunn Report) and more recently its striking work for Heineken (AAB’s ‘Ad of the month’ in January), the agency is on a roll and expanding its creative floor with no less than 7 international creatives. From left to right: Rosie Bardales joins the Amsterdam agency as CD, coming from BBH London. Also coming from London are Australian team Selena McKenzie and Toby Moore. Previously they worked at Fallon and before that at Publicis Mojo Melbourne – where they worked on Nike. The South African team Mike Bond and Bern Hunter – with their distinctive outfit – are joining from AMV BBDO London. Apparently a team with itchy feet; before AMV they worked at Publicis and Mother in New York and TBWA Paris. Finally, Dan Maxwell and Ivan Cash come from Venables Bell & Partners San Francisco. Welcome to Amsterdam, guys. We hope it will be everything you expected – and more.