We were invited by the VEA (association of Dutch advertisers) to attend the second edition of Creative Lounge on Monday in Pakhuis de Zwijger. The night was hosted by Jelani Isaacs (Brenninkmeijer and Isaacs) and Claire Finn (U-Turn). Guests of the evening were Matthew Atkatz (Riot, digital arm 180), Romke Oortwijn (N=5), Raphael Mazoyer (Asics) and – Skyping in from London – Florian Schmitt (Hi-Res). And this night’s topic was the controversy between digital agencies and non-digital agencies; is digital part of the idea or is digital the idea itself? A promising question, though it did take a while before the discussion stopped to bounce all over the place. We do understand why it did though; there’s no unambiguous answer to the question what the exact role of digital is in advertising. Some big ideas can only exist thanks to the technology behind it, while some ideas merely use existing digital tools to execute it. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Viral’ Category
Dutch carnival hit is viral for Bavaria
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
This is a screenshot from a carnival hit conceived by Kumpany for Bavaria. Maybe not many people know this, but carnival is quite big in the Netherlands. That is, if you live ‘below the rivers’ (read: in the south). Every year in January/February some odd carnival hits seep through to the North. This year there was this hit called ‘Zachte G, Harde L’. Translated ‘Soft G’ – referring to the accent in the south – and ‘Hard L’ – referring to the male reproduction organ. The hit already has 1.5 million hits on YouTube, which – for Dutch standards – is quite impressive. What’s more, the song was played intensively on 538. And Jos van Oss, the singer, performed the song throughout the Netherlands in local bars and clubs. Only after the song became a hit, Jos van Oss revealed (on SBS Show News) it was a viral for Bavaria. In the YouTube video Jos only subtly holds a can of Bavaria in his hand. In hindsight it’s clear that the video is advertising for Bavaria – Jos for instance pees against the Heineken brewery. For some it will only generate big question marks, but if you understand Dutch culture, it is a hit – both literally and figuratively.
Tits-and-bums humor to make a joke
Monday, December 14th, 2009
‘Shit happens’ is the title of this website. What are they selling? Toilet paper that can also be used to clean your face? Nope, not even close. This ad, made by Doom & Dickson for ‘Consumer & Safety’, tries to explain the danger of playing with fireworks; before you know, it explodes in your face, the doctor replaces your mouth with your own (tiny) ass, and then – of course – your speech sounds like farting. To make the campaign viral, the site has a tool to upload your friends’ photos and give them the same ‘make-over’. It made us laugh. The campaign will easily win the craziest ad of the year, but we strongly doubt the effectiveness. Of course this kind of humor suits the purpose of creating a viral effect and will thus generate a fair amount of exposure. We fear though that the tits-and-bums humor suffocates the message that fireworks are dangerous. In previous campaigns, for example, real victoms were used with mutulated arms, missing fingers, etc, which clearly showed the gravity of the subject. The only lesson to be learned by the target (male adolescents) here, is that it’s fun to make your friend’s face look like an arse. William Bernbach – founder of DDB – already taught us very wisely that in advertising “humor should never be used to make a joke, only to make a point”.
Update: The website was built by Superheroes.
Cyber mafia into social networking
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Kong Amsterdam, the digital agency of N=5, built a very smart feature with Hyves (= Dutch Facebook) for the Dutch Ministry of Justice, called Stanislav. A video, with strong James Bond-like execution (the Eastern Europeans play the bad guys), warns in quite a convincing way to be prudent about sharing your personal information online. When you watch the video through your Hyves profile, it uses your accessible data, like name, age, city and photos in the story. The subtle thing about it, is that you don’t realize it is using your profile content, until you all of a sudden see your friends’ and your own photo appear. Interesting detail: Hyves also gave the advertising agency access to the data of hidden profiles, which they weren’t allowed to do according their own terms & conditions – would that be a cyber crime? Anyway, a minor detail when you realize how useful and effective this message can be. And compliments to the government. Usually they make unconvincing, waste-of-money advertising.
Update: (August, 21st) Adformatie reports that the campaign was terminated this week, because of its overwhelming effect. Three million Hyvers watched the personalized video (out of 16,5 million Dutchmen), while the link was forwarded more than 7 million times. Impressive.