The Tomorrow Awards, founded by Ignacio Oreanumo, were held in Pakhuis de Zwijger on November 17th, 2011. A night of lots of booz and some great speakers: Paul Lavoie (Taxi), Nick Bailey (AKQA), Carl Johnson (Anomaly), and Jean-François Bouchard (Sid Lee) – more info on AAB. Photo’s by Sigol Eschkol (http://www.sigeli.com). All photos here.
Anomaly – opening its Amsterdam office at the end of last year – has hired Gaston Serpenti as Digital Creative Officer. Serpenti is coming from Boondoggle Amsterdam, the agency he founded about 5 years ago with Tom de Bruyne – who left Boondoggle last year to found Sue Amsterdam with Astrid Groenewegen. The hire has been made partly possible by both Nike and Converse, recently appointing Anomaly to handle local business initiatives. Serpenti has an impressive track record, winning Spins, Webbies, and Lions. His most successful cases were Take Mokum for Nike and KLM Surprise. These cases also helped to make Boondoggle Digital Agency of the Year in 2011. Hazelle Klonhammer, MD at Anomaly about Serpenti’s hire: “Exceptional digital talent is rare in this industry. That’s why we feel very fortunate to have him onboard.” We’ll be looking forward to see his work for Anomaly.
We can imagine that when you get a brief for a new EA game it will often tell you that the gameplay is new, improved, and more realistic than ever before. To demonstrate this the most obvious thing to do is to show some in-game footage and lift a little corner of the veil of gameplay. That’s what AKQA did to promote the launch of Grand Slam Tennis 2. The responsive “total racket control” is translated into a replay of the final shot at match point during some memorable Wimbledon, US Open, etc. match. We tried McEnroe (or at least an avatar that vaguely resembles McEnroe) vs Borg. And we found out that the game is so realistic that – amateur as we are – scoring the winning point against Borg proved impossible. Then again, maybe we were just too impatient. For those of you with more patience, try it out here.
AKQA Amsterdam has appointed Rui Vieira to the role of Creative Director. Azorean-born Vieira worked at Fullsix Group in Lisbon. Before he worked on brands like McDonald’s, AXE, Playstation, and the popular portugese beer Superbock. Vieira is also known for organizing and producing the International OFFF festival in 2008 and 2009. About his move: “AKQA is an exciting new horizon for me and I’m proud that my work has led me to the world’s leading digital agency, based in the world’s most creative city”. Vieira will join AKQA in April and will be working across the agency’s accounts, including Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, and Electronic Arts. We wish him all the best.
With a track record like Tribal DDB it’s hardly a surprise that they became interactive agency of the year at Eurobest this year. Throughout the year they’ve been making great and award winning work for KLM and Philips. The climax of their award victory march has been Eurobest this week; out of the 12 nominations they won 9 awards – for Philips Obsessed with Sound 4, for ‘Wake up the town‘ 2, and for KLM Tile & Inspire 3. What really took us by surprise was ‘The Legendary Making of The Date’ for Heineken by Wieden+Kennedy winning a Grand Prix in film. We already noticed that every big budget commercial nowadays gets a making of to create some relatively cheap content – and PR for the agency, for that matter. But actually winning a Grand Prix with the side project of a campaign is quite something. Back then we said: “Not your standard ‘making of’, but one made with ‘joie de vivre’ and lots of CG jokes. If we weren’t already, this would want to make us work in advertising”. The commercial itself, ‘The Date’, also won silver in film, and ‘The Entrance’ won gold. We were told that AKQA’s London office sent in the work of AKQA Amsterdam, so you could say that the Grand Prix and Gold in Mobile for Heineken Star Player (social betting on football matches), also went to Amsterdam. DBB and 180 won silver in film for ‘Old Lady’ (Volkswagen) and ‘Marked for Life’ respectively. We also had the Epica awards last week. W+K won 5 Epica’s plus a Grand Prix for ‘The Entrance’ and ‘The Date’ combined. Again W+K won an award (gold) for the ‘extra’s’ – some extra mini scripts around ‘The Entrance’. 180’s Marked for Life won gold and silver. Finally Lemz did well with 2 silver and 2 bronze for IKEA 365, KLM Live Reply, and ‘Children see things differently‘. In total Amsterdam won 22 Epica awards. One final note to Eurobest and Epica; can you guys please merge? There’s no reason to have two identical continental award shows – except making lots of money, of course…
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.
