The cheapest tickets, that’s all that matters. Budget Air makes its outdoor posters as small as possible to be able to offer the cheapest tickets – which makes the Mupi lightning visible. We ourselves never use Budget Air, since they never end high enough in our Google search, so maybe next time they should spend some money on Google Adwords. Nice ad anyway. Created by New Message.

We love animation. Especially because it makes so much more possible than traditional film. This commercial is a combination of real stage design and animation – how skillfully made! It tells the story of Achmea – a Dutch healthcare insurer. 200 years ago some farmers decided to work together and share the risks – what a great bolt of lightning! It was these kind of cooperations that led to the foundation of Achmea. According to the narration a lot has changed over the years, but Achmea’s principles have stayed the same. Then the animation changes into a new area; Achmea wants to ‘unworry’ society with initiatives that no one expects from an insurer and that make the working environment safer. And also, providing better food for school children. However big a ‘probleem’ is, it becomes smaller when you tackle it together. If we had to place one critical note; no real choices were made. The ad contains more information than the average consumer can handle and the myriad of styles doesn’t convey one single visual identity. But maybe that’s just us being anal. It’s a wonderful ad altogether. Created by DDB Amsterdam and directed by Raphaël Bartels.

Apparently there are women who work in the garden and want to look sexy while doing so. To us that sounds very odd – if not incredible. But hey, we never work in the garden. For KIXX – a company that makes working gloves – it is a very important target group. And if there are women out there that want pink working gloves to “impress” the shit out of the neighbours, KIXX is bound to find them with this appealing ad. It was created by Rademakkers and photographed by Gerrit Schreurs.

Holland won 18 Epica awards – four times gold – last week in Belgrade. It ended fifth after Germany, France, Sweden and the UK.  Our favourite gold went to Kit Kat Jesus. Kit Kat pretended as if Jesus had been spotted in a Kit Kat bar and this news spread as quick as only internet can spread news. We didn’t just like it because we are atheists (or at least agnostic), but more so because we love simple (but great) ideas that generate tons of free publicity. We found it a little odd that this was in the category ‘technique’, but apparently their was no better category available – the category ‘big idea’ would have been more to the point. It was done by UbachsWisbrun/JWT. Heineken’s Walk-in fridge also won gold in ‘film’ – it was submitted by TBWA’s production company CZAR. 180 won gold for Adidas with ‘Every team needs the spark’. And Grey won gold in print for Pink Ribbon.

Source: Adformatie

We are all pretty similar when it comes down to buying an insurance, that’s why this new insurance brand Izio – founded by Delta Lloyd – keeps it simple. On its website it just asks whether you are single, have a partner, a family, etc. And you can choose a bundle accordingly. The different t-shirts show the phrase ‘Long live Average Joe’. Today this is quite an original campaign line in insurance country. Most insurers teach us that we are all individuals. This sounds tempting, but makes choosing a lot harder. Izio wants to keep it simple; ‘click and ready’ is what the tagline tells us. Sounds good. The only thing that struck us, is that we initially thought this commercial was about health care insurances. Through the website we had to find out  it’s about liability/travel insurances, etc. Anyway, a sympathetic and distinctive ad, made by Dawn.

Stockholm/New York/Amsterdam based agency Perfect Fools created a whole new, unexpected and daring campaign for McDonald’s in the Nordic countries. The most striking thing about it, is that the campaign doesn’t revolve around bad burgers and salty fries, but around 60 minutes of “satire”. The story, written and directed by Jens Jonsson, was created together with TV production company Happy Fiction and is told over seven episodes on the  website Dreaming In Mono. It is also broadcasted on four Nordic TV networks. The story is about a rivalry between two ski legends of which one wants to break a ski record on a monoski – this topic proofs how McDonald’s always thinks global but acts local. The first episode definitely made us curious to see more. Since the only link to McDonald’s is that the fictional characters buy their food there, we can easily imagine that this campaign will change the McDonald’s brand into a more exclusive brand – or at least less mainstream. And if McDonald’s would simultaneously upgrade its food, we can even imagine ourselves eating there! All in all, a beautiful example of branded content.

Smart idea by CCCP. They’re building the world’s largest website for Natuurmonumenten (‘nature monuments’). It is called ‘make a meter’. Natuurmonumenten is an organization that privately buys pieces of land in the Netherlands to let nature (more or less) take its own course and prevent it from being built on. A very sympathetic organization. As a ‘consumer’ you can claim an online square meter (scale 1 on 1) of land on the site, by choosing one out of six different kinds of (typical Dutch) nature and leaving your personal details. CCCP calls it ‘user generated nature’. Since the sounds are as tranquil as the displayed nature, it is quite nice to wonder around and snap out your hectic life for a minute.

We’ve been writing quite a lot about Vodafone in the past months. Mainly because the mobile company seems to be in some sort of identity crises. Every time we see a Vodafone advertisement it communicates in a different way, with a different style and seems to be targeted at a different group of consumers. It started with the mutated guinea pigs, then they were giving away phones and other stuff, then you had to search for them (off and online) and the previous promotion asked us: ‘Who wants to be a prepaid millionaire?’. This time it’s not about your knowledge, but about your luck. That is, if we go by the campaign proposition: ‘Lucky Calls’. The concept is simple: you just call your favourite phone and ‘Anouk’ picks it up by moving through the screen in different ways. When you can answer a really simple question, you might win the phone. Not until you’ve submitted your personal data though – so Vodafone can add you to their database. Fortunately digital agency Super Heroes tried to make it all as digestible as possible.

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.