Posts Tagged ‘180’

Spectacular for Adidas F50 Adizero

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Quite spectacular this outdoor ad for the Adidas F50 Adizero. Not only did Adidas change the tram stop benches, the real boots were also incorporated in the outdoor furniture. Created by 180, TBWA\BEC and JC Decaux.

Sony Vaio does the job with rocket science

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Talking about some slick advertising. Here it is. It starts like a movie trailer: “The first rocket to reach the moon had less computing power than today’s Sony VAIO notebook”. The trailer announces a branded documentary that shows how some whiz kids learn “rocket science” to launch a rocket with a Sony Vaio. The Hollywoodish tone of voice is no surprise when you realize it was created by 180LA (180 Amsterdam’s sibling). And while the cynics among us might say that probably any other comparable laptop can launch a rocket, you got to admit this (literally) is a great piece of ad. We can easily imagine people getting goosebumps when seeing the trailer. And they might even be compelled to see the entire documentary on Science Channel “this fall”. It caries all the Hollywood tricks (“a weather setback!”) that will make compelling TV. And we’re pretty sure that Sony Vaio will gain on the brand attributes “smart” and “powerful”. Job well done – this goes for both kids and agency.

Shoptalk: Sid Lee wins; Arnold opens

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

ShoptalkAdidas is moving its digital account from 180’s Riot to Sid Lee. A worrying move for 180, since it makes Sid Lee, already working for Adidas Originals,  own yet another piece of the advertising pie. Through the grapevine we also heard that Boston based Arnold will be opening an Amsterdam office at the end of this year to service its international client Volvo. This sounds like an efficient move since Volvo’s international digital agency EuroRSCG 4D is already based in Amsterdam.

Cannes: 4 Film (Craft) Lions

Monday, June 28th, 2010

On Saturday the last Cannes Lions were awarded to Amsterdam agencies in the categories Film and Film Craft. Silver went to the intelligent commercials made by TBWA\Neboko for IDFA – international documentary festival Amsterdam. Though we liked the previous concept a little better, the one showed in this post brings the message ‘You can’t make up reality’ in a similarly convincing way. 180 Amsterdam won silver in the ‘Film Craft’ category for their Adidas film ‘Every team needs the spark’. Indeed, a lot of craftsmanship. XXS and N=5 won bronze for their Dierenbescherming (animal protection) and Live Interactive Billboard ads respectively. The latter is an aggression awareness campaign that shows a billboard with ambulance personal being harassed. Bystanders that watch the billboard are being filmed and integrated in the film – so they watch their selves being inactive. Quite smart, though in our opinion this case would have been better of winning in Outdoor or Cyber. Like last year Philips won a Grand Prix (this time in ‘Film Craft’) for The Gift, “a sci-fi thriller in a dystopian future” that shows quite some skills being brought together. It was created by DDB London in assocation with RSA Films. We mention it, cause Tribal DDB Amsterdam was responsible for the overarching Parallel Lines campaign that included the 5 short films – of which The Gift was one. O.k., enough chest pounding already. Let’s get back to work!

Adidas’ Quest ends on Facebook

Monday, June 14th, 2010

“And so this journey brings me here…”. The extensive journey started about a year ago with Messi as the Spark and the mysterious voice-over of Zidane explaining what was going on. To us the whole concept was a bit over-complicated. We never really understood what Zidane was trying to tell us – not only because of his poor English. But we forgave Adidas and its agency 180 Amsterdam easily, cause it was all so richly executed and therefore not a punishment to watch. Especially the previous commercial – “inspred by Sin City” – was a very pleasant orgy of special effects. So now the long journey has brought Zidane to South Africa. And to celebrate this, you can join the Adidas “Match-Up experience” on Facebook. Again, quite a bombastic ad. But if we understand correctly, you can pick a favourite player out of the 32 Adidas heroes from the different countries (Messi from Argentina, Gerard from England, Pienaar from South Africa, etc.) and then predict who will win when they’re playing each other. The winners get free Adidas gear. So to put it banally, it’s betting on matches, sponsored by Adidas. And so the journey must end.

Adidas F50: it doesn’t matter how fast you are

Monday, May 17th, 2010

With this rich, Sin City inspired ad, it looks like 180 Amsterdam wanted to display how easily it integrates so many different creative disciplines into one single piece of advertising. But just like the previous ad with Leonal Messi as The Spark and Zinédine Zidane as the voice over, the commercial is made primarily to sell the Adidas F50 football boot – this time as the the lightest and fastest. What we didn’t know yet, is that there’s two kinds of fast; there’s the spark and the blaze – the latter respresented by David Villa. While the spark needs a ball to be fast, the blaze simply is a consuming inferno of speed. To be honest, we don’t really care, we simply love to watch it – over and over again.

Boards Summit Europe 2010; the insights

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Boards Summit EuropeWhat an inspiring event it was. Here are the insights we took home. The first key note speaker, Ed Ulbrich from Digital Domain, talked us through the process of getting the multi-platform remake of Tron to market. He showed what looked like a trailer of the movie ‘Tron Legacy’, but later revealed it was ‘just’ a teaser to get Disney excited; they could make a movie, a game and a theme park ride out of this single concept. He called this a ‘transmedia content prototype’; a piece of content that mitigates the investor’s risk, because it provides a tangible window into the opportunities of the concept. Ulbrich founded a  company, Mothership, that single mindedly builds these kind of prototypes. (more…)

Creative Lounge: the big idea in digital

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

creative_lounge_logoWe were invited by the VEA (Association of Ad Agencies) 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…)

Epica: Kit Kat Jesus wins gold

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

kitkat-jesus

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

Shoptalk: Moseley and Dundas joining 180

Friday, November 13th, 2009

ShoptalkAl Moseley, partner and executive creative director at Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer (HMDG), has quit to join 180 Amsterdam. Though Mosley is responsible for the ‘M’ in HMDG, the agency won’t be changing it’s name. He will become part of the management of 180 together with Kevin Dundas, who’ll become managing partner. Before HMDG, Moseley worked at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and before that he worked for Mother. Dundas (ex Saatchi & Saatchi) was president and chief executive at Sapient Nitro and only joined the agency last January. Moseley and Dundas will work alongside 180 chief executive, Chris Mendola, and the chief creative officer, Andy Fackrell. Alex Melvin continues in his role as Chairman focusing on key clients and agency expansion.