Amsterdam won two Grand Prix in Film and Design at Eurobest in Hamburg, last Wednesday. Wieden+Kennedy was awarded the prestigious award for its epic Nike ‘Write the future’ commercial – alledgedly the most expensive commercial ever made. And for the same film it won bronze in Film Craft. Amsterdam Worldwide earned a Grand Prix in the category Design for the Onitsuka Tiger ‘Tansu sneaker’. Other than that Amsterdam did not do extremely well, we have to admit. In interactive Pool Worldwide won silver for its brilliant StarWars branded TomTom viral. In the same category 180 Amsterdam won bronze for Adidas’ Match Tracker and NRG3 won bronze for an interactive banner for the EA game Need for Speed Shift. N=5 was awarded silver in the category Media with a ‘Live interactive billboad’ – an aggression awareness campaign. BSUR got bronze in Film for MINI’s Flow, Publics won bronze in Print for KIKA, and JWT bronze in Promo and Outdoor with the MINI Christmas box.
Draftfcb will be the sole lead agency for Beiersdorf – owning personal care brand Nivea – as from January 1st 2011. The agency won a lengthy international pitch with among others TBWA\. For Draftfcb the pitch was led by international Chief Creative Officer Jonathan Harries and Amsterdam based ECD Dagan Cohen. For years both Draftfcb and TBWA\ were working on different Beiersdorf brands/products, which didn’t exactly create a situation of strategic and creative coherence. This should now change.
180 Amsterdam has made a series of new hires. From left to right in the picture: First of all Ben Hartman and Neil Durber from Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe London joined the agency. They will primarily work on 180’s newest account DHL. To further reinforce the creative department, creative David Chalu is also joining the agency as Senior Copywriter – he came from McCann Erickson London. Earlier this year, in September, Galen Graham was appointed as Creative Director – coming from DDB Chicago.
Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam/London won gold at the London International Awards (LIA) for Nike’s ‘Write The Future‘ – in the category film. The campaign also won three bronze awards in the categories print, poster, and music adapation – the latter went to Massive Music for updating Focus’ hit ‘Hocus Pocus’. Grey Amsterdam won silver in print for Pink Ribbon Magazine’s happy breasts. 180 Amsterdam won bronze for ‘The Match Tracker’ for Adidas.
This commercial kicks off an online Adidas game that allows you to play against random people on Facebook. You choose a city (from a team that plays the Champion’s League), then a part of your city, and then a move you would like to make against your opponent. It’s like rock-paper-scissors (where have we seen that before?), so everybody can play it. If you win, a part of the city becomes your team’s colour. Created by 180 Amsterdam.
StrawberryFrog NY/Amsterdam won the pitch for the Downtown Dubai account, owned by Developer Emaar Properties (PJSC) – it was a three-way pitch with Saatchi & Saatchi London and Y&R London. Strawberry Frog Amsterdam can be happy with this second global account win since re-opening offices in Amsterdam. In july the agency won Emirates, another company from the Middle East, and one of the reasons they were invited to the pitch. Downtown Dubai has a total project (not just advertising) budget of $20 billion (!). Part of Downtown Dubai are the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and the Dubai Mall, the biggest shopping/entertainment mall in the world. 180 Amsterdam also won. Not an account though, but a new creative director; Galen Graham. Before he worked at DDB Chicago, where he worked on clients like Bud, McDonald’s and Dell. His most famous piece of ad is Bud Light’s ‘Swear Jar‘, a huge hit on YouTube, and the first non-broadcast ad winning an Emmy Award. Before DDB Chicago Graham worked as an art director at Cramer-Krasselt. He started his career in 1998 at Fallon. Sean Thompson, who was ECD at 180 Amsterdam since January 2006, became global creative director for the brand new Team Volvo. They probably found him through all the awards he won for Honda – especially with ‘Grrr’ – at W+K London.
Finally! We’ve been waiting for this all summer! But we don’t actually mean the new MINI Countryman. No, we are referring to a piece of advertising just being awesome. Something that is so well made that your rational brain doesn’t have time to wrap itself around it. Your limbic system simply screams: NEED to have. The way that this four wheel driven race monster is sexed up, makes you want to try it as soon as the 60 seconds are done. The only thing we don’t understand is why they’ve added two extra doors. Surely not to be able to squeeze your little baby inside? Way too dangerous! Anyway, the commercial, called ‘flow’, was mostly filmed in Milan and directed by Brian Beletic. It was produced by Smuggler and the visual effects were added by Sway Studio. Check the making of here. Last but definitely not least, the concept was conceived by bsur. The agency won a three-way global pitch last May against 180 and KesselsKramer – all Amsterdam agencies. And when seeing the result, we are pretty confident that it was a fair decision.
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.
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.
Adidas 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.
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!
