“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.

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.

What 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…

We 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…

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

Al 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.

Last Tuesday the VEA (Dutch Association of Advertising Agencies) and VCP (Dutch Association of Commercial Producers) organized ‘Creative Lounge’ – an initiative that brings the creative advertising scene together. The theme was ‘Two worlds of advertising’, referring to the clear distinction in Amsterdam between the typical Dutch agencies that make typical Dutch advertising and the international expat scene mainly working for international clients. One important difference between the Dutch professionals and the expats, as talent recruiter Keith White of Wieden+Kennedy explained, is the fact that the Dutch are used to work from 9 till 6, while the Wieden+Kennedy’s of this world live in a parallel world and often start their day when the Dutch go to bed. There’s  a different work ethic. It helps of course that for expats social life is for the biggest part happening within their working environment. When the question was raised why the international agencies never work with Dutch production agencies, Clair Finn of U-Turn (180) said it was partly due to the lacking service level of the Dutch. White added to this that it’s not just within the agencies, but in general; Dutch restaurants, shops, the service is overall quite poor. Paul Lovoie (Taxi) suggested that you should do your advertising in Amsterdam, while outsourcing the service to the French. We’re not sure whether that’s a wise idea, but without a doubt learned that Amsterdam has to raise its service level.

Source: Adformatie

We had to view this Sony commercial a few times, before we could fully appreciate it. The reason is that if feels a little corporate. As if Sony told its agency: make a big budget commercial, throw in massive special effects, show that we spend lots of money on R&D and please feature some of our fantastic entertainment titles. Oh yeah, and make sure everybody likes it. As said, a little corporate. What we like about it, however, is that Sony for the very first time in its history positions itself as a complete entertainment company that offers movies (2012), games (Motor Storm, Pacific Rift) and music (Hey Monday). We also like the on/off button as ad property, combined with the pay-off ‘make.believe’. It says: we are a ubiquitous, full service entertainment company that makes everything you can imagine. It makes Sony look confident, ambitious and ready for the next century. The commercial was created by 180’s Amsterdam and LA offices, directed by Noam Murro and given special effects by Animal Logic.

This year Amsterdam is hosting the Eurobest festival, so as Amsterdam Ad Blog we thought it would be appropriate to pay a little more than average attention to it. As you you’ve been able to see in the banner on our website – that has probably become a little annoying by now – the festival will be held on the 25th until the 27th of November. Yesterday the jury was announced. The following Amsterdam Creative Directors have the privilege to judge the best of Europe’s advertising: Chris Baylis, Tribal DDB (traditional); Sicco Beerda, Euro RSCG (jury president interactive); Coen Weesjes, Downtown (direct & sales promotion); Eugene Bay, VBAT (design); Andy Fackrell, 180 Amsterdam (jury president integrated) and Magnus Olsson, Saatchi & Saatchi (integrated).

This ad was made by 180 Amsterdam – and photographed by Carlos Serrao – to advertise Adidas Climacool. There’s not very much to say about it – pretty much on brief, we guess. Except maybe that the press release said the shoot was done with “a slightly retro advertising all-in-camera approach”. We don’t really know what that means, but apparently it made them cut off the guy’s trainer.