After having introduced our new columnists last week, this week we’re introducing a new item called ‘Inspiration’; Amsterdam creatives sharing their inspiration on a weekly basis. In order of future appearance we found the following posse willing to show us what they like, what fascinates them, or what they admire on a regular basis: Jennette Snape, art director at Dolly Rogers; Jarr Geerligs, art director at Selmore; Joep Beving, creative at Massive Music; Rick de Zwart, designer at Meneer de Zwart (and responsible for AAB’s visual identity); David Snellenberg, copywriter at Dawn; Johan Kramer, director at 328 Stories; Martin Pyper, designer at MeStudio; Reuben Alexander, creative at Buutvrij for Life; and Christian Borstlap, art director at Part of a Bigger Plan. Of course these people do more than just what their often somewhat rigitd title suggests (in art, music, photography, etc.) but you can read about that on their profile page, once they’ve posted their first contribution. Today Jennette Snape kicks off with an art piece she created herself. The title is “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”; a nice kick off for this new genre, since it philosophies on what inspiration really is.
If you live in the Netherlands you probably know ‘Artis de Partis’; it’s an icon of the Amsterdam zoo and a cuddly doll for many Dutch kids. Two years ago Artis conceived an alien brother for Artis de Partis to promote Artis’ planetarium, called ‘Artis de Marsis’. The cyclope was a logical step to further exploit the success of Artis de Partis. When Dutchman André Kuipers – a big fan of the Artis planetarium – recently went into space with the ISS international space program, he decided to take Artis de Marsis with him, which led to this wonderful picture of Artis de Marsis in space. On top of this Dawn – Artis’ agency – created a goodbye film, a dedicated webpage where one can follow Artis de Marsis, and a special program in the Planetarium. The fans of Artis de Marsis will soon even be able to make an inflight call with Kuipers live from the planetarium. Engaging advertising in its truest form.
Though we’re always a bit wary of ‘commercials’ that show how the consumer is impressed by seeing an ad – it’s usually (art) directed – we very much like the idea of Triodos boldly using Nasdaq and Thomson Reuters’ tickertape on Times Square – probably the most expensive billboard in the world – to communicate that the stock market is about greed, instead of happiness. Quite a change from last year’s ‘Follow your heart, Use your head‘ ad – about which we said it wasn’t aggressive enough. What we like best about this ad is that it ironically shows that money makes the world go round; everything is for sale. Created by Dawn.
The Artis animal sticker campaign by agency Dawn was one of the better campaigns we’ve seen this year. This huge ‘sticker’, measuring 20 x 30 meters – on the former head office of Shell, next to the new futuristic Film Museum that seems to have problems with the white sheets that should cover it – follows it up with the text: “Before you know it they are too big“. It promotes the September discount entrance fee at Artis – which was introduced more than a century ago to allow the poor Amsterdammers to visit the zoo. It was difficult the get the council of Noord (the district north of the IJ river) to coorporate with this huge outdoor ad in the up and coming area of Amsterdam (where Dawn itself is located), but eventually they did after Artis threw in some of its goodwill. The photo was taken by Ronald van Weeren.
This spring a baby boom is hitting Amsterdam zoo Artis. To celebrate this, Dawn came up with outdoor stickers. The agency was inspired by the farm-animals-car-window-stickers from the 70s-80s. Since the stickers can be removed and reused elsewhere, it is the first outdoor campaign that can physically go viral. What an incredibly handsome idea.
The Triodos story continues. The new visual ad identity by Dawn started with a teasing outdoor campaign designed by Christian Borstlap. This was followed by another outdoor campaign revealing more of Triodos’ fair trade banking approach. Now there’s this film. Not designed by Borstlap as you would expect, but by Jeroen Krielaars (Calango). The animation explains that not every bank is the same (read: not every bank tries to rip society off). Triodos for example invests solely in companies that give society a positive impulse. Sounds good, looks good.
Dawn has transformed its season’s greetings into this bottle of vodka. And since the agency has a strong feeling for branding, it is called Modka, using the inverted ‘m’ from Dawn’s logo. A nice collateral advantage of this name is that they could claim the URL modka.nl. On this dedicated website all the internal correspondence on how Modka came into existence is disclosed (“modkaleaks”). And that’s why the 100% organic grain vodka (bottled by Rutte & Zn) is dubbed ‘The most transparent vodka in the world’. So if you ask yourself, which font they used for Modka, you’ll find out on the website that it’s “45 point Pippin Regular”. It also reveals that the bottle does not contain “0.375 ml”, which would be a drop, but 0.5 liter (the mistake was due to a dyslectic art director and sloppy AM) , that the website cost Dawn €888, and many more trivial facts. We hope the Modka tastes as clean as it looks.
We talked about Triodos’ new designy ‘Follow your heart, Use your head’ campaign – created by Dawn, designed by Christian Borstlap – a month ago. It was called a ‘missed opportunity’, since we thought the ads lacked an incentive for the consumer to move to Triodos (‘sustainable banking’). Now the incentive is there. “We invest in rubbish. Because recycling has the future” is what this outdoor ad tells us. The others communicate: “Let’s turn Fair Trade into a pleonasm” and “Banking without e-numbers and preservatives”. O.k. now we get it. Though it still feels a little too ‘fair trade’ to persuade the masses. But we sincerely hope we’re wrong. In any case, nice copy and design.
There’s something about this guy… Indeed, he looks a bit like a dork. But there’s more. According to the voice-over, he is also “urban”, “knows what he’s doing”, “doesn’t hesitate”, “laughs sensationally”, “is classically dressed”, “cosmopolitan”. He’s got it all. Except… “He is missing something…. right…. a topic”. He is clearly missing De Groene Amsterdammer (Green Amsterdammer – has got nothing to do with the environment, for that matter), a Dutch political weekly that will give you plenty of topics to talk about. Especially when you look very sophisticated, but don’t have much to say. We’ve never read it, but the stylish black and white, jazzy cinema commercial, makes us want to buy it as a status symbol – just like we wanted to drink Grolsch when they used black and white and jazz. We’ll just go to a ‘café’, have it nonchalantly lying on our table – next to an Illy espresso, glass of water, and maybe even a pack of Gauloises Blondes. And then we’re complete. Created by Dawn and directed by Bram Schouw (hazazaH).
These outdoor posters were created by Dawn for Triodos Bank. The first two posters say ‘Use your head’ and ‘Follow your heart’. At night – when the lights in the JC Decaux outdoor furniture are on – both posters change into the third poster. Dawn worked with Christian Borstlap, who recently won a Dutch Design Award for the Dutch ‘Children stamps’ he created (here’s the commercial that came with it). We like these posters. They clearly stand out – both in tone and look – in a landscape of banks that all of sudden (not very credibly) en masse listen to their clients and offer ‘revolutionary’ consumer friendly products. Still it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Triodos Bank is the only bank that can honestly claim not being greedy. And while the sober style matches with this insight, the message feels kind of empty. We usally use our head and heart, but why should we bank with Triodos? We hope that in the rest of this campaign they’ll show a bit more of the aggressiveness all the other banks used to sell they’re lucrative products.
Update: Dawn told us kindly that “this is the introduction kick off for the people who’ve never heard of Triodos”. As from next Monday Dawn will explain us why we should all bank there. We look forward to it.
