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.

Last week we wrote about Autodrop introducing the ‘fingernose’. The commercial seemed to be heavily inspired by The Office – especially typecast-wise. Here’s another one that takes an uninspiring office environment as a starting point. It advertises ‘Maandag’ (Monday), a recruiter hiring talent looking forward to Mondays – quite an insightful name. The stylish campaign that introduced the new brand Maandag two years ago, impressively won a golden Effie in 2009. This campaign, also created by Dawn and directed by Bianca Pilet, introduces Maandag’s 7 laws. We’ve shown #1; Use all your talents. The other laws can be found on Maandag.nl. They all communicate independence in well written copy. And they all show people dancing in or around the office. Not very attractive, but quite surreal and thus distinctive.

Last week the Esprix awards were divided between the Dutch campaigns that were most persuasive in changing the consumer’s behaviour. Originally the Esprix was a direct marketing and sales promotion award, but since these terms sounds old school nowadays, the institute changed its proposition – already a few times in the past years. In any case, there were 31 winners. Etcetera and Red Urban (sister agencies, both owned by the DDB network), performed best. They won 5 awards each! Jointly Etcetera and Red Urban won gold for Bol.com – recently awarded advertiser of the year. The Dutch Amazon advertised its study books in outdoor (see picture). Subsequently, a fictional student hijacked the campaign by slapping his own, personal print ads on top of them (“50% cheaper!”), selling his second hand study books on Bol.com. A smart idea, with impact; Bol.com saw its study book sales increase with 15%, and its second hand study book sales with 29%. The other golden award went to N=5 – recently awarded agency of the year – and Kong (N=5’s online sister) for the Ministry of Justice. The message; be careful in sharing your personal details online. Very smartly the agencies created two pieces of content; one ‘traditional’ TV commercial for the parents and one personalized online video, called Stanislav – going viral through social network site Hyves – for the digital generation. Though it seems hard to measure the success of this campaign on behavioral parameters, it surely must have had impact in terms of awareness. Our favourite (read: most original) campaign was ‘Alex, who follows?’ (silver) created by Dawn. Alex is an online broker that facilitates ‘do it yourself’ trading. To persuade potential customers to try it out, it asked its existing customers to share their experiences online – both positive and negative – through a webcam. Talking about transparency of financial services! Here you can find all the winners.

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.

Already in January we called this commercial about the Big Bank Theory by Dawn ‘state of the art storytelling’. Last weekend the beautiful animation, made by Postma Graphics and Motions, won a Dutch Design Award for best motion design. A good excuse to show it again.

Dawn won a golden Effie last Wednesday for its introduction campaign for Maandag© (Monday), an interim recruiter that only hires people that love Mondays - instead of dreading them. And since the Effie stands for effectiveness, this should make the client very content. In the end, he didn’t ask for creative mambo jambo, he just wanted to sell more cars…toothpaste…or let’s say interim candidates. But obviously it’s not that simple, a perfect case also needs creativity to distinguish itself. And that’s what this case embodies; both strategy and creativity. It began with a strong insight; one that is simple, but explains the subtleties of the market and its players instantly. Dawn came up with a name that reflects the ambition of the client and – more specifically – its candidates. And to stand out in the grey clutter, it made this pleasant film about someone that enjoys going to work. And although Effie cases are often about writing skills and manipulated research results, we can imagine why this case was awarded. There’s also a second film; less serious, but with the same message. See you on Monday.

This state-of-the-art example of great story-telling, was made by Dawn. With all our big banks in trouble these days, the timing for introducing the ‘Big Bank Theory’ couldn’t be better. Interesting is that Alex seems to have borrowed its ‘small bank’ brand positioning from its parent company, Binck Bank. After all, it was Binck who introduced ‘big bank bashing’. Either way, we love the sympathetic tone of voice of this animation (“Once upon a time…”). Hopefully this new advertising property will not prove too successful though; before you know it Alex will grow BIG!