Weird, but pleasantly weird. That was our first thought when we saw this commercial for telco provider Ben, created by Kumpany and directed by Hein Mevissen. The story roughly combines the tradition of Sinterklaas (the Dutch St. Nick) with the style of a Spaghetti Western. The protagonist is wearing Ben’s corporate colour and needs to “deliver this sack to Holland”. We don’t know what our blue friend is carrying or when he will be arriving in “Holland”, but that’s o.k. cause according to the press release nobody knows. To make the campaign integrated, you can follow him on Facebook and see what places he is visiting. One thing seems pretty sure, he’ll bring something for everyone – which is probably an interesting telco deal with Ben. It’s quite a bold choice of Ben to change its advertising property so radically. Then again, it is the only wise choice to make Ben stick out again in the overcrowded competitive field. Ben was introduced in 1999 by KesselsKramer with a legendary style that was so distinctive that the brand obtained instant fame. Then T-Mobile bought the brand, killed it in 2003, and made it come back again in 2008. But it was never able to reclaim its fame. This brand new commercial has the potential to do so. Let’s see what happens.
Last Wednesday the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Nederland) hosted a session in ‘De Kring’ on the Rembrandtplein dubbed ‘XXX Expat’ (XXX is part of the city’s shield), with the noble aim of bringing two parts of the Amsterdam ad industry together; the Dutch and the expats. Some would say these two groups are surely two sides to the same coin, others would say these are separate entities with little or nothing in common other than geography. The somewhat lacking relationship between these two communities has been well documented over the years, yet despite this, nothing has ever quite bridged that gap, except of course – modest as we are – Amsterdam Ad Blog. Lode Schaeffer (ECD at Indie), new chairman to the ADCN is determined to branch out and readdress the balance. The idea was simple; get five speakers from leading agencies in Amsterdam to each give a presentation about the experience of living and working in Amsterdam as an expat.
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Last time we judged KesselsKramer’s work for Hans Brinker more of the same. Well, here is something new. And we like it. This dedicated YouTube channel invites people to create some advertising for the Hans Brinker hotel – “the most discouraging hotel of Amsterdam”. The reason that Hans Brinker asks the crowd to help out, is that it believes in advertising, but not in fancy advertising agencies. It doesn’t matter whether you share “a talking kitten, your drunk friend cycling or a Rick Astley video” you just have to make sure that you mention Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. When a video reaches a 1,000 views, Hans Brinker will pay you €10 in cash. It looks like KesselsKramers – Hans Brinker’s fancy advertising agency – made some nice examples to trigger the crowd. If these examples help to make this campaign actually get picked up by the crowd, we’ll like it even more.
A very nice stop-motion film for Fair Trade created by KesselsKramer and directed by André Maat (hazazaH). The copy basically comes down to the fact that when you buy Fair Trade you are “fairbezig” (literally ‘fair busy’). It is clear that the commercial tries to persuade us to buy Fair Trade, but to know why buying Fair Trade is good for you (or your karma) you need to go to the fairbezig website. And there we see a big picture of a monkey choosing Robert Smit’s banana (no pun), which makes Robert win a golden fair trade banana. And that’s where we lost interest. Why not make a website about how Fair Trade works?
In the series of tongue in cheek messages conveying the unattractiveness of the Hans Brinker hotel in the Kerkstraat, KesselsKramer this time conceived these freshly designed posters apologizing for the bad service. Let us be clear about one thing: the concept of positioning Hans Brinker as the crappiest hotel in Amsterdam is rock solid. It has proved its success wonderfully well over the past decades by attracting millions of shoe string travelers visiting Amsterdam. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t mind seeing something new.
The good thing about working as an ad agency for small clients (with small budgets) is that your creative playground gets much more spacious. Big brands often don’t dare to stick their neck out, let alone go political – the consumer might turn against them! Not Lotte Yoga School; she hasn’t got much to lose. And that’s why she gave KesselsKramer carte blanche. And when you do that, you get distinctive work. Together with these posters – that promote a €5 trial session – Lotte Yoga School also sent each politician a letter. Unfortunately they are not very well written – here’s one that invites Geert Wilders to try yoga. In any case, a sympathetic idea; if we ever feel our brain is getting rigid, we’ll try out Lotte’s Yoga School!
In the past decade KesselsKramer has made some great advertising for Hans Brinker; always convincingly underselling the Amsterdam budget hotel with a good sense of humour – making it very attractive for shoestring travelers. If it comes to underselling, this “High Tech” virtual receptionist with a constantly changing mood, does the job. It is a pity though that the concept is a little worn out; Burger King’s revolutionary Subservient Chicken was innovative 10 years (!) ago. What also surprised us is that the receptionist doesn’t really answer your question; “Can I borrow your pen?” was answered by “Kanker Hoer” – read: cancer prostitute (?!). If this concept is to show that Hans Brinker has a shabby advertising budget; well done. Then again, we liked the shitvertising better – it didn’t require much budget either.
This film for Ben promotes a website that allows you to dance with Bashir. The webcam application that recognizes your dance movements was built by SuperHeroes and based on the commercial ‘Ben & Bashir’ by KesselsKramer – directed by Mijke de Jong. In the KK commercial Bashir throws his mobile phone away. When it comes back like a boomerang he catches it again – don’t ask us why, but it follows up a series of commercials released in September, last year. The dance app is very techy and smartly made, but we were also left wondering what Ben is trying to sell us here.
This week it is the national Book Week, an initiative of the ‘Collective Propaganda for the Dutch Book’ (CPNB). For this occasion CPNB asked Erik Kessels (KesselsKramer) and writer Christine Otten, to create an essay around this year’s theme ‘Written Portraits’. The result is Good Luck, a story based on a found photograph album of two unknown lovers. The two lovers were given a new life by Kessels and Otten; they became Betty and Pierre Vincent. Kessels is known for his fascination for lost photographs. He already created several books and exhibitions with pictures he bought or found on flea markets – e.g. the wonderful series In Almost Every Picture. Unique about this essay is the fact that it comes with a perfume, especially designed for the story. This makes it the most complete love story you can imagine; in words, images, and scent.
This is the concept of a new campaign by KesselsKramer for mobile phone provider Ben in a nutshell: if you are stuck to an extensive mobile phone contract and you can’t get rid off it, you might have an interesting story why you want to get rid of it. Tell your story through your webcam and if provider Ben likes it, it will buy off the contract and give you a flexible Ben contract instead. On top of that, you’re story will be ‘reconstructed’ by a bunch of actors. So the picture in this post is an example of the original versus the reconstructed story – here’s the ‘commercial’ (in Dutch) that comes with it. And just like the previous Ben ad, the takeout is of course that Ben is as flexible as a straw. Reconstructions remind us of missing persons and uninteresting television, but maybe it’ll work on the internet. In any case, it’s interesting too see how Ben adds production value to user generated content so that it becomes more interesting to watch.
