Apparently not many people read the labels on household chemicals. But it’s wise to do so; according to the Dutch Food and Goods Authority 6,000 incidents take place each year by wrongly handling (read: drinking, exposure to skin, etc.) detergents at home. You can imagine it’s mainly young children who are victim – in fact, in a previous campaign the bottles were very smartly shown through the eyes of a kid. Again Lemz was asked to raise awareness around this issue. And the agency took the insight that money is the most effective behavior changer to the supermarket shelves through a Label Lottery. As you can see in the video Lemz attached a special label to a few bottles with one additional line: “Congratulations! By reading this label you have won €1000.” Though all the bottles are sold already, no one has claimed the prize yet – which makes sense if the thesis is that no one reads the label. This week the word is spread through outdoor (the poster has quite some stopping power) and online that reading a label can actually make you money. Hopefully people don’t just frantically scan the bottle for “€1000,” instead of carefully reading the bits about ‘danger.’

Photo: Maurice Mikkers
The biggest winner last night at the ADCN (Dutch Art Director’s Club) awards was Lemz. All the ‘bulbs’ – of which one was a Grand Prix (the very best integrated work) – went to their Fireworks campaign. Our very favourite campaign of the year Domino’s Pizza Pepperoni by Indie won one Golden and two Silver bulbs (TV, internet and activation) – in our opinion it was at least as good as Lemz’ work. Wieden also won one Gold and two Silver for Heineken’s ‘The making of The Date’ (internet, TV, and activation). Selmore won Gold for Bavaria and Hugh Heffner – so we can be sure that Charlie Sheen will also win Gold next year. We were a bit surprised that N=5 won Gold for Telfort – not really our taste. Y&R won one Gold and two Silver for LG’s ‘smart thief‘ (internet, TV, and viral). A bit strange that alle these films are winning different prizes for the different channels through which they are broadcasted – does the channel matter? Another one of our favourites was Hema’s with a push-up bra in print, promoted by a male model, going viral big time – by Doom & Dickson. It won Gold and Silver. Note: Hema is one of the most down to earth department stores in the Netherlands. TBWA won Gold with its print campaign for DIY chain Gamma; free Lego – “Just like dad.” In Interactive Tribal DDB won Gold and Silver for ‘Obsessed with Sound’ for Philips. One of the most impactful commercials of the year by Publicis for ALS won Silver – “I have died by now.” Special bulbs went to Mischa Rozema (for directing OFFF), Christian Borstlap (art direction and illustration, for LV and Mr Porter), and Simon Warner (photgraphy, for Octopus).

We weren’t physically there when last night no less than 30 ‘Spins’ (rings, either gold or silver) were awarded to the best digital work of the Benelux at the SpinAwards. Instead, we were mingling with the lesser gods at the NewWork Pre-Party. After ten, though, when the SpinAwards opened their doors for the after party, we were able to congratulate all the winners in person. First of all, Tribal DDB. The big winner with three golden awards; two for Obsessed with sound and one for KLM Tile & Inspire. On top of that Tribal won the agency of the year award. Lemz also won big with five Spins. Three Silver Spins went to Taskforce Tracing Bomb makers, targeted at teenagers making their own bombs around New Years and showing the impact proudly on YouTube. The Taskforce downloaded the videos and re-uploaded them with a warning to the bomb makers. Lemz also won two silver spins with KLM Live Reply. And – not much of a surprise – KLM became advertiser of the year. Buutvrij For Life won two awards with their ‘Pass it on day’ – they asked all their Facbook friends to form a line through Amsterdam to pass on their office interior when they were moving offices. Unofficially they also won a third award together with Cote d’Azur for ‘Everything smells like chocolate.’ Boondoggle won two awards with ‘Cordeals’ for Cordaid and with Medi-Plaza.nl for the government. The latter case is slightly similar to the Taskforce concept; consumers who were buying medicines online were led to Medi-Plaza, when about to make the transaction they were confronted with the message that buying medicines online is a dangerous affair. Red Urban won two awards with the Russian Roulette app for Duyves and their ‘Like’ campaign for KPN. Click on picture to see the entire list of winners.

With a track record like Tribal DDB it’s hardly a surprise that they became interactive agency of the year at Eurobest this year. Throughout the year they’ve been making great and award winning work for KLM and Philips. The climax of their award victory march has been Eurobest this week; out of the 12 nominations they won 9 awards – for Philips Obsessed with Sound 4, for ‘Wake up the town‘ 2, and for KLM Tile & Inspire 3. What really took us by surprise was ‘The Legendary Making of The Date’ for Heineken by Wieden+Kennedy winning a Grand Prix in film. We already noticed that every big budget commercial nowadays gets a making of to create some relatively cheap content – and PR for the agency, for that matter. But actually winning a Grand Prix with the side project of a campaign is quite something. Back then we said: “Not your standard ‘making of’, but one made with ‘joie de vivre’ and lots of CG jokes. If we weren’t already, this would want to make us work in advertising”. The commercial itself, ‘The Date’, also won silver in film, and ‘The Entrance’ won gold. We were told that AKQA’s London office sent in the work of AKQA Amsterdam, so you could say that the Grand Prix and Gold in Mobile for Heineken Star Player (social betting on football matches), also went to Amsterdam. DBB and 180 won silver in film for ‘Old Lady’ (Volkswagen) and ‘Marked for Life’ respectively. We also had the Epica awards last week. W+K won 5 Epica’s plus a Grand Prix for ‘The Entrance’ and ‘The Date’ combined. Again W+K won an award (gold) for the ‘extra’s’ – some extra mini scripts around ‘The Entrance’. 180’s Marked for Life won gold and silver. Finally Lemz did well with 2 silver and 2 bronze for IKEA 365, KLM Live Reply, and ‘Children see things differently‘. In total Amsterdam won 22 Epica awards. One final note to Eurobest and Epica; can you guys please merge? There’s no reason to have two identical continental award shows – except making lots of money, of course…

We don’t really like this case film – though Lemz’ new case film voice-over is an improvement – but we do very much like the ‘Live Reply’ concept conceived by Lemz. KLM wanted to convey the message that they have a social media service, which answers all your questions 24/7 through Twitter and Facebook within the hour. That in itself is quite innovative. And communicating it through 140 KLM employees that physically hold up the answer gets easily picked up by the same social media. The only unfortunite thing is that we tried it and only received an answer the next day. We’ll forgive KLM though, since it shows they embrace both new ways of communication and their customers. A lesson to be learned; if you actually listen to your customers, they will be very forgiving.

This ‘Donate your friends’ page that works with Facebook immediately made us think of Burger King’s ‘Whopper Sacrifice’. This is different though creative Matthijs Schoo of Lemz assured us: “you don’t ditch your friends, but you donate your Facebook friendship, which means Artsen Zonder Grenzen (‘Doctors without borders’) will get more friends. And this will eventually lead to more people supporting the NGO.” Anything for the good cause; start donating!

This ‘lenticular’ – we just learned a new word – print makes modern use of an old school medium. When you pass it, you see the bottles in the cabinet change into a rooster, a baby bottle, an elephant, and a dragon. And the tin with paint brushes and box into a drum with sticks and sweets. You would guess most parents know that “Children see things differently” when they open the cabinet underneath the sink, but if not they will now. There’s also a website, with more information, where the animated ‘characters’ come to life. Created by Lemz for Consumer and Safety. Simple and sweet.

Usually we’re not too fond of case study films. They rarely portray the truth – concepts that haven’t had any impact are desperately changed into award winning material. This case study of a great concept by Lemz is pretty much ‘what you see is what you get’ though. The medium (usage) is the message; 365 different commercials in one year does give the impression that IKEA is a dynamic store with endless amounts of different products. The only thing we would change is the Jurassic voice-over; it gives us the shivers and makes IKEA sound old.

“Today at Ikea it’s Plundra, to make room for our new collection. That’s why this Frostig fridge is only € 299. But be quick, cause gone does mean gone. Ikea, every day is different.” The word ‘Plundra’ sounds Swedish – just like all the Swedish-named products at Ikea – but it is actually a pun derived from the Dutch word ‘plunderen’, meaning to loot and referring to the big Sales Ikea has once a year. Agency Lemz created a different Tetris game for every bargain, slowly emptying Ikea’s warehouse. Simple and smart.

This viral for X-Travel made by YoungWorks, won a bronze Esprix award yesterday. A viral that truly deserves its name; it has generated 2.7 million hits until now. The Esprix awards are about smart and effective advertising that activates the consumer. 23 cases were awarded; 8 won silver and 15 bronze – no gold. Just like at the ADCN awards, TBWA\Neboko walked away with the most prizes; 2 silver and 1 bronze award. Followed by Doom&Dickson (1s.,1b.) and Lemz (the interactive agency of the year won 3 times bronze). In our humble opinion, the best concept was created by Selmore for van Gils. The Amsterdam agency created a new icon for Van Gils, a white window dummy that physically proved its tagline; ‘it’s all about the suit’. The dummy showed up with hot celebs at many international paparazzi events and thus naturally generated tons of free publicity. Talking about smart advertising!