Amsterdam won two Grand Prix in Film and Design at Eurobest in Hamburg, last Wednesday. Wieden+Kennedy was awarded the prestigious award for its epic Nike ‘Write the future’ commercial – alledgedly the most expensive commercial ever made. And for the same film it won bronze in Film Craft. Amsterdam Worldwide earned a Grand Prix in the category Design for the Onitsuka Tiger ‘Tansu sneaker’. Other than that Amsterdam did not do extremely well, we have to admit. In interactive Pool Worldwide won silver for its brilliant StarWars branded TomTom viral. In the same category 180 Amsterdam won bronze for Adidas’ Match Tracker and NRG3 won bronze for an interactive banner for the EA game Need for Speed Shift. N=5 was awarded silver in the category Media with a ‘Live interactive billboad’ – an aggression awareness campaign. BSUR got bronze in Film for MINI’s Flow, Publics won bronze in Print for KIKA, and JWT bronze in Promo and Outdoor with the MINI Christmas box.
Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam/London won gold at the London International Awards (LIA) for Nike’s ‘Write The Future‘ – in the category film. The campaign also won three bronze awards in the categories print, poster, and music adapation – the latter went to Massive Music for updating Focus’ hit ‘Hocus Pocus’. Grey Amsterdam won silver in print for Pink Ribbon Magazine’s happy breasts. 180 Amsterdam won bronze for ‘The Match Tracker’ for Adidas.
Who would have ever thought that running could become a form of graffiti – or rather graffiti for the impaired. Thanks to a new Nike+ GPS app, you can now track your runs on the map and connect your speed to a location. To promote this new app Boondoggle Amsterdam came up with the idea to organize a graffiti contest on Facebook, called ‘Take Mokum’ (Amsterdam’s local nickname). The ten tags with the most ‘likes’ on Facebook will be exhibited in the Nike Runhouse, a new ‘running club’ in the Amsterdam Van Baerlestraat. The club is only accessible for members of the Nike Running community on Facebook – not making it a place for everyone that is interested in running seems a bit of a missed opportunity. The winners will also win a pair of auto-designed NikeiD’s LunarGlide+2. What a great way to activate your audience.
Ribery cast in a statue – he is about to write his future. Very nice artwork! Made by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Here you can find our previous post about the Nike ‘Write the future’ campaign.
This minute avalanche of fast paced catchiness, called ‘Write the future’, was created by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, in collaboration with a myriad of creative hotshops – among which its sister agencies in London and Portland. It was launched in 32 countries, during the May 22nd European Champions League Final and directed by one of our most favourite Hollywood directors, Alejandro González Iñárritu – renowned for making parallel storylines intertwine seamlessly. Though a very international production, the itchy song ‘Hocus Pocus’ by Dutch 70′s band Focus – updated by Amsterdam based Massive Music – gave the whole thing a little ‘colour locale’. With a good sense of humour the film elaborately shows that in sports the future is in your own hands; the difference between a made and missed goal is the difference between living like trailer trash or getting your own football stadium. Next to Nike’s muses, Rooney and Ronaldinho, other (sports) stars like Rodger Federer, Kobe Bryant, Homer Simpson and Gael García Bernal (directed by Iñárritu in Amores Perros) got a cameo in this ejaculation of production value. The print and interactive executions show how Drogba, Cannavaro, Robinho, Ronaldo and Ribery will be remembered when cast in a statue. In June the audience is allowed to write its own future on Nikefootball.com and try to get selected to attend the Nike Academy – in collaboration with the English Barclay’s Premier League. The epic production is easily the biggest Nike campaign ever, which makes it not only write the future, but also ad history.
In the past years we haven’t seen many Nike commercials that talk about product features. Usually Nike advertising is about attitude, stamina or fun. But once you’ve read what Nike has to say about its new, state of the art ‘Mercurial Vapor Superfyl II’, you understand that an instrumental ad was inevitable. Get a load of this: “The new boot has Nike SENSE adaptive traction technology studs”. Pardon? “Adaptive studs that can extend and retract by up to 3mm, based on ground conditions and pressure exerted by the player”. So what’s in it for me? “Two of these studs on the forefoot of each boot combine with directionally positioned blades to allow for quick changes of direction, while secondary toe traction provides added power for those first critical steps. The result is a boot that enables greater speed in all directions – in all conditions.” Ahaaaa. These instrumental benefits were translated by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam into a Transformers inspired, animated pitch that imitates the extreme conditions a player has to deal with, combined with the real life actions of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. This resulted in an impressive piece of ad. If it wasn’t for those awful colours and rediculously oversized swoosh, we definitely would have bought them!
The Six Nations rugby tournament has a rich tradition. France officially joined the tournament in 1910 – at that point there were only 5 nations – and the battle between France and England has always been the most fierce and respected match. Because France celebrated its hundredth birthday this year, Nike wanted to pay a homage to the tournament finale, also known as ‘The Crunch’. Before the match, on the 20th of March, Nike released a print ad, saying: “100 years of rugby. That leaves traces. We welcome our English friends”. The stitches said ‘Hello’. After winning the final 12-10 this print ad was released. It says: “Bye Bye. We thank our English friends for this great slam. Come back whenever you want”. It was – very skillfully – made by W+K Amsterdam.
Amsterdam design agency DAY won two red dot Awards this year for the in-store design of the Van Gogh Museum shop here in Amsterdam (click on picture to enlarge) and a Nike Store in Paris. Both designs also won the additional honours of ‘best of the best’ and ‘distinction for high design quality’, respectively. We’ve checked out the red dot design website and if you see how many categories and awards there are, it’s hard not to win any. Having said that, we very much like what the design agency did with the Van Gogh shop. And, while we’re at it, recently Dutch interior design agency UXUS has been appointed to design the shops for the Tate Modern. That is, both for the existing Tate Modern as well as the impressive Herzog & de Meuron extension.
Although not everyone that writes for this blog will support the Dutch this summer at the World Cup Football in South Africa, the second ‘Bleed Orange’ commercial for Nike, made by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, does get us properly excited. It introduces an un-Dutch ‘Just do it’ swagger to the Dutch team. An attitude the orange lions will need, since ‘a beautiful loss, is still a loss’ – as the copy reads insightfully. As in the first bleed orange commercial (the Dam square take-over) the tape art is used as a distintive style element to glue all the campaign assets together. The film – featuring Van Nistelrooy, Van Bronckhorst and Van der Vaart – is shot on 8mm and 16mm by Johan Kramer to create a voyeuristic look behind the scenes. And the persuasive music by Junkie XL finishes it off nicely. If anything will persuade the Dutch to bleed orange this summer, it will be this kind of advertising.
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…
