Not so long ago you at least needed talent to become famous. Even if you looked as unattractive as Paul Pott or Susan Boyle, your voice had to get people’s attention. Today you don’t even need the voice anymore. In fact, even if you can’t playback properly, you’ll get your 15 minutes of fame. Take Keenan Cahill. He has become world famous by playbacking 50 Cent, Katy Perry and David Guetta. And now Samsung – or more correctly agency Muse – hires him to sell the new Smart TV. Since this new TV gives access to the internet, we understand that Samsung wanted to use a YouTube celeb – though we would have tried to find something more attractive. The idea is to have consumers participate in a ‘stare battle’ with Cahill – through your webcam – on a special YouTube channel, during which he distractingly explains the special Smart TV features. For the occasion he also recorded a video in which he ‘sings’ De La Soul’s “Me Myself and I” without blinking once. That is, he blinks at 0:13, but, as said, it doesn’t require much skill to become famous nowadays.

We’re big fans of WeTransfer; a service that allows you to transfer big files for free. We like the clean site and are impressed by its business model; it simply sells wallpapers as advertising. And though the ads cover your entire screen, they’re not intrusive at all, cause WeTransfer only allows stylishly branded images – rotating every 45 seconds. With this game, built by Samsung and promoting the 3D LED Monitor, WeTransfer has taken things one step further. When you click on the pair of glasses (see picture), you become part of a first-person shooter and have to perform some simple tasks like reloading your rifle and spotting a terrorist with your binoculars. The game is not that special, but we like the fact that WeTransfer made it subtly ‘on demand’, instead of in your face.

Yesterday was a good day. Not just because it was our first day in Cannes and we enjoyed soaking up all its extremes – Le Palais, the sun, the beach, ‘le canard au miel’, and lots of drinks – check out our photo’s here. It was also a good day for Amsterdam, because it won 5 Lions! Two silver lions went to outdoor; Interbest ‘mail stripper’ and the Go Fast water-bike, both to Y&R Not Just Film. At the time, we weren’t too positive about the unattractive stripper, because we doubted its effectiveness. You could say the silver lion has proved us wrong. Two bronze lions went to the radio commercial ‘sexual harassment’ (Publicis) and an Allsecur outdoor ad (Ogilvy). In Media Muse and Starcom won Silver for their 3D Samsung projection. Earlier, on Monday Amsterdam won two meager bronze lions; the Dutch dress for Bavaria in promo – which definitely deserves more in our opinion – and bronze for Boondoggle’s KLM Suprise in PR – in Holland this won a golden Spin (read: cyber) award. Hopefully we’ll be able to celebrate some gold later this week.

Four Amsterdam agencies scored a Webby award this year. The most serious one went to Boondoggle with Take Mokum (Online Campaigns) for Nike+. Boondoggle has a running gag going that mentions penguins in every interview; hence the 5-word acceptance speech by CD Gaston Serpenti – please note that this is Belgium humour. The others went to Streetview Sudan (Rich Media/Non profit), by Kong; Samsung 3D (Integrated Media Plan), by Muse and Starcom; and LBi Lostboys, with a website around the Anne Frankhuis (Cultural Institutions).

“If you don’t want to miss a thing this summer, send a SuperSwyper“, is what this poster communicates. Since Apple has introduced the iPhone, every mobile phone manufacturer tries to copy its intuitive navigation. Samsung is no exception. There’s one thing though that Samsung tries to do better, and that’s ‘Swyping’ instead of typing. With one continuous movement of your finger, you can swipe a word. And since typing on an iPhone can be very frustrating, the potential of this technology might prove an important innovation. The mobile phone manufacturer that is steadily growing to become one of the big players in the land of consumer electronics, claims that swiping is 1,5 times faster than typing. We cannot judge whether this is true, but it sounds promising. Muse was asked to create a campaign that explains the ease of use of swiping – for the Galaxy S. The Amsterdam agency came up with Samsung SuperSwypers, a team of journalists that you can send to an event to register it. It’s one of those ingenious campaigns that  displays tech savvyness, but doesn’t seem to tap into a genuine consumer need – why need journalists, if you have friends to keep you posted on interesting events? That’s why we think it will fail to reach a broad audience. Having said that, we are curious whether swiping will become the new category standard.

Update: Today (August, 12) Samsung bought a blogpost on GeenStijl. This means the SuperSwypers will get some serious attention now!

Last time we wrote about Samsung, it took over a building in the centre of Amsterdam with a 3D projection. Today Samsung is taking over You Tube with a game. The game-take-over starts with a film of the 3D projection on the Beurs van Berlage. Then it slowly takes over YouTube. The game is nothing special (click on as many butterflies as possible  and win a 3D LED TV), but the take-over makes quite good eye candy. Created by Muse.

Last weekend this larger than life outdoor ad – excuse us for the poor quality of the recording – was projected on the Beurs van Berlage, a historic building in the centre of Amsterdam, to promote Samsung’s new 3D LED TV. After the screening, the audience could experience 3D on a real ‘miniature’ Samsung TV. The event was spread online, through YouTube, Foursquare and Twitter (#Samsung3Devent). When logged in on Foursquare during the event, you could win a 3D TV. And on June 1st the projection will be part of a YouTube take-over. The ad, created by Muse and media agency Starcom (part of Publicis), made us eager to experience 3D TV at home. But as the pay-off “Turn on tomorrow” already suggests, we might have to wait a while, since it will take a long time before your average sitcom will be broadcasted in 3D. Just as it will take a fair amount of time before we can fully enjoy Philips’ intensively advertised 21:9 standard. And though we never watch sitcoms and know that movies are a lot quicker to adopt these standards, we don’t want to pay the premium prices for this ‘TV of the future’ – being an innovator is quite an expensive hobby. But that doesn’t matter, really, cause we love the ad and from now on will remember Samsung as an innovative brand.

This is quite an innovative ad for Samsung. We’re a bit late showing it, since the Olympics are already over, but the mechanism of this ‘spectacular’ is quite impressive. The video basically speaks for itself; you can film and mail yourself directly from the interactive tram halt. The content is a bit lame, but we’ll forgive Samsung. At least we’re getting the message that de Samsung Omnia has an app that allows you to follow the Winter Olympics wherever you are – although we have to say that we could do the same with the offcial Vancouver App on our iPhone. Anyway, it was made by Media Republic and 2010 in collaboration with JC Decaux.

We ended our last post about Vodafone with ‘to be continued’. Why? Because we were surprised that Vodafone’s new, distinctive characters (the ‘mutated guinea pigs’) weren’t used at all in Achtung!’s brand activation, ‘Upgrade a stranger’. And while Vodafone internally is still being divided over the new ad property – created by THEY – Achtung! was asked to create yet another activation campaign for the (young) consumer. The principle is quite similar to the previous activation; through two different micro-sites Vodafone gives away more mobile phones. The first campaign is called BlackBerryHideout; phones (BlackBerry Curves) are hidden around universities, video clues are given by two students  (in English) on the website and anyone can search for it – in real life. The other activation, is called TheYouFlickInMyHyveFaceChase; an online treasure hunt through social networks and blogs. This time the prize is a Samsung H1 (and some other prizes). We are not sure how many consumers are involved in these activations, but it definitely sounds like something that will cause a lot of rumour around the brand – this time mainly positive rumour…