That’s what this film is telling us. In the previous LG commercial the bottom of an elevator fell out, to make us believe LG has monitors with lifelike colors. We were a little disappointed when we found out that the whole thing was staged. This one seems more genuine – which is probably why the screens don’t look very lifelike. But, as with the elevator film (scoring 18 million hits in 3 months), the viral factor of this film seems all in order; it has received more than 2 million hits in less than a week. So, again, whatever you think of it, the message is out there! Created by SuperHeroes, directed by Tobias Pekelharing and Rogier Vijverberg (Revolver).

This fall, record label Luaka Bop released “Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia.” To give Maia’s first international album release – to commemorate what would have been the Brazilian legend’s 70th birthday – some extra attention, SuperHeroes and illustration/design rep Shop Around created this wonderful animated biography. If you don’t know Tim Maia, don’t worry. According to the press release “Tim Maia might well be the greatest (and craziest) soul singer you never heard of.” The press release continuous: “Infamous in Brazil, Tim Maia was a soul grenade that exploded in the 1970’s. He single handedly revolutionized Brazilian popular music and had the best time ever doing it.” The distinctive voice-over is by Devendra Banhart. When we asked Gareth Broadbent, copywriter at Super Heroes, why Devendra, he answered: “He’s been my favourite South American artist for years. He is a Venezuelan folk singer who has curated festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties. When we asked him, it turned out that Devendra was only too happy to help as Tim was one of his heroes and he also really ‘dug’ the animation we had made.” The idea was conceived by Eric Welles-Nyström (working at Luaka Bop), the animation was done by Fred Huergo, Zoltan Korai, and David Schagerström, and the sound by Sander Houtman. What a great production.

Diesel and Amsterdam based SuperHeroes hypnotised people so they can show the world how happy they are with a Diesel Christmas present. It looks more like method acting to us, but the film says “it’s real,” so then it must be real, of course… You can check out the ‘behind the dreams’ here. It has been done before – hypnotise consumers to like a product – but that doesn’t matter, cause if Diesel wants to be weird, that’s definitely what it got.

We do like the concept. To promote its new monitors with lifelike colors – thanks to the IPS technology, whatever that may be – LG and its agency SuperHeroes (together with De Filmwinkel) created this elevator-scare. Can you imagine; the floor collapsing under your feet when standing in an elevator! “So real, it’s scary.” Crafty stuff. The only thing that makes us a little itchy is that we can’t help getting the feeling that these recordings are staged – it reminded us of this one for the Champions League. Then again – staged or not – if the film has been viewed around 5 million times on YouTube within the week, LG will probably be happy. After all, the message is out there.

We all know Diesel for its no so serious advertising. Usually quirky. And always with a look and feel that does not resemble anything you’ve seen before. This piece of advertising is no different. It’s a teaser for an interactive website displaying the new Diesel Fresh & Bright underwear collection; a boxer trunk, a brief, and a boxer brief in different colors. In this campaign the colors have become the heroes. Together with the Swiss/French artists Ben & Julia, Amsterdam based SuperHeroes created “an one online art exhibition” with three simple installations; two spraying arms (‘handroids’), a licking tongue, and a unicorn with piercing eyes, all adding color to the different pieces of underwear. You could call this much ado about nothing, but it does give Diesel its distinctive edge.

Quite a flashy film. It is an activation by the Dutch Openluchtmuseum (‘open air museum’), a museum that displays the last 200 years of life in the Netherlands. Since the Openluchtmuseum exists 100 years it decided – together with interactive agency SuperHeroes – to select ten iconic objects that should be preserved and exhibited for the next 100 years. The crowd can come up with things like … a toilet brush. SuperHeroes made a high quality film to promote the contest – we especially like the styling – but we wondered if it’s not overselling the product a little. Maybe the museum should have first spent some money on a new website.

We were invited to Digital Dinner at Rainarai, an Aglerian restaurant in Amsterdam. Though the food was wonderful, the portions were a bit meager. And since there was plenty of alcohol, we’re writing this piece a bit hungover. But the good news is that the evening was packed. Achtung!’s Dick Buschman did the introduction, explaining that Emerce initiated the event to connect with the Dutch creative industry. The organization (Achtung!, Bert Hagendoorn, and Pop The Campaign) then asked Creative Social to select some interesting speakers. Marc Chalmers (Perfect Fools), founder of Creative Social explained how members of Creative Social have to introduce theirselves; they have to show what they are working on and finish their presentation with the words “That’s me that is.” So we had the honor to witness the introduction of the 10 new Creative Social members.

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It took us a bit of discussion to have an opinion about this teaser and website created by SuperHeroes. Some reactions: scary, gay, and stereotypical. Why show 6 men that demonstrate the different motions of an LG washing machine? Are women morons? Or are we taking this too seriously? Maybe we are. Maybe LG simply offers a good excuse – for some – to watch these hard bodies doing the laundry. We don’t really know. What do you think?

Beginning of this month we wrote about a viral – if we may – for the Amsterdam Maritime (‘Scheepvaart’) museum; “No Facebook without the Dutch” it was dubbed. Apparently – and wisely – all of the museum’s budget goes towards online, cause last week we encountered yet another great piece of digital advertising; a site take-over – again a collaboration between One Big Agency, CCCP, and SuperHeroes. When you pull the plug to let the water run away, the Netherlands all of a sudden has become part of Spain and the Dutch news site ‘Nu’ changes into ‘Ahora’. History changes and the news accordingly; queen Beatrix is merely a sculptor now, Dutch brand Philips is called Philips II (after the ruler of Spain in the 16th century), a separatist organization claims to stick to Dutch (a cameo for CCCP’s copywriter and art director); Wesley Sneijder (“Esnaider”) scores for Spain, and Jan Smit (“Juan Smit”) with mustache releases a new album. This time the message is: “Without shipping no Orange” (the royal colour) and again the Scheepvaart museum teaches us how important the maritime history has been for the Netherlands. Usually we ignore banners or – when they obscure a site – search for the ‘delete’ button straight away, but not with this banner that entertained us for almost 10 minutes. It could be a lesson for those advertisers who think that buying banner positions is the same as making an impact – it is not.

This animated trailer promotes a beautifully made interactive new website, created by SuperHeroes, tells the story of Yakult. If we wouldn’t be skeptical about probiotics, we’d start loving Yakult right away – according to evidenced based science probiotics do more or less the same as normal yoghurt, which is probably why the word Yakult is derived from the Japanese word for yoghurt. Never mind though, it’s always good to see an agency being able to show off its skills. What makes things especially crafty is the fact that SuperHeroes used a scaled model that represents the Kyoto area to create the film – here’s the making of. The only pity about that – and we really hate to mention it – is the fact that Amsterdam Worldwide did more or less the same for Onitsuka Tiger (also a Japanese brand) in 2009. Fortunately the consumer couldn’t care less. SuperHeroes worked together with One Big Agency, CCCP, C-41 (Live action production), Magic Bullet (Interactive production), and Lullatone (for the happy sound).