Normally we don’t show typical Dutch commercials, because the humour is often culturally challenged and thus not very funny for an international (and critical) crowd. But this guy telling his girl she still owes him money for the burger he bought her during a ‘romantic’ dinner at McDonald’s made us laugh. Especially because it highlights one of the most famous preconceptions about the Dutch; they are all stingy bastards! And since McDonald’s – with its think global act local strategy – sells a ‘Dutch Deluxe’ this week (on a brown bun, yuck!), the execution is spot on briefing; “deliciously Dutch”. Created by TBWA\Neboko and produced by CZAR.
Posts Tagged ‘TBWA’
McDonald’s’ Dutch Deluxe; made for Holland
Monday, March 8th, 2010Epica: Kit Kat Jesus wins gold
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Holland won 18 Epica awards – four times gold – last week in Belgrade. It ended fifth after Germany, France, Sweden and the UK. Our favourite gold went to Kit Kat Jesus. Kit Kat pretended as if Jesus had been spotted in a Kit Kat bar and this news spread as quick as only internet can spread news. We didn’t just like it because we are atheists (or at least agnostic), but more so because we love simple (but great) ideas that generate tons of free publicity. We found it a little odd that this was in the category ‘technique’, but apparently their was no better category available – the category ‘big idea’ would have been more to the point. It was done by UbachsWisbrun/JWT. Heineken’s Walk-in fridge also won gold in ‘film’ – it was submitted by TBWA’s production company CZAR. 180 won gold for Adidas with ‘Every team needs the spark’. And Grey won gold in print for Pink Ribbon.
Source: Adformatie
Shoptalk; ABN AMRO ditches TBWA for Selmore!
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Wow! It doesn’t get much juicier in advertising! It all started when Dutch bank ING felt they were in need of a new agency. In the past years there had always been a lot of criticism on ING’s advertising, created by Leukwerkt Worldwide (Funnyworks), but ING kept defending it as being effective. We have to admit, Leukwerkt’s merger campaign that integrated Postbank’s and ING’s corporate identities was quite successful. But still, a ‘funny’ image is not appropriate in a time when most consumers heavily mistrust banks for their greedy nature. In any case, a few months ago ING organized a pitch and invited four agencies; Selmore, UbachsWisbrun/JWT, Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt. At the same time TBWA\Neboko was working for ABN AMRO – the other big Dutch bank. And things were looking good for TBWA, they were in the middle of developing their new campaign. In the ING pitch Doom & Dickson and Leukwerkt both retreated prematurely – the latter, because it was still proud of its work and didn’t want to change it. So now only two agencies were left, Selmore and JWT. But last Monday something very curious happened, ABN announced ending its relation with TBWA and continuing with Selmore! Which means both ABN and Selmore were already talking with eachother, while being involved with another partner! This also makes JWT automatically the ING pitch winner and leaves TBWA empty handed. Unless, of course, TBWA will join the ING pitch after all. To be continued…
Update (22 Jan): Yesterday in Adformatie: TBWA’s Simon Neefjes says that ING invited TBWA in December to the pitch, but decided to stay loyal to ABN – after having shared the invitation with ABN and after a satisfactory answer on how ABN saw the future collaberation between TBWA and ABN. Also, last week TBWA presented creative work to ABN that was strongly appreciated. He confirms that it must be someone on the board that decided to break with TBWA.
Update (28 Jan): Today on Adformatie: TBWA wants to discuss terms of termination with ABN. According to the contract, ABN was legally not entitled to pull out instantly without paying any compensation. At least 15 people were working on the ABN account at TBWA.
Update (9 Feb): UbachsWisbrun/JWT officially wins ING pitch – while being the only participant left .
Trojan-horsevertising for Shield Security
Monday, January 11th, 2010
New Message came up with this idea – hidden letters, visibale on an airport scanner in a briefcase – to help Shield Security find new security employees at Schiphol; “Wanted: experienced security personnel”. Quite an expensive way of advertising it seems; every single message will cost Shield Security a flight ticket. But since the conversion rate will be a lot higher than when you shoot with hail through mass media, it might turn out cheaper in the end. Trojan-horsevertising is not new. We guess the first agency to use it, was TBWA\Neboko with its ‘Quit&Join’ campaign in 2006. It hired professional window cleaners to clean the windows of the biggest agencies in town, while wearing t-shirts showing the different vacancies. In 2008 agency 2010 found a new DTP colleague by delivering a free Abode CS4 (misspelled on purpose) software package – with the vacancy hidden inside – at the doorstep of the best Amsterdam agencies. Another agency – of which we don’t know the name – paid agencies €1 and communicated in the transfer subject that it was looking for a financial colleague with ‘eye for detail’. So Trojan-horsevertising is not completely new, but it is always impactful, effective and a good way to generate PR.
Heineken’s walk-in fridge wins Golden Loeki
Monday, December 21st, 2009
In the Netherlands every year the public is asked to choose the best commercial of the year. Not a bad idea, when you realize that eventually advertising is made for them. The award is called the Golden Loeki. Until 2004 ‘Loeki de Leeuw‘ (Loeki the lion) was the bumper icon of the STER, the organization selling the advertising clusters on the public channels; Netherlands 1, 2 and 3. Though officially the prize is awarded to the most ‘likeable’ commercials, it almost always goes to ads that use humour to get the message across – which says something about the average consumer, for that matter. This year the award goes to Heineken’s walk-in fridge, made by TBWA\Neboko. Indeed, a funny commercial. It was very successful this year. It already won a golden ADCN (Dutch Art Director’s Club) award. And internationally it also did well. A few weeks ago it was awarded a Silver Eurobest award and this summer a Silver Lion in Cannes. And that’s interesting. Usually there’s a big gap between what international ad pundits appreciate and what the consumer likes. Not only do the experts prefer smart, esthetical or sophisticated advertising (instead of simple jokes), Dutch humour is often culturally challenged – i.e. nobody outside the Netherlands understands it. So TBWA\Neboko made a very effective ad, it sells beer to the consumer and the agency abroad.
Heineken’s walk-in box for the walk-in fridge
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
What a great idea. 20 of these IKEA style boxes – with a picture of the contents on it – were spread through Amsterdam by TBWA\Neboko. As if someone bought a complete walk-in-fridge. A smart way to refresh the attention for Heineken’s ad property, the walk-in fridge.
Philips ‘Cinema 21:9’ wins Eurobest Grand Prix
Monday, November 30th, 2009Just like in Cannes this film by Tribal DDB won a Grand Prix in the TV/Cinema category at Eurobest in Amsterdam, last Friday. The commercial, only distributed through the internet (how could it win in TV/Cinema?), advertises the new Philips cinematic widescreen standard in a mind blowing way; a violent bank robery filmed in freeze frame and done in one single take. Cinema 21:9 also won Gold in the category Interactive – on the dedicated website you can (among other things) influence the speed and direction of the timeline of the film. The DDB network also won the best network award. At the awards ceremony, DDB asked Gary Raucher (VP Head of Integrated Marketing Communication) to accept this prize on behalf of DDB, which was a nice gesture given the fact that Philips trusted DDB with such a big budget to advertise a TV that is still in a very early stage of its product lifecycle. In general, compared to last year, the Netherlands (read: Amsterdam) did quite well. It won 22 prizes, of which 1 grand prix, 3 gold, 8 silver and 10 Bronze. Compared to the European competition, however, we didn’t. Belgium and Sweden for example – with a lot less inhabitants – scored significantly better. Amsterdam interactive agency Kong (N=5’s online agency) won Gold in the Media category for Stanislav, a short video spread through Hyves (Dutch Facebook), using your profile details to show how personal information shared on internet can easily fall in the wrong hands. Another favourite of ours, the IDFA films “You cannot make up reality” by TBWA\Neboko, won gold. ‘It’s all about the suit’ by Selmore for Van Gils won Silver in the Media category. Looking at the competition in this category, it easily deserved Gold in our opinion.
Amsterdam scores well at IMC Awards
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
At the IMC Awards the Heineken ‘Trompet’ (a drum disguised as a hat for football fans, which was a follow-up of the speaker hat – a hat disguised as a speaker) by TBWA\Neboko won a golden IMC Award. Upload Cinema for De Uitkijk by Lowe/Draftfcb, also won gold. The Heineken Trompet was distributed around the European Championships 2008 as a premium – together with 8 cans of Heineken. We earlier wrote about Upload Cinema – creating long form content for a cinema, by making a compilation of long tale, short form content from the internet. All in all Amsterdam scored very well. And with 16 prizes in total, the Netherlands was the best awarded country in Europe.
Marketing Tribune: Dutch ad agency survey
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Marketing Tribune just published its yearly Dutch ad agency survey, conducted by Intormart GFK. And because 180 Amsterdam scored so well, co-founder Chris Mendola (right) and Andy Fackrell were asked a few questions about the success of their agency. The results of the survey came from 865 advertisers, who answered questions about the awareness, preference and image of the Dutch agencies.
We were happy to learn that the respondents judged ‘coming up with original ideas’ as the most important feature of an ad agency. This basically means that if creativity is not leading in your agency, you have to change your proposition or your job. On this characteristic 180 Amsterdam scored best with 52% – which proofs that having 32 nationalities on board does induce creativity. The agency strongly climbed on the image ladder; last year it scored only 14% on this characteristic. On ‘enthusiasm’ (would that be hugging the client before selling your ideas?) 180 also scored best. Wieden+Kennedy, another very cosmopolitan agency, is the most trustworthy agency – The People’s Valley and McCann were second and third.
Advertisers with a one-million-plus budget, put DDB, N=5 and TBWA, respectively, on their shortlist for an above the line campaign. Not a preferable position when you realize that the interactive agencies (LBi Lost Boys, Clockwork, Achtung! and The People’s Valley) are gaining territory fast – this of course was already announced by the strongly shifting media budgets. And ironically Saatchi & Saatchi and Ogilvy have a very strong brain position – amazingly still profiting from the brand position they built up in the 90’s.
To us the most striking conclusion of the survey is the image leap made by 180 and Wieden+Kennedy among Dutch advertisers. Hopefully it means they will finally become an integrated part of the Amsterdam ad community. We know from the interview that 180 is working hard on it; the agency is looking for a Dutch new business director, who can build its local business.
KFC inspired by Burger King and McDonald’s
Monday, August 17th, 2009
This website was made by EuroRSCG Amsterdam. Through a security camera, you can follow the indecisiveness of a KFC customer ‘live’ – but not really. As if to say, at KFC it all looks so good, it’s too hard to make a choice. If you guess what he will eventually choose, you can win ‘fantastic prizes’. In itself a nice idea. But it immediately made us think of the subservient chicken, made by Crispin Porter + Bogusky for Burger King in 2004. It went very viral and was one of the first great examples of the interactive potential of online advertising. Although the KFC guy is not dressed up like a chicken (he only wears a fake beard) and does not do funny moves on request, it is the poor quality of the footage, the fake perception of live action and the funny ‘highlights’ that it has in common with the Burger King ad. And of course the CP+B campaign was (ironically) also promoting chicken. If you think the link to the Burger King campaign is too farfetched; the website even more reminds us of a commercial from the other big fast food chain; McDonald’s. In 2007 TBWA\Neboko made a commercial with kids not being able to choose at the counter. The pay-off: lots of variation in our happy meals, makes it a tough choice.