Last Wednesday the ADCN (Art Director’s Club Nederland) hosted a session in ‘De Kring’ on the Rembrandtplein dubbed ‘XXX Expat’ (XXX is part of the city’s shield), with the noble aim of bringing two parts of the Amsterdam ad industry together; the Dutch and the expats. Some would say these two groups are surely two sides to the same coin, others would say these are separate entities with little or nothing in common other than geography. The somewhat lacking relationship between these two communities has been well documented over the years, yet despite this, nothing has ever quite bridged that gap, except of course – modest as we are – Amsterdam Ad Blog. Lode Schaeffer (ECD at Indie), new chairman to the ADCN is determined to branch out and readdress the balance. The idea was simple; get five speakers from leading agencies in Amsterdam to each give a presentation about the experience of living and working in Amsterdam as an expat.

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Edu Pou, CD at W+K, has found a new creative partner in Stuart Harricks (left in picture), after his former partner, Joakim Borgström, left for San Francisco to join Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Harricks joins W+K after leaving Y&R New York where he was Global CD for LG worldwide among other brands alongside Andrew McKechnie. Recent work for LG included the award-winning ‘Something Lurking’ film, created with Psyop. Before Y&R, Harricks worked as an Integrated ACD at Modernista!, Boston. And before that he spent four years at Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore. 24 year old Zabeti (right in picture) was born in Paris to parents of Persian origin and grew up in Germany. After graduating from the Miami Ad School in Hamburg, he received the ADC’s Student of the Year Award. In 2007 Siavosh joined DDB Paris and created the famous Tropicana billboard (powered by oranges), among other striking work. During his four years at DDB he impressively won 4 Cannes Lions, a ONE Show Pencil, 2 WEBBY awards, several Young Guns awards, and 2 D&AD nominations. We wish both Harricks and Zabeti all the best in Amsterdam!

The Champion’s League season has started and according to Heineken it is the most prestigious competition on the planet. Wieden+Kennedy was asked to convey the Champion’s League as ‘black-tie’ football; the players on an epic stage in prestigious arena’s. Well, they’ve done an impressive job with Clarence Seedorf and Gianluigi Buffon performing in an opera house overlooked by real angels. Here‘s another one in an ancient Roman gladiatorial ring, with Vieira and Van Nistelrooy competing in front of Adler’s goal. Wieden also created a series of adaptations, meant as humorous, but in our humble opinion a weak attempt, almost spoiling the beauty of the originals. Anyway, the films were directed by Martin Krejci (Stink) and shot by Stepan Kucera.

The ad factory Wieden+Kennedy just keeps on giving birth to new, international commercials. This one for EA, ‘Love Football, Hate Football’, promotes FIFA 12, the much anticipated game by those who are obsessed with football – the ones who play football, comment on football, read about it, argue about it, worry and even dream about it. According to the press release the game has a “player impact engine, precision dribbling, and pro player intelligence”, which doesn’t really mean much to us, but should make the game even more life-like than FIFA 11. Production budget-wise this version is clearly more modest than last year’s commercial; Rooney, for example, is the only star player that could be afforded physically – the other ones merely earned their selves a digital role. We understand why they chose Rooney; he must be on Wieden’s pay role by now – here he’s writing the future for Nike. The commercial was directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (Smuggler) and post produced by The Mill.

Recently we wrote about Wieden+Kennedy’s specialty: “showing the essence of a sport and the passion of its supporters”. This time W+K didn’t perform its trick for Nike or EA though, but for ESPN. We agree with Adweek that ‘The Gift’ very much resembles a recent Carlton Draught ad, but we also think it convincingly conveys what it’s like to be a TV sports junkie. They have the gift “to see sport like no mere mortals” and “to understand that the call of sport is louder than the call of nature” – meaning you can hardly go for a pee. We’d love to nurture the gift as the great copy is asking us to do, but we’re afraid that our call of nature asks us to get off the couch, go out there and perform these sports ourselves. Let’s say we’re more the ‘Just do it’ kind of people. Anyway, the film was directed by Mark Denton and Sean De Sperango (Coy!) and the post production was done by Glassworks.

This is something Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam has proven to be good at; showing the essence of a sport and the passion of its supporters. They’ve done this for Nike several times – recently in Copa Barrio – and for EA Sports’ FIFA – here’s #10. It’s all done with heroic copy and visually supported by lots of action, packed stadiums and close-ups of fans. Since the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is sponsored by Heineken this year and since W+K is the Dutch beer brand’s favourite agency after winning a cabinet full of awards for The Entrance and The Date in Cannes, the agency makes a logical choice. The commercial explains ‘The Code’, which basically comes down to the well known saying that rugby is a barbarian game played by gentlemen – while football is a gentleman’s game played by barbarians, for that matter. The film was directed by Steve Rogers (Revolver). In print the code is aptly translated into: “We lost some teeth. We gained some friends” (among other lines).

‘Go Forth’ is Levi’s new brand proposition. It supports positive change in the world and celebrates today’s “pioneers who are taking action to build a better future”. In this dramatic mini-documentary, created by Wieden+Kennedy and directed by Sanne van Hecke, we see Portuguese street artist Alexandre Farto (aka “Vhils”) nonchalantly wearing a pair of baggy Levi’s and creating a series of street murals that capture the faces of some ‘Berliners’ who embody the ‘Go Forth’ spirit. This branded content made us think of both the Sartorialist film for Intel (by Amsterdam Worldwide) and the mobile printer film for Océ (by Lemon Scented Tea) – though the latter was a fictional documentary. We’re spotting a trend here, in which everyday people are portrayed as heroes. That is, they all do something special and this is enlarged in a documentary-like piece of long(er) form content. It merges real life with the smooth exaggerative qualities of an ad agency and thus subtly incorporates brands into society. It makes (or at least should make) these brands more authentic, credible, and sympathetic.

W+K Amsterdam was asked by Nike to create an integrated campaign to celebrate the South American Copa America, which is being held throughout July in Argentina. The result: ‘Copa Barrio’. There are two films, one for Brazil, featuring Neymar with funky hairdo, and one for Argentina, featuring Pastore, Higuain, and Tevez – we’re showing the latter in this post, because Argentina is hosting the event. To give the campaign a grassroots feel the films, directed by Paulo Gandra (Hungry Man Brazil), were more or less created on the go, with no real scripts to adhere to – though they look quite slick anyway. AKQA London was responsible for the online component, a Facebook fan page. Note: if you live in the Netherlands you have to choose English as your preferred language at the very bottom of the fan page – AKQA is working on this glitch. Anyway, on this page fans can create and share their own rallying posters with the same ‘barrio’ feel that is established in the commercials. We’re sure things will go ‘loco’ in South America.

Picture: ECD’s W+K Amsterdam Mark Bernath (left) and Eric Quennoy (middle), mainly responsible for Wieden+Kennedy’s huge success in Cannes and Enrico Balleri from Nike, just after the award ceremony last Saturday. What a great closing night for the Amsterdam agency it was. Nike Write the future scored seven more Lions – earlier in the week it already won gold in Cyber. At the most important award night the Amsterdam agency first of all won the prestigious Grand Prix in film. It was a very close finish with Puma’s ‘After hours athlete’ as jury chair Tony Granger (CCO Y&R) explained at the press conference. After a lengthy discussion he asked the jury to put all the rational arguments aside and vote from the heart. This gave Nike the final push. Nike also won five Lions in Film craft: two Gold (Editing and Script), two Silver (Production and Sound), and one bronze (CG). And the seventh Lion, Gold in Integrated, proved that the campaign didn’t just have a pretty face. And then Heineken; for this other power brand W+K won five Lions in Film and Film craft. Four for The Entrance: Film: Gold and Bronze (interactive). Film craft: Gold and Silver (Direction and Sound Design). One Lion went to The Date – more or less the sequel of The Entrance. It won bronze in Film. This brought the grand total for Wieden+Kennedy to 13 (!) Lions. Together with all the Lions that Portland won for Old Spice, W+K must easily be the most awarded independent network in the world. Two more Amsterdam Lions went to MINI ‘Flow‘ (Silver in Film craft) by BSUR and one to Volkswagen’s ‘Old Lady’ (Bronze in Film) by DDB. All in all Amsterdam (officially) won 25 Lions, 8 (!) more than last year.

With 13 shortlist nominations in film and 7 in film craft, Amsterdam should be able to win some more Lions tomorrow night. Of all these nominations 4 go to Nike ‘Write the future’, 3 to Heineken’s ‘The Entrance’, and one to Heineken’s ‘The Date’, which adds up to an impressive 8 film (craft) nominations for Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Write the future also has a nomination for Titanium (integrated), though this case was sent in by Nike. BSUR also does well with 4 nominations for MINI Countryman’s ‘Flow’. Philips’ ‘Wake up the town’ by Tribal DDB has 3 film nominations. Other film nominations go to Volkswagen (DDB), Centraal Beheer (DDB) – we personally liked this more subtle Centraal Beheer film a lot better – De Bijenkorf (Selmore), IDFA X-ray eyes (TBWA) – a very smart film – and the beautiful Sire film ‘Marked for life‘ (180). We’ll keep our fingers crossed!