From Coke to Mikado – Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Red Button
Posted: March 13, 2013 Filed under: Ambient, Australia, Awards, Belgium, Beverages, Brazil, Cannes Lions, Case History, Cliché, Direct, Event, France, Installation, Press/Outdoor, Promotion, TV/Film, USA, Viral | Tags: Ambient, Belgium, Buzzman, Cannes Lions, Case History, Clemenger BBDO, Coca-Cola, Duval Guillaume, fantastic delites, France, funny, Happiness Truck, installation, Mikado, push the red button, push to add drama, resistence test, TNT Tv Channel, USA, Viral Leave a comment »
Mikado – Resistance Test
Advertising Agency: Buzzman, Paris, France
CEO / Creative Director: Georges Mohammed-Chérif
Art Director: Louis Audard
Copywriter: Tristan Daltroff
Art Director Assistant: Clément Séchet
Year: 2013
TNT TV Channel – Dramatic surprise on an ice-cold day
Advertising Agency: Duval Guillaume Modem, Brussels
Creative Director: Geoffrey Hantson, Katrien Bottez
Copywriter: Dieter De Ridder
Art Director: Ad Van Ongeval
Production Company: Czar
Director: Koen Mortier
Year: 2013
Fantastic Delites – How Far Would You Go?
The Delite-o-matic is an interactive vending machine that dispenses free packs of Fantastic Delites simply by pushing a button hundreds of times or by performing challenges. The Delite-o-matic was put out on the streets to prove that because Fantastic Delites taste so good, people will go to incredible lengths to get their hands on them.
Advertising Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Australia
Creative Director: Karl Fleet
Digital Creative / Art Director: Oliver Prenton
Digital Creative / Copywriter: Matt O’Grady
Year: 2012
TNT TV Channel – Big Red Push Button
To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text “Push to add drama” invited people to use the button.
Advertising Agency: Duval Guillaume Modem, Brussels
Creative Director: Geoffrey Hantson, Katrien Bottez
Copywriter: Dieter De Ridder
Art Director: Ad Van Ongeval
Production Company: Czar
Director: Koen Mortier
Year: 2012
Coca-Cola – Happiness Truck
A Coca-Cola delivery truck is converted into a happiness machine on wheels delivering “doses” of happiness in the streets of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Where will happiness strike next?
Advertising Agency: Definition 6, Atlanta
Year: 2011
Gazet van Antwerpen – The Empty Newspaper
Posted: November 16, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Case History, Direct | Tags: Belgium, Concentra, Direct, Gazet van Antwerpen, Het Belang van Limburg, Proximity BBDO, the empty newspaper Leave a comment »
Since the economic crisis of 2009, more and more readers cancelled their newspaper subscriptions. Our mission: convince them to renew their subscriptions, using a direct mailing. Preferably by playing on the emotional bond and the interactive relationship between the reader and their regional newspaper. After all: it’s the local readers who make the news. In other words: we need them not only as a subscriber, but equally as a source for most of the content in Gazet van Antwerpen (paper for the province Antwerp) and Het Belang van Limburg (paper for the province Limburg).
So why not show them the direct result of their decision? We mailed the readers a copy of their local newspaper that was completely empty. The front page showed only the header, and had a hand-written personal message from the editor in chief on it: “Without you, it’s empty around here…” Inside, only the editorial was printed. The editor in chief looks back on the long and splendid relationship they had for months, often even years. He asks himself: where did it go wrong, what did I do wrong? He ends with a warm plea to make a new start.
The creative execution.
An emotional approach was successful as ex-subscribers do not respond to rational arguments (no time to read, too expensive). The empty paper was a good way to express the feelings of the editor in chief who felt it was pretty empty without the reader. Besides, the empty paper was a nice way to say the reader had to miss a bunch of news every day.
The results
In the past, an administrative approach generated a response rate of maximum 3%. The emotional approach of the empty newspaper resulted in a double digit response. Overall, 11,67% of the lapsed subscribers decided to renew. As a extra benefit, this approach was pretty ecological. We used blank newspapers that were not (for quality reasons) being used for printing newspapers. So no extra trees where cut down to make this direct mail.
Advertising Agency: Proximity BBDO, Brussels
Year: 2011
Opel Movano – The first van that carries your stuff across the web
Posted: October 27, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Car, Case History, Digital | Tags: A van to deliver your (digital) files, Banner, Belgium, McCann Lowe, Movano FileMover, Opel Movano, The first van that carries your stuff across the web Leave a comment »
To raise awareness of the Opel Movano, agency came up with a digital campaign to demonstrate that the Movano is a utility vehicle designed for moving goods around. It created a banner ad that doubles as a file transfer service: users simply type in their name, upload up to 2 GigaBytes of file in the rear of the van and send it to someone accross the web. The recipient gets an email to download the file and also learn more about the Opel Movano. So far, the virtual van has completed more than 5,000 ‘deliveries’ in its first month.
Advertising Agency: McCann Lowe, Belgium
Creative Director: Benoit Hilson, Olivier Roland
Copywriter: Jeremie Goldwasser
Art Director: Arnaud Piette
Web Designer: Greg Pin
Year: 2011
Scottex – Mailing on kitchen paper towel
Posted: October 21, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Cannes Lions, Case History, Direct | Tags: Belgium, Direct, Duval Guillaume, kitchen paper towel, mailing, Scottex Leave a comment »
The Brief
Communicate the strength of Scottex kitchen paper towels to restaurant owners.
Idea
We created a mailing made from real Scottex kitchen paper towels. These mailings were posted ‘as is’, without an envelope, and sent to restaurants all over Belgium. After a successful series within Belgium (see result) we decided to take things a step further… literally. So we used our agency in New York and a befriended agency in Tokyo. The agencies then sent out a new series of mailings to Belgian restaurants.
Result
A big hand for the Belgian and world’s postal services! All the mailings we first sent out to test the concept in Belgium arrived without any damage. Same went for almost all the mailings we sent in the second round (from NY, Tokyo and Ushuaia). We called all the restaurants to check if and how the mailing was received. 98% of all the mailings reached the restaurants in a perfect state and was considered super original and convincing. Even the series posted from Ushuaia, the world’s most southern city, made it all the way to Belgium.
Advertising Agency: Duval Guillaume Antwerp
Creative Director: Geoffrey Hantson, Dirk Domen
Creatives: Carsten Van Berkel, Stefan Leendertsen
Year: 2008
Silver Lion
Studio Brussel – Black Boy Wanting Water
Posted: September 28, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Best Use of Television, Cannes Lions, Case History, Direct, Social | Tags: Belgium, Case History, interrupting live television, Mortierbrigade, Music for life, studio brussel, thirsty black boy Leave a comment »
Brussels, Belgium-based Mortierbrigade’s out-of-the-box pro-bono creative, “Black Boy Wanting Water,” won a Titanium Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival this year, as well as Lions in the Direct and Media competitions. A member of the Film jury, he spent much of his time reviewing commercials, but as the week progressed and his agency’s work was honored in one competition after another, his anticipation built. The excitement culminated at the end of the week, when the work walked away with the Titanium Lion.
“We never expected to win that,” says Mortier, a 40-year-old writer who co-founded the agency three years ago. “It was unbelievable.”
The agency started working on the campaign last October, when it was asked by client Studio Brussels, a radio station, to come up with a campaign for its yearly “Music for Life” fundraiser. The “Music for Life” event, benefiting the Red Cross and its water programs, aimed to raise awareness about the problem of limited drinking water in Africa. “We were looking for another way to approach this problem, not to just make an advertisement,” says Mortier. “We wanted to find a much more direct way of confronting people with this problem.”
Instead of creating a spot asking for help, the agency had a young black boy, Gaetan, run into live broadcast studios to grab the glass of water usually unnoticed in front of newscasters or show hosts, drink it, then run off again. “We thought by having this boy [take] it we could say it’s maybe not so normal to have a glass of water, and make it clear it’s not in reach for millions of other people,” says Mortier.
To keep the reactions as real as possible, the agency informed only the the shows’ producers in advance, keeping the on-air talent in the dark. “They didn’t know this was going to happen,” says Mortier. He adds that it “wasn’t so easy” keeping the project quiet, but the station owner, government-owned VRT, gave the agency access to the live broadcasts of five prime-time shows, including political, sports and entertainment programming.
The five- to 10-second interruptions, which took place for three days over a weekend in December, were filmed and later broadcast as a commercial that explained who was behind the events and why. Mortier admits the agency wasn’t sure how well the idea would work. “It was live, so we only had one shot,” he says. “We had to cast a little boy who wasn’t afraid to interrupt live television recordings. Not easy. But Gaetan did it with a lot of flair.”
The work stirred the curiosity of the Belgian public, and by the time Monday morning rolled around the media was buzzing about the TV oddity. The radio station soon explained it was behind the stunt, as did the TV programs, and the PSA ran for a few weeks after the fundraiser. “It gave us the opportunity to tell this story one more time,” says Mortier.
Paul Woolmington, co-founder of Naked Communications in New York and a member of the Cannes Titanium jury this year, says the panel was impressed with the simplicity and inventiveness of the program. “I love the idea that something so taken for granted and universal could be hijacked in such a provocative and relevant way,” he says. “The idea and execution is so simple and brilliant, but finding the right person with vision and authority to make it happen is very difficult. Anyone tried to get through to Rupert recently?”
The effort raised 3.3 million euros, with 1 million euros donated by the Belgian government. For a country of 10 million people, it’s an impressive figure, notes Mortier, particularly since the initiative was broadcast only in Belgium’s Flanders region, the Flemish part of the country.
(from Adweek)
Advertising Agency: Mortierbrigade, Brussels
Creative Director: Joost Berends, Philippe DeCeuster, Jens Mortier
Creative: Dieter Vanhoof, Tim Driesen, Joeri Van den Broeck
Production Company: Caviar, Brussels
Year: 2008
Antwerp Zoo – How one baby elephant moved an entire nation
Posted: August 2, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Cannes Lions, Case History, Digital, Direct | Tags: Antwerp zoo, baby elephant, Belgium, birth, Boondoggle, Cannes Lions, Case History, Digital, Direct, Kai-Mook, Phyo Phyo, ultrasounds Leave a comment »
Antwerp Zoo wanted to drive visitors leveraging the pregnancy of one of its elephants. It was keen to avoid typical advertising campaigns and wanted to engage as many people as possible during the gestation period. The aim was to make everyone in Belgium feel as though they were involved in the pregnancy, almost as though the elephant was one of their own children.
Just like any proud future parent, the zoo decided to show everyone the very first ultrasound. The scan was projected onto prominent buildings, along with a URL directing people to a central website, www.baby-olifant.be. On the site, the zoo not only invited people to suggest names for the baby elephant but also kept it updated with developments during the pregnancy. Daily news was posted onto the site, along with information about the mother and baby and a calendar countdown. The content was spread via social media with photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube. A tool was created to allow people to create a customized Facebook profile picture that featured their face with an elephant’s trunk entering the frame and the message “I’m also waiting for baby K”. When the labour started, everyone was notified by text message and invited to watch the birth live.
More than 1.2m people visited the website during the birth weekend and on May 17th 2009, 559, 824 people watched the birth of baby Kai-Mook live from their computers. Never before had so many Belgians watched a live event online together.
More importantly, Antwerp Zoo welcomed 300,000 more visitors (200,000 paying) in 2009 than it did in 2008. The site continues to be updated with new about the elephant’s progress.
THE DIRECT CAMPAIGN
How do you get 200,000 extra visitors to the Antwerp Zoo? Knowing that the Antwerp Zoo suffers severe competition from other leisure activities, that this equals a visitor increase of 18 %, that there is no real urgency for people to go to the Zoo (the animals are always there), and that bad weather can be the final reason to cancel an even already planned zoo visit (people don’t go to the zoo when it rains)?
We built a digital platform baby-elephant.be, allowing people to follow the story on a day by day basis.
They could do this by reading the baby elephant blog, by seeing regular ultrasounds, by consuming engaging user generated content , by registering to receive regular updates about the baby and the mother elephant’s condition. Gradually, KMDA (Antwerp Zoo) made them ready for the climax : the live broadcast of the birth, something that had never been done before and that would write digital history. And – ultimately – the opportunity to pay the newborn elephant a visit in the Antwerp Zoo.
Antwerp Zoo focussed on a unique and highly emotional event : the birth of a young elephant.
A story unique for Belgium and even very rare for Europe.
A story by which we would be able to evoke the complete Zoo story (apart from being a zoo, the Antwerp Zoo is renowned for its animal research and wildlife funding projects).
A story by which we could take the whole Belgium population on a unique and long journey : the pregnancy and birth of a young baby elephant.
A story by which we could no doubt increase the numbers of visitors for the Antwerp Zoo.
The results were staggering :
- 8,500 name suggestions for the new baby elephant.
- 41,000 registrations for updates.
- 850,000 unique visitors on baby-elephant.be, massive local and international press attention.
- 560,000 people watched the birth online, there were 1.2 million site visits in the birth weekend.
- 5,000 people signed the online birth register,
- 22,000 blog comments in the birth weekend.
And most importantly: the Antwerp Zoo welcomed 300,000 visitors (200,000 paying visitors) more than in 2008.
After 22 months of anticipation, twenty-eight year-old Asian elephant Khaing Phyo Phyo has finally given birth to her fourth child at Antwerp Zoo. Phyo Phyo was born wild in Myanmar, then was captured to live in the Netherlands and the UK before moving to Antwerp. Over the past eleven years she has three previous children – Timber, Sitang, and May Tagu. The father, Alexander, has been responsible for nine other healthy offspring, however this baby is the first product of Phyo Phyo and Alexander together.
An elephant birth is a first for Belgium. The anticipation was so great that many Belgians signed up for SMS alerts of the birth. The progress of the gestation, from ultrasounds to a live video of the birth, was projected onto giant screens. She was born at 8:45 AM on Sunday May 17, weighing 80 kilograms, and was on her feet within 20 minutes. Her four-year-old sister May Tagu was originally jealous, but with the help of aunt Phyo Yu Yu Yin, she now seems to have welcomed the little one into the family.
A nation-wide competition was held to name the baby, and the result has just been revealed: Kai-Mook (“pearl”). To celebrate this event, the post office will send 4.8 million postcards to the households of Belgium – a world record number of birth announcements. All of Belgium is united in celebration of this delightful event.
THE DIGITAL CAMPAIGN
To get 200.000 extra visitors to the Antwerp Zoo, we focused on a unique and highly emotional event: the birth of a young elephant. So we built a digital platform baby-elephant.be, allowing people to follow the story on a day by day basis.
They could do this by reading the baby elephant blog, by seeing regular ultrasounds, by consuming engaging user generated content, by participating in the crowdsourcing of the name of the baby elephant, by registering to receive regular updates about the baby and the mother elephant’s condition. Gradually, KMDA (Antwerp Zoo) and Boondoggle made them ready for the climax: the live broadcast of the birth, something never done before, that wrote digital history.
Advertising Agency: Boondoggle, Leuven
Creative Director: Stef Selfslagh/Vincent Jansen
Creative Team: Tom Loockx/Jorrit Hermans/Peter Vijgen/Bart Gielen
Copywriter: Hans Verhaegen
Happiness Brussels – Comic Sans Destroyer
Posted: July 27, 2011 Filed under: Cannes Lions, Case History, Digital, Belgium, Promotion, Agency | Tags: Promotion, Digital, Cannes Lions, Case History, Belgium, bronze lion, font, happiness brussels, Gregory Titeca, Ramin Afshar, comic sans, destroyer, graphic designer, application, bad taste Leave a comment »
Advertising agency Happiness Brussels is looking for a graphic designer with the right spirit and good taste.
How could we get a maximum number of applicants amongst the best graphic designers? We targeted the graphic design community through an online action in order to spread the word.
In graphic design communities, the Comic Sans font it is considered to be the ultimate symbol of bad taste.
Therefore, we designed the ‘Comic Sans Destroyer’, a downloadable application that will erase Comic Sans for once and for all from your computer. Only after using the application and cleaning their computer from all forms of Comic Sans, applicants can apply for the position of graphic designer.
‘Comic Sans Destroyer’ is now the ultimate tool to get rid of Comic Sans for once and for all; and at the same time it spreads the message: we only want graphic designers with really good taste.
Results
After one week:
- Featured on the most influential graphic design blogs and websites.
- Over 20.000 unique visits on the website.
- More than 4.000 downloads of the application.
- More than 130 graphic designers from all over the world applied for the job.
Advertising Agency: Happiness, Brussels
Creative Management: Karen Corrigan/Gregory Titeca
Creative Director: Gregory Titeca
Creative: Tom Galle
Creative: Ramin Afshar
Toyota IQ Font – The First Typeface Designed By a Car
Posted: July 27, 2011 Filed under: Cannes Lions, Case History, Car, Digital, Belgium | Tags: Digital, Cannes Lions, Case History, Car, Belgium, the making of, gold lion, toyota, design, iq, font, typeface, designed by a car, happiness brussels, Gregory Titeca, Tom Galle, Ramin Afshar, Zach Lieberman, Pleaseletmedesign, Stef van Campenhoudt Leave a comment »
Toyota launches the new iQ, a compact car that combines sleek design and cutting edge technology. Our briefing was to communicate the unique agility and perfect control of the iQ in a relevant way to a target group of 18-35 year old urban people. We want to reach the communities that fit the iQ’s core values: design, technology and automotive. We need a concept that can merge these three strong online communities. How can we jump out of the mass? How can we be different from our competitors, and be relevant and attractive to our target group? How can we create something that’s in our target group’s world, and that lasts longer than a normal ad?
To demonstrate its incredible agility, the new Toyota iQ was the first car in the world ever to create an entire font from A to Z. To make this project happen, we collaborated with: – Zach Lieberman, pioneer in interactive art. Color tracking software developer. – Pierre and Damien, from Pleaseletmedesign, a type and graphic design studio. Font designers. – Professional pilot Stef van Campenhoudt, European champion of GT3 racing. Font driver. All together, they created the iQ Font. The making of video was posted on Vimeo, with a direct link to download the iQ font for free on the Toyota website, where people were also invited to book a test drive.
Results
The making of video was posted as a viral film on Vimeo, and got featured on thousands of influential design, technology and automotive blogs worldwide. The video was posted on over 6000 blogs worldwide. The stunt also got a huge amount of offline media attention in leading design and technology magazines all over the world. It was even broadcasted at the Typophile festival in New York, and at ‘Centre Pompidou’, the museum for modern art at Paris. The iQ Font making of video got more than 600 000 unique clicks and reached over 2 million page views on blogs and online magazines. The iQ Font got downloaded over 24 000 times from the Toyota website.
Thousands of posts on other social media, like digg, facebook, tumblr, delicious… More than 600 000 views of the making of video. More than 2 000 000 page views on blogs and online newspapers. Free media coverage in magazines and newspapers. More than 24 000 font downloads from the Toyota website. 2 345 test drive demands. All this with 0 euro media investment.
Advertising Agency: Happiness, Brussels
Creative Management: Karen Corrigan/Gregory Titeca
Creative Director: Gregory Titeca
Creative: Tom Galle
Creative: Ramin Afshar
Head of Art: Cecilia Azcarate Isturiz
Axa Insurance – iPhone Print Ad
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: Belgium, Case History, Digital | Tags: ads to life, Axa, Axa Insurance, Belgium, Case History, Digital, Duval Guillaume, iPhone app, iPhone Print Ad Leave a comment »
AXA is Belgium’s first insurance company to launch an iPhone app. Their free application helps and guides you through some basic steps when you have a car accident. This product has been launched with an innovative print ad that requires your iPhone to complete the message.
Advertising Agency: Duval Guillaume Antwerp/Modem
CD: Geoffrey Hantson, Lansen Walraet
AD: Kristoff De Prins
Copy: Philippe Blondé
Prod Comp: TRS
Director: Felix&Paul
