JCDecaux sends out the worst mailing ever in the history of direct mail.

The problem: JCDecaux is well-known for their 2m2 billboards. But they wanted to show their clients that they offer other billboard sizes as well.

The solution: They send out the worst mailing ever in the history of direct mail. Every advertiser received a miniature 2m2 billboard featuring one of its own ads, but with a huge mistake. JCDecaux had confused their biggest clients’ products with those of their biggest competitor. Nike received a miniature 2m2 billboard for their Nike Stan Smith. Dior for their Dior No5, Apple for their Apple Xperia, etc.
JCDecaux apologised for their intentional error in an accompanying letter.
“We are sorry we have intentionally mistaken you for a competitor. We just wanted to let you know how we feel every day. But we assure you that if you choose our networks for your next campaign, it would not be a mistake.“

The results: The strong reaction and frustration that this move caused amongst the marketing directors led to a 15% increase on demand for bigger billboards.

Credits :
Creative Director: Arnaud Pitz & Sebastien De Valck
Associate Creative Director: Klaartje Galle
Creative Team: Toon Vanpoucke & Morgane Choppinet
Account Supervisor: Isabel Peeters
Account Manager: Marleen Depreter
Strategic Planner: Tom Vingerhoets, Jan Van Brakel
Advertiser Supervisor: Veerle Colin (JCDecaux) Els Desmedt (JCDecaux)

Breakvertising. These Days reinvents TV advertising with innovative use of the pause button

All things going digital. Traditional TV advertising struggles for viewer attention. Fast-forwarding is just too easy these days. The need for innovative ideas that could bridge the gap are always welcomed.

These Days, an Antwerp, Belgium based communication agency did just that. The came up with an innovative idea:

“Breakvertising”

These Days catered to the fast-forwarding trend by looking for untapped potential. The result: pause button advertising – or breakvertising, to use a slightly more international term. As soon as the viewer presses the pause button on the remote, a still is displayed. For advertisers, this is a light-hearted but meaningful way of connecting with the viewer.

Gertjan De Smet, Art Director at These Days and co-author of the concept: “We were looking for a fun and non-intrusive way to make the most of those moments when viewers pause the programme. They interrupt the programme to answer the phone or go to the bathroom, or they want something to nibble, etc. By definition, each of these moments involves a product or service. That’s why we thought it would be a good idea to give advertisers the opportunity to use this precise moment to interact with the viewer.”

The viewer has the final say

Contrary to a classic commercial break, breakvertising is deliberately limited to a single, frozen image. While it’s OK to liven up a break with a wink, it is essentially still a moment of rest.

And if there’s a specific message that vexes the consumer, then he can simply use the settings of his digicorder to disable it.

Telenet & SBS jump on the bandwagon

The advertising agency called upon its customer Telenet (Liberty) and the SBS broadcasting group to flesh out the idea, and both immediately saw the potential. Telenet is responsible for the technical development of the concept and will provide the necessary support, whereas SBS will use their commercial contacts to pitch the idea to a broad range of advertisers.

World first

This new form of TV advertising is also a world first for These Days, SBS & Telenet. In the short term, the concept can be made available to every TV channel, distributor or telecom provider. The trial phase of the pause button advertising concept starts in a few days. The rollout is scheduled for the end of the year.

Credits:

Agency: These Days, Belgium

JCDecaux gets too personal with Marketing Directors

Closing business presentations with leading marketing directors is always a struggle. They are always very busy. JCDecaux found the perfect way to tackle that.

Instead of just mailing an invitation for their presentation about ‘The effectiveness of outdoor’, JCDecaux and BBDO Belgium came up with “Personal Billboards” to prove the effectiveness of the medium.

For every director they wanted to contact, they made a billboard with his a photo without asking for permission. Each billboard only had their name and a contact address of JCDecaux.

Then they waited for a reaction, so the marketing directors could tell for themselves how effective outdoor still is. They reacted exactly how JCDecaux wanted: confused, shocked and a little annoyed that people kept contacting them to know what the purpose was.

JCDecaux responded with an e-mail apologizing for any inconvenience: “We just wanted you to experience the effectiveness of outdoor advertising, As you said it yourself, you got so many reactions from only one single billboard. Just imagine what our entire network could do for your brand.”

After, they could to sign up for the presentation… And why wouldn’t they free up some of their time now? After all, it’s hard to disagree with yourself, right?

So every single one of them booked a presentation, and JCDecaux reached a response of 100%. Talk about effectiveness.



Credits
Creative Director: Arnaud Pitz & Sebastien De Valck
Creative Team: Toon Vanpoucke & Morgane Choppinet
Account Supervisor: Isabel Peeters
Account Manager: Marleen Depreter
Advertiser Supervisor: Veerle Colin (JCDecaux)

Carlsberg's poster is probably the best poster in the world

Carlsberg reintroduced its iconic strapline in the UK with a first of its kind OOH campaign.
A poster who works as a beer tap!

It's easy to say that a poster that gives free beer is #ProbablyTheBest poster in the world.

The poster was located at The Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane and offered to people over 18 free beer for one day. The stunt is part of the new £12m TV campaign which is based around the theme “If Carlsberg did...”

Carlsber's “Probably the best...” slogan was revived in 2015 after four years (they had dropped it in 2011 after nearly four decades).



Credits
Advertising agency: Fold7 

A "Stalker" viewed your LinkedIn profile. BBDO for Vier

What a great and creepy way to launch a new thriller series. BBDO Belgium used the "who’s viewed your profile" LinkedIn's feature to anounce the launch of "Stalker" on Vier.

They took advantage of that feature by creating a fictional LinkedIn profile named ‘Stalker’ and filled it out with broadcast info, an exclusive trailer and some personal yet very disturbing details.

Then ‘Stalker’ started visiting profiles. Each of the 12.0000 users received from LinkedIn a notification that "Stalker, self-employed at a place near you" viewed their profiles. Then curiosity did its part and 63% viewed Stalker’s profile.

People liked the idea and spread the word on Twitter. Even without having a Twitter account of his own, ‘Stalker’ got around 27,600 Twitter impressions.

Credits:
Creative director: Jan Dejonghe, Sebastien De Valck, Arnaud Pitz
Art Director: Jan Dejonghe
Copywriter: Jutta Callebaut
Account manager: Lore Desmet
Account Director: Isabel Peeters
Videographer: Jasper Heldenbergh
​Social strategy: Julie Bogaerts
Client: SBS Belgium VIER
Client contacts: Steven Vlassenroot, Steven Huyers

Canal Sony Brasil: Skip Ad Festival

Many have used the YouTube's 5 seconds waiting time before you can to skip the ad in a creative way. Publicis Brasil, went a step further for the promotion of The Voice's new season on Sony Channel in Brazil.

The hosted a musical contest and made the viewer become the judge. Singers had five seconds to prove that they are good enough to enter the show. If the user skipped the ad then the singer was rejected. If the user watched over 5 seconds the singer was approved.

Credits:
Advertising Agency: Publicis Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil
Creative Directors: Hugo Rodrigues, Kevin Zung, Henrique Mattos, Daguito Rodrigues
Art Director: Elias Carmo
Copywriter: Kiko Mattoso
Agency producers: Tato Bono, Cayan Lobo
Production House: Casa do Vaticano
Director: Guilherme Petry
Director of Photography: Pablo Chasseraux
Postproduction: Casa do Vaticano
Sound company: Lua Nova

Mercedes E-Class Estate: The Transportable Banner

When Mercedes asked BBDO to make a bannering campaign that shows how spacious the new E-Class Estate is, they came up with a smart idea that transformed the classic banner into a medium that proves Mercedes’ promise.

BBDO introduced the Transportable Banner. A banner showing the E-Class Estate, which is suddenly being ripped out of its framework by two guys and transported to the E-Class Estate parked right behind it. Finally the two guys store it nicely in the trunk of the E-Class Estate.

Credits:
Agency: BBDO Belgium
CD: Arnaud Pitz, Sebastien De Valck, Jan Dejonghe
Art Director: Jasper Verleije
Copywriter: Sarah Huysmans
Account Director: Valérie Bracke
Account Manager: Marleen Depreter
Account Executive: Bram Devidts
Agency Producer: Leen Van Den Brande
Online Production: AdSomeNoise
Production Company : Ristretto Films

Burger King: Fight to skip the line mobile game

The problem: Burger King went back in France after 15 years and due to the very few restaurants opened so far, people complain on the social media as they line for hours before ordering.


The solution: Buzzman invented the first mobile game ever created to cut the line.

Users can download the application (http://www.burgerking.fr/application/), defend their menu against swarm of hands and win the Fast Pass. The Fast Pass is valid for 15 minutes, and will allow the user to skip the line just by showing his screen to a cashier.

Credits:

BURGER KING®
Marketing Project Managers: Bérénice Charles, Carole Rousseau
Marketing Project Manager Assistant: Anna Perrin

BUZZMAN
CEO & Creative Director: Georges Mohammed-Chérif
Vice President: Thomas Granger
Associate Director: Julien Levilain
Copywriters and Artistic Directors:
Mickael Krikorian, Victor Sidoroff
Artistic Director Assistant : Pierre Cognard, Aurélie Femenias
Account Managers: Pierre Guengant, Loïc Coelho
Social Media Manager: Julien Scaglione
Digital Producers : Julien Ouvrel , Romain Goutte
PR Manager : Clara Bascoul
Digital Production : Unit9

Plan Parent: Too young to watch. Old enough to get married.

The numbers are staggering. Every minute 27 girls are forced into marriage. That’s 2 every second. Child marriage is a global problem.

The practice violates girls’ human rights, curtails their education, harms their health and sharply constrains their future.

Plan Belgium with the help of Duval Guillaume agency helped these girls to take over ‘age warnings’ in prime time on national television, in movie theaters and in youtube trailers and explain the problem. In these touching movies, 3 separate girls tell an emotional story and paint a true picture about this horrible tradition.

The start of a solution is simple: more education. Getting girls to school means delaying marriage. And by becoming a Plan parent that’s exactly what you’re helping to achieve.

Credits:
Agency: Duval Guillaume 

Ikea built an entire website inside Instagram

Cool and innovative work from Russian agency Instinct for IKEA. They launched a fully functional website inside Instagram to showcase IKEA's 2104 PS collection. Users can go to ikea_ps_2014 Instagram account and see 12 image tabs that represent the categories then click any of them to go to the items. Each of the 34 items has its own Instagram account. The agency used the tagging feature in order to give to the users an easy navigation.

The concept of 2014 PS collection, which was created by 14 young designers, is "Always on the move" and this Instagram site that works seamlessly on smartphones is the perfect way to reach the collection's target group.

IKEA PS: Instagram Website from Instinct on Vimeo.

Credits:
Advertisign Agency: Instinct BBDO, Moscow
Roman Firainer, Yaroslav Orlov – Creative Directors
Nikolai Fabrika – Digital Creative Director
Timur Abdusheev, Max Demkin – Art Directors
Dmitry Moiseev — Copywriter
Matthew Choudnovski — Strategic Planner
Natalya Ametova — Account Director
Vera Ulitenko — Senior Account Manager
Ksenia Goldberg — Account Manager

Hellmann's: #PreparaPraMim (#PrepareForMe)

#ReciTweet action is so clever and useful for the user that was bound to beat all records on Hellmann’s Brazil Twitter page.

Hellmann's fans could tweet the ingredients they had on their fridge with the hashtag #PreparaPraMim (#PrepareForMe) and receive a personalized recipe from Recepedia.com based on those ingredients.
So simple and without having to download any app or doing any research.

Over the 15 days of the campaign there were more than 3 million impressions relating to #ReciTweet, 2.000 new fans and approximately 85.000 engagements – the sum of clicks, followers, retweets and replies to the  tweets posted. 

Giovanna Gomes, marketing manager for Hellmann’s said "With #ReciTweet, we developed a fun and creative way of interacting with users and provided them with a fast and effective solution for an important moment in their daily lives: deciding what to prepare for a meal with the ingredients and at the time determined by the user".

Credits
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy, Brazil

Paw Justice: Animal Strike

An animal strike that changed a law. Paw Justice with the help of DDB New Zealand collaborated with Google and YouTube and blocked videos with animal content in order to make people sign a petition to force the goverment to change a law that allowed legal-highs to be tested on animals.

The insight was simple. People love to see entertaining videos of animals online. So a nationwide block of these videos would definitely spread the word.

Street posters, print ads, TVCs and billboards, where also used in the campaign, along with a website with the petition and a strike toolkit with all the files needed for the public in order to upload then to their social media profiles, YouTube channels and websites to block their own animal content.

This incredible collaboration made the Prime Minister John Key announce that there will be no further testing of legal-highs on animals in his country.

Credits:
Advertising Agency: DDB, New Zealand

DIRECTV: Get Rid of Cable Twitter Story

The first ever Twitter-Generated, Fan-Made, You-Written, Get Rid of Cable Twitter Story That We Made On Twitter Together. DIRECTV asked its fans to contribute to a story with tweets with the hashtag #GetRidofCable from April 14 through April 21. The best tweets were chosen and formed the following story.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung: The Digital Newspaper Holder

Convincing conservative newspaper readers about the advantages of a digital publication can be a hard task. Jung von Matt turned the classic wooden newspaper holders into a digital tool to surprise readers. With the use of LED boards inside the holders and the programming needed in order to receive RSS-feeds through an infrared transmitter, they managed to surprise readers and record a 2.7% increase in its digital readership for Neue Zürcher Zeitung from August to October 2013.

The Digital Newspaper Holder from not-enough on Vimeo.

Credits:
Jung von Matt/Limnat Zürich, Switzerland
Executive Creative Director: Alexander Jaggy
Copywriter: Cyrill Wirz
Art Director: Adrian Merz
Art Director: David Hanselmann
Graphic: Aude Kohler
Account Supervisor: Sabrina Arthur
Account Manager: Petra Moser
Social Media: Oliver Vedolin

Pampers Daipers: ZZZ Radio

A radio station that airs only white noise is a brilliant idea from Ace Saatchi & Saatchi Manila for Pampers Diapers. It is scientifically proven that white noise has sleep-inducing effects on babies. Since radio static is white noise Ace Saatchi & Saatchi Manila reinvented how radio can be used and made 99.1FM "ZZZ Radio". They helped babies to sleep and let moms take it to social media and gain the impressive 2011% increase in engagement.

Credits:
Advertising Agency: Ace Saatchi & Saatchi Manila

Pause Home Entertainment: Speaker Cards

Pause, a Stockholm based high-end hifi store developed a business card that transforms into a battery-free speaker for smartphones, delivering a 17% increase in volume. Pause promise is that they can create customized sound systems for every wallet. This card delivers the message literally.

Pause Speaker Cards from Ourwork on Vimeo.

Credits:
Advertising Agency:  Åkestam Holst

Virgin America: Musical Safety Video

Virgin America transformed the boring safety video into an entertaining 5-minute musical video featuring 36 singers and dancers and 14 dance styles. To make it social they are hosting an audition for the next safety video at http://VXsafetydance.com. You can participate by uploading an Instagram video with moves using the #VXsafetydance hashtag.

Credits:

Director: Jon M. Chu, 

Choreographers: Jamal Sims and Christopher Scott

Take 3: Recycle a tweet - The worlds first recyclable and refundable tweet‏

8 billion bottles and cans trash Australian beaches, rivers and ocean each year, killing precious wildlife and marine life.

In an attempt to convince Barry O'Farrel, the Premier of New South Wales, to implement a Cash for Containers scheme (Recycling deposits), Take 3 created the world's first recyclable and refundable tweet.

Though recycling deposit refunds has been a proven solution around the world, in Australia it is still facing strong opposition from beverage companies.

A national scheme for Australia will soon be under review with the key decision maker being Premier Barry O’Farrell. Take 3 needed to prove the recycling power of a ‘Cash for Containers’ scheme whilst calling on Barry O’Farrell to make the needed change.

So they created the world’s first recyclable and refundable tweet. A tweet calling on Barry O’Farrell to implement the Cash for Containers scheme and encouraging the public to recycle the tweet by re-tweeting it.

Every re-tweet can be refunded the same deposit amount as a standard beverage container, one shiny Australian 10 cent piece.

Support the call for a Cash for Containers  scheme by recycling our tweet at recycleatweet.com.

Credits:
The Take 3 Team

Ray-Ban: #nofilterjustrayban

Last day of summer but I'm posting about a cool idea DDB Brussels had for Ray-Ban sunglasses to keep it going for a little longer (well, in Greece, the weather is like summer almost year round).

So, DDB tranformed trams in all major Belgian cities into "Ray-Ban Test-Drive Trams" by pasting filters on the windows and letting people discover the city through different Ray-Ban color lenses thus promoting the wide range of Ray-Ban's polarized color lenses: from sky blue to hot pink.

To make it social, posters inside the tram invite travelers to share their pictures of the city with #nofilterjustrayban.

Credits:
Campaign: #nofilterjustrayban
Agency: DDB Brussels
Client: Ray-Ban Belgium (Luxottica Group)
Marketing Manager: Dagmar Sleuwaegen
Agency: DDB Brussels
Creative Director: Peter Ampe
Creation: Gertjan De Smet
Account Manager: Gertjan De Smet
Strategic planner: Maarten Van Daele
Head of Digital: Geert Desager
Online producer: Simon De Pauw, Sevenedge
Experience Architect: Maarten Breda
Graphic Designer: Arnaud Hemroulle
Production company: Lijncom, JCDecaux, Clear Channel
Photographer: Mary-Ann Koninckx, Yannick Tielemans
Media: website, transit, social media

Intel and Toshiba: The Power Inside

The third social film experience from Intel & Toshiba is here. They started two year ago with "Inside Experience" and now with the "Power Inside" we deal with an alien invasion. It seems that extraterrestrial moustaches and unibrows take over the upper lips and eyes of people around the world.

Your face can join the Uricks (the aliens) or the Guardians. Just visit www.thepowerinside.com or www.Facebook.com/insidefilms to watch the trailer and audition to be in the film. To join the Urick team and potentially be featured in the film you have to upload a photo to the Facebook Page, and the facial recognition software will add a moustache or unibrow. You can also upload videos of yourself removing a moustache to join the Guardian team.

Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon  (“Blades of Glory” and “The Switch”), the movie stars Harvey Keitel (“Reservoir Dogs”), Craig Roberts (“Submarine”), Analeigh Tipton (“Crazy, Stupid, Love”), Reid Ewing (“Modern Family”) and Zack Pearlman (“The Inbetweeners”).

The first episode of the social film will be available on August 15 and continue online over the next six weeks.



(thanks Monika)