Tag: The Netherlands

Havas Boondoggle Amsterdam recruits via Airbnb

Advertising students and recent graduates are hungry for a taste of agency experience. More so when it can bring some adventure along with it.

So Havas Boondoggle Amsterdam decided to recruit interns who are both creative and worldly, through Airbnb. The agency started by renting out its couch (10 Euros a night) for a minimum of one night and maximum of one week. In exchange for the budgeted accomodation, hand picked interns would work during the day at the agency and then get to explore the city at night.

TexTales

In September I had written about how a father of two had decided to re-write the Tooth Fairy experience for the 21st century. Now in this latest example of interactive 21st century fairytales, Eindhoven University of Technology has created TexTales, a new kind of smart textile that when combined with augmented reality can enhance the experience of reading a fairytale to your children at bedtime.

TexTales consists of a set of bed sheets that have images woven into the fabric. The images are recognized by a custom made software that displays 3D characters from a fairytale through a tablet or smartphone onto the textile. This allows parents to create personal stories with their kids before going to sleep or during a play time.

With the support from the Kickstarter community they want to develop TexTales further by creating a storyline and characters that actually matter. For more information visit their Kickstarter page here.

Disney’s Planes pre-screening on a KLM plane

On October 2, KLM gave 300 kids an experience of a lifetime. The lucky kids were invited to a spectacular pre-screening of the new Disney film Planes.

To make the event an unforgettable one, KLM held the pre-screening on an actual airplane and then used special effects to recreate the world of Planes in a live setting. This made it the world’s first movie experience in and around a plane.

Heineken: UEFA Giveaway

Here are two campaigns that Heineken created in Europe to giveaway seats for the UEFA Champions League finals in London last month. 😎

Heineken: The Negotiation

Heineken challenged football fans at a furniture store in Netherlands to convince their ladies into buying a $1899 set of plastic stadium chairs for their home. If they did managed to pull it off, they would win a trip to the finals. The result…

Heineken: The Seat

In Italy, Heineken hid 20 tickets under 20 Wembley seats and spread them around Rome and Milan. Fans then had only one hour to find them and secure their place in finals. The results…

Heineken Ignite

Last year I had written about StartCap, the world’s first digitally enabled bottle top. Now, Heineken has created LED based “smart bottles” that puts serious some tech into drinking beer.

These interactive bottles come with motion sensors and tiny lights that illuminate in correspondence to certain party gestures. For example, the LED glows when people cheer and clink bottles against one another, or blink quickly while the person is drinking. It also comes with special software that tunes the bottles with the music for a synchronized light show.

The concept was unveiled during Milan Design Week early this month to showcase how this innovative approach allowed people to be a part of the party in a whole new way. But to reach the commercial market, Heineken still needs to optimize the technology as the prototypes consist of an external module attached to the bottles. Once the tech is embedded directly into the bottles, parties around the world will not be the same again. 😎

3D Printed Superheros and Crayon Cowboys

Creative agencies do all kinds of things in order to boost employee satisfaction and attract future talent. Here are the latest examples:

Dutch agency Resoluut came up with a unique and inspiring way to showcase its employees. Instead of the usual flat business cards, the agency turned its workers into superhero-like characters and had their mini figures created using a 3D printer.

US based agency Red Tettemer + Partners also had a similar idea but with a slight twist. To welcome their new staff the agency created miniature crayon sculptures of each individual.

A dramatic surprise on an ice-cold day

In April last year TNT had launched their digital channel in Belgium with a big red push button in a quiet Flemish square.

Now to launch their movie channel in the Netherlands, they created a new dramatic piece of the now famous red button in the quiet town of Dordrecht. When innocent passers-by dared to push the button, pure TNT-drama unfolded with a slightly new twist: close ‘participation’ of the public. 🙂

Dungville

Natwerk was asked to create something playful to engage the online minded visitors of ‘The Next Web conference 2012’. So they created an analogue gambling game featuring a real cow and layered it with an online extension. As you can see in the case film ‘Klara’ the cow was expected to shit three times a day and the visitors could bet where she would drop her shit.

Waternet Queen’s Day Challenge

Amsterdam’s water supplier Waternet wanted to discourage people from urinating in the city’s canals during the national Queen’s Day holiday in April. So Waternet hired Achtung! to do a little campaign that people would be very eager to try.

Several brightly colored urinals were created and installed at various points on the Amsterdam canal. Each urinal contained 4 stalls that were connected to a digital screen that turned peeing into a race.

As a result the campaign got people to use the urinal, pee quickly and even earn their water taxes back!