February 24, 2013

Art students hack Google Images to become advertising platform

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:03 pm

Students of the Willem de Kooning art academy in Rotterdam have managed to take a search string, ‘ultimate business car’, and have this produce five pictures in Google’s search engine for images that, once put next to each other, form an advertisement.

Search engines are in a continuous battle with Search Engine Optimizers, companies with the morals of an arsonist who try to replace relevant search results with links to the sites of their paymasters.

Students Pim van Bommel, Guus ter Beek and Alwin Lanting used the help of ‘hardcore SEO-ers’ to get the ad to show up in Google’s search results. The ad is no longer visible in its original form. When 24 Oranges searched for ‘ultimate business car’, the first panel had disappeared entirely and the text panels were in a different order. Van Bommel told Bright: “As soon as users start clicking on images Google’s algorithm changes the display order based on popularity. Unfortunately that is an aspect we do not yet control. Ads in which the order of the images is of less importance would be a good solution.”

The students call this concept Search Engine Advertising.

(Image: guusterbeek.nl)

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August 17, 2012

Selling a bank using cheese and blonde clones

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:35 am

Clichés sells, even to our big Eastern neighbours, the Germans who like Dutch cheese, clogs and blondes. However, this commercial kicks it up a notch, with more clichés and a weird German-Dutch accent.

The advert is trying to get Germans to choose a Dutch bank. “What to do you think of when you think of a Dutch bank?” the advert asks. Those blonde clones look like a bad sect, the computers could be Tulips (a Dutch brand — anyone?), the phones are clogs, the orange national color is de rigueur and many more details the makers enjoyed cramming in.

Making banking funny is an interesting stretch: either it works or it backfires, time will tell.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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August 12, 2012

HP opens miniature store in tram stop

Filed under: General,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:37 am

A little unexpected guerilla action from staid and stoic Hewlett-Packard at the Leidseplein in Amsterdam—in a tram stop just across the new Apple Store the computer manufacturer has opened its own Spectre Store.

Spectre being a new 14-inch laptop by HP that nominally competes with the 1- inch Apple MacBook and the 14-inch Dell XPS. I say competes, but according to this Engadget review, it is slightly slower and more expensive than its competitors, and the only thing you get in return is a better screen. Then again, if you had cash to burn and a good screen was what you craved the most, you probably wouldn’t buy an HP in the first place.

The tram stop store has a display window with actual laptops, and HP has sales people on hand to tell you about their new ultrabook. Passers-by can win a laptop by scanning a QR code. The store will be up and running until next Tuesday from 10 am to 9 pm.

According to Bright, this is one of the busiest tram stops in the country.

(Photo: Edelman PR)

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April 25, 2012

Trashing Ukraine for profit leading up to Euro 2012

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

Insiders will tell you that Dutch energy firm Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij has been accused of bad advertising before and even of questionable business practices, and don’t have a good reputation. This time, they’ve really outdone themselves: they’ve trashed a country, subjected another to gender stereotypes and told everyone not to go to the Euro 2012 in Ukraine (yes, partially being held in Poland).

The website with porno posing ‘shopped Ukrainian women is actually online as part of this media strategy and basically says ‘keep him [your guy] at home’. You keep him at home, away from the mail order porno brides by switching energy firms and receiving a home beer tap that’s all pimped up in Dutch team colours. Ukrainian women are sluts, Dutch women need to worry about not being so chunky and keeping their stupid football crazed men at home using beer.

I’m a ref and I am holding up a red card right now.

Imagine if the makers had picked on Polish women, considering the recent wave of Poland bashing some Dutch politicians have inflicted on the rest of us. Picking on Ukraine was probably the only culturally sensitive thing this company did.

UPDATE: Adversing blog Adformatie quotes the makers of the advert as ‘reflecting pure reality’ because Ukraine gladly profiles itself as having beautiful women. I never thought fake pictures looked anything like reality.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, Photo of Ukranian woman by my3colors, some rights reserved)

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April 21, 2012

Electric moped that emits advertisements instead of engine sounds

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:11 pm

A delivery moped for Domino’s Pizza is cruising the streets of Amsterdam with its traditional engine sound replaced by a man’s voice that goes “Mmmmm… Lekker, lekker … D-d-d-d-d-omino’s” (“Hmmmm … Yummy, yummy … D-d-d-d-d-omino’s”).

The ad campaign was conceived by Indie Amsterdam. I am not sure if actual delivery mopeds have been equipped with this sound, or if the video is plenty guerilla marketing by itself.

Although the idea is quite brilliant, I could do with less permeable advertising in my life. The plague of reverse graffiti is bad enough.

(Link: The Pop-Up City. Video: Amsterdam Ad Blog.)

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April 19, 2012

KPN discriminated with its ‘Dutch only’ discount

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:42 pm

KPN telecom recently had a ‘50% off for 100% Dutch’ advertising campaign that got some French people living in The Netherlands properly pissed off. The French popped into a KPN store to apply for the discount and were turned away for not being Dutch, which is discriminatory and illegal on a European scale.

And, like many Dutch companies and individuals do when they mess up, they call it a ‘misunderstanding’. KPN claims that the software for its ‘Hi’ mobile phone plan had been unfortunately programmed to accept only Dutch passport numbers for ID purposes and not resident permit numbers, which is commonplace. It is sad how the sales rep thought it was normal to turn someone of another nationality down for a discount. Actually it’s scary.

I have no reason to ever do business with KPN and I think they’ve just given me another reason to make sure that’s permanent.

(Links: www.rtl.nl, ftalphaville.ft.com, Tip: Matt (thanks!) )

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July 6, 2011

Hustling yourself a job with Twitter

Filed under: General,IT by Orangemaster @ 9:45 am

My only memory of someone being creative to get a job is some guy in my hometown of Montréal who carved his CV in ice and made sure the employer he was trying to win over saw it– and it worked.

“This ‘Job Hustle’ film by Bas van der Poel and Daan van Dam speaks for itself. They wanted a job and got one at Boondoggle by using Twitter in an unorthodox way. It’s on target, inventive and effective. They used technology to get a message across, not just to show they are geeks.”

(Link: amsterdamadblog.com)

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May 31, 2011

Dutch beer ads with Playboy bunnies and famous guys

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am

Bavaria beer ads on Dutch television currently feature two commercials with Mickey Rourke (see one below) playing upon his reputation as a major drinker. Besides the usual reasons for putting Americans in Dutch commercials, including sexing up your product, appealing to the youth and trying to be more international, Bavaria does sell 65% of its beer abroad, so it has good reasons for using heavy hitters. Although not a huge brand in the Netherlands, Bavaria is apparently sold in more than 120 countries and was caught up in controversy during the World Cup in South Africa 2010 with its Dutch dresses. The dresses were seen as advertising another beer brand than the main sponsor and some good looking blondes wearing the dresses got arrested, a fantastic marketing moment in retrospect.

I guess I like the Rourke ones better for the simple reason that the Dutch don’t censor English swear words no matter what time the ads come on television.

Here’s a funny Dutch ad with Snoop Dogg and Dutch singer Marco Borsato (a family man Neil Diamond, schmaltzy but much more ‘modern’) that anyone outside the Netherlands couldn’t have seen. It’s about having some choice when choosing a mobile phone, from a few years back.

(Link: reclamewereld.blog.nl)

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April 17, 2011

Spot the two main ingredients in these fruit drinks

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:17 pm

I don’t often have the time to prepare breakfast, so I tend to end up taking a bottle of Fruit2day to the workplace. The manufacturer, Swiss company Hero, promises that these drinks contain all the fruit you need in a day. (The drinks also contain a quarter of all the sugar you need in a day, but the producer doesn’t give that factoid as much prominence.)

Can you guess what the two main (fruit) ingredients of each drink are? Answers after the break. To get you started, the names of the drinks from left to right, when translated to English, are: “Strawberry Orange”, “Raspberry Grape”, and “Mango Peach”.
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December 30, 2010

Dutch disco legend Bobby Farrell dies

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 1:01 pm

Bobby Farrell, frontman of 1970s disco band Boney M has died in Saint-Petersburg, Russia today at the age of 61.

As a little girl in the village of Baie Comeau, Québec, I used to go to the local recreational centre turned roller rink for kids and roller disco my heart out to songs like ‘Rasputin’ (second (video). I also used this song when I presented my honour’s degree play in Russian Studies, as the lead characters were dancing in a Russian disco. For years Boney M and ABBA were the only disco-like music allowed in Russia from the West. Although Boney M was a German band, Farrell was born on the island of Aruba, making him a Dutch citizen. He was living in Amsterdam in recent years.

The irony of him dying in Saint Petersburg like Rasputin did (he was murdered, that’s different) is interesting, as the cause of death is not yet known at this time.

First, a recent Dutch commercial for an insurance company with Bobby Farrell in it, about getting your money fast instead of working ‘crazy like a fool’ and not seeing any money. Second Ra-Ra-Rasputin, a Russian flavoured disco sound known around the world. RIP.

(Link: depers.nl)

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