Foreigners do the funniest things - EPICA Awards 2009

Our fellow jurors included representatives from the likes of Marketing Week, Creative Review – from the UK – as well as CB News, Advertising Ideas and Marketing Tribune from France, Russia and Holland respectively.

Over the course of four days thousands of films, press ads and digital ideas were assessed from a huge range of countries that not only included all the normal European suspects but the likes of Russia, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia as well.

It presented a great opportunity to assess the output across scores of countries – from first world to third world, from those with mature economies to those which are still developing.

On one level it showed there is still a ton of work which conforms to national stereotypes. The French still love their bare breasted women, the Scandinavians just like nudity right across the board and the Dutch are remarkably laid back; even running a TV campaign for New York Pizza with the endline “They’re fucking tasty.”

But on a more cerebral level, other lessons could be drawn. The UK still punches well above its weight in terms of creativity. In fact most of the big prizes went to UK campaigns; DDB picked up Best Film for Polo, Lowe’s won Best Poster for John Lewis and DDB also picked up Best Press for Marmite.

Work generated outside the M25 featured as well. The in-house team at Specsavers won the Toiletries and Health category with their commercials which depicted a shepherd inadvertently shearing his sheep-dog along with his sheep. And LOVE picked up an award for its Silvercross packaging, which recognised kids prefer the boxes to the products they protect.

But the other trend was that many of the most interesting ideas – if not the best executed work – were to be found away from the traditional categories of print and TV.

In fact, in categories that included Media Innovation and Business to Business Direct Mail there were a clutch of things that we had never seen before.

There is a real sense that this is the type of work which might define the future of the business. So, we thought it might be a good time to highlight some of the work which, although not winning a place on the winner’s podium this time round, is very interesting in any case.

01. ANR BBDO (Sweden), Vets by Bottle, B2B direct mail

To mark its launch, the Vastra Veterinary Clinic in Sweden managed to capture the individual scent of each of its five vets in aerosol cans. Since this centre specialises in dogs, they thought it might be a good way of putting the olfactory sensitive animals at ease, even before they visited the new practice for the first time. The aerosol cans – which were decorated with pictures of the vets – were then sent out to 100 kennels with a note explaining the areas in which each vet specialised in. As a result referrals to the new service were 450% more than anticipated.

02. Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann Werbeges m.b.h (Austria), Robert Reinagl, ‘Self Promotion’

This seems slightly ‘Chip Shop’ but is not a bad idea nevertheless. A speech therapist was looking for a new business card. So, what was designed was a card which was completely blank. No type. Just a white card – which had a flap. And when you opened that flap a recording was activated, which then read out the company’s name and contact details.

03. DDB Berlin GmbH (Germany)

This was a really simple idea. Basically, when somebody in the agency hit the print button the computer showed a chain saw icon and played the sound of a revving two-stroke engine. If they then hit ‘okay’ another sound effect of a tree crashing down kicked in. If they cancelled print they were treated to the sound of singing birds.

Much better than adding lines such as; please consider the environment before printing blah, blah, yawn.

04. THE Coffee Company (Holland)

The Coffee Company is Holland’s largest chain of coffee houses. As part of a bid to attract students they started arranging free WiFi access at its branches. The only problem was that when students came in they did not look at the menu. So the coffee house decided to move their menu on to their customers’ WiFi menu. The name of their routers are routinely changed to titles that include ‘mmm…yummymuffins only 1.99’. However, says the company, nothing gives them more satisfaction than when somebody yells over for the WiFi name and staff can yell back “OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready.”

05. Interone Worldwide GmBH (Germany), Media Innovation

MINI Clubman decided to offer an entire cinema a virtual test drive of its new model. Special motion-sensors were fitted to the cinema which allowed the audience, through their body movements, to take control of the on-screen car. They simply swayed left and right in order to steer the car round a virtual race track. It turned a bog-standard commercial into a real inter-active experience. The idea featured twice in the festival, but this was the better executed of the two.

06. Akestam Holst (Sweden), Playground

This firm is in the business of retailing outdoor equipment that includes down jackets. To demonstrate how warm they were, they got a volunteer to incubate and hatch a chicken egg in one. For four days, armed with nothing but a sport-bra and body heat he stayed in a temporary ‘chicken farm’ outside a Playground store. The result was a healthy baby chicken and a spectacular amount of press and TV coverage.

07. Saatchi and Saatchi, Amnesty International, The Trojan Girl

This agency claims to have discovered that YouTube use the frame from the dead centre of films to serve as the preview picture on its website. So they featured a sexy, sultry, pair of lipstick laden lips as the preview picture of an Amnesty International film. When people selected it, expecting to see – er – they got instead a dry film from Amnesty which showed a soberly dressed presenter walking through a dull office. However, enroute he suddenly, and for no apparent reason, picks up a picture of a girl with lipstick laden lips. A really interesting idea. However, we would be more impressed if we could actually find the film on YouTube.

08. Serviceplan Hamburg (Germany), Shen International Advertising

The agencies objective was to attract potential recruits. They set up a spoof Chinese ad agency whose big idea was to adapt (steal) existing campaigns for new clients.

Popular and well known ads tagged with unknown brand names were featured on its website; www.schen-ia.cn and on YouTube. A new tool was even launched called the ‘AdConfigurator’ which contained 30,000 award winning campaigns and was designed to make ‘plagiarism easier’. Many were taken in by the website and some ‘we’ll sue your ass off’ type threats were even received. However, just as the storm of protest was reaching a crescendo the agency announced the spoof with the line ‘only new ideas are good ideas’.

09. Jung von Matt AG (Denmark), Ikea

Store catalogues can seem impersonal. So IKEA’s attempted the ultimate in personalisation. They replicated the set which was used for the catalogue cover in various stores. Then customers had the opportunity to pose in this set and have their pictures taken. Several days later they received their catalogue – complete with a front cover that featured them. The wonders of digital printing!