Author Archive

To promote a new series of world biographies of De Morgen newspaper, we created facebook profiles of famous people. Through the facebook status we spread quotes and photo’s featured in the biographies. We also announced the release date of each book and triggered discussions by commenting on things happening in the world. If you became a facebook friend of Nicolas Sarkozy or Fidel Castro, you could learn to know them a bit. But only by getting the biography you learned to know them really well.

In a new tv-commercial for Telenet digital tv, a guy named Patrick tells us how it feels to play an extra in films and series. He tells us that more people start recognizing him in the street, which is pretty cool. According to him this is the result of more and more people switching to the outstanding image quality of Telenet digital tv.

For the commercial a real extra was used. The lead actor who greets the extra, is Roel Vanderstukken, a famous Belgian actor and ditto singer.

The ticket-to-me is a new product, developed for the new year’s campaign of public bus company De Lijn. It gave all seasonal ticketholders the chance to fulfill their good resolutions of 2010 : see their friends more often. Everyone could enter the names of his or her best friends on a special website. De Lijn saw to it these friends got a ticket-to-me by post.

In Belgium it is obligatory to give VAT receipts with the bills in restaurants. Bus Company De Lijn is the first to use these VAT receipts as an advertising medium. On each receipt we added a message, inviting people to think about their choice of transport. If they consider taking the night bus, they don’t have to worry about ordering that extra drink.

. The branded VAT receipts will be distributed by 50 restaurants in 5 major cities. Later on another 30 restaurants will be added to this list.

At the end of 2006 the newly found word “fokkie” was used for the first time in a radio commercial for leading coffee brand Douwe Egberts. It was part of a dyslectic series of commercials illustrating you mix up words when you haven’t had your coffee yet. Soon the word “fokkie” began to lead a live outside advertising and at one point it began to pop up in chat sessions, it was used by radio hosts and the scriptwriters of one of belgium’s popular soaps used it in their dialogues. And no, this was not the result of product placement. Last summer we organised an online petition to get “fokkie” in de official Dutch dictionary. More than 7.000 people signed the petition and 12.000 became fan on facebook. And so, three years later, the unthinkable happened: fokkie is accepted as an official entry in the new yearbook of the official Van Dale Dutch dictionary. If you make it to the yearbook a couple of times, you are permanently part of the official daily language.

To promote the evening and night buses, public bus company De Lijn has launched a large scale guerilla campaign. In all major cities they stuck passe-partouts on existing event posters with the text: whatever you are planning tonight, also plan your transport.
The campaign also has an interactive part. Organisers of events are given the chance to promote their event on the real buses of De Lijn. All they have to do, is to upload their poster on www.nachtlijn.be.

For fitness center HealthCity we made a wrongly addressed mailing. On purpose, of course. Everyone reveived a letter addressed to his or her neighbour. We counted on everyone to do what good neighbours do, namely go outside and put the letter in the neighbour’s mailbox. Like this everyone got some exercise. But that’s not enough to get in shape, that’s why the letter invited everyone for a free session at the HealthCity fitness center.

One of the measures taken against the Swine Flu is to dissuade people to shake hands. Since greeting is an essential part of our social life, a new way of greeting is needed. That’s why Telenet wants to introduce the airshake, that’s a handshake without touching each other and without infecting each other. Learn the airshake now and make it spread faster than the swine flu.

You can easily learn the airshake on www.airshake.be

A cup of coffee still is the best moment to have a meaningful conversation. Coffee brand Douwe Egberts wanted to underline this, so we designed cups that help you choose a topic to talk about. You can let your spoon decide on a subject ad random or you can slightly manipulate the choice, that’s up to you.
Last Sunday a special edition of the cup was handed out during the Antwerp referendum about the construction of the controversial bridge “The Lange Wapper”. By handing out coffee, we invited people to have one last good conversation before taking a vote. We even gave a cup of Douwe Egberts to the mayor of Antwerp, even though he already had made up his mind.

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Creative Director Katrien Bottez is invited to be part of the 2009 Eurobest jury. She will be judging television, print, outdoor and radio. Eurobest, the European equivalent of the Cannes Lions, will be taking place in Amsterdam from November 22nd onwards. On www.eurobest.com you can check how much Katrien and the other members of the jury liked your work.