The Epica Book 2008

This 22nd annual edition of the Epica Book features more than 950 commercials, print ads, publications, internet sites, direct marketing operations and packaging design projects honoured in the 2008/09 Epica awards, Europe’s premier creative awards show.

Judged by journalists from 34 leading advertising magazines from Europe and the EMEA region, the 22nd Epica awards attracted 4,945 entries from 661 of the best advertising agencies, photographers and production houses in 51 countries.

All the winners and finalists are in the Epica Book, together with a selection of other high-scoring entries.

The Epica awards have become the reference for creative achievement in Europe. The Epica Book is a lasting record of the awards and a unique source of information for all those interested in contemporary European creative trends.


The price of the Epica Book 22 is €80, including postage within Europe. You can buy it in the Epica Shop.

 

Index

This unique record of European creative achievement is fully indexed and conveniently arranged by product categories with creative credits and brief English translations where necessary.

 

FOREWORD BY AMIR KASSAEI

Chief Creative Officer, DDB Group, Germany

At present we are living through one of the most radical but exciting periods in recent history.

It is not only the financial and economical crisis that is keeping the world in suspense. It is the speed with which it is undermining old structures and forcing new thinking.

We have reached the end of an era that has been driven by a policy of short-term gain and profit maximization. Now we are experiencing the beginning of a new era that spotlights innovation, creativity and sustainability.

Therefore, it is more important than ever to reward ideas that set standards beyond media and categories – standards for new thinking, for intelligent problem solving and for refreshing insights that affect people and markets.

The Epica Awards recognise exactly these sorts of ideas. And you can get an impression of their power and potential by leafing through this book.

Enjoy!

Amir Kassaei,
Chief Creative Officer, DDB Group, Germany

IT'S A DOG'S LIFE

Lewis Blackwell is a creative director, writer and strategic consultant. He is the former editor/publisher of Creative Review and worldwide creative head of Getty Images. His new book Photowisdom is a collaboration with many of the world’s leading photographers.

We all know that it is the emotional connection that makes for great – and successful – advertising. An ad has to make you feel inclined to believe it’s message, it cannot wrestle you into submission with logical argument. And belief is not entirely, or even at all, rational. Yet most of the ads out there all too literally try to tell us things, persuade us with logic even though we are not so logical, but highly emotional.

And then along comes an ad like ‘Dog’ for VW Polo out of DDB London. It wins the Epica d’Or for film because it entirely gets the need to connect at an emotional level. It does this so brilliantly that I for one could not even see the brief, but could only feel the force of its appeal. I was won over, ready to buy, by the sheer charm of the film.

So what is it about a small dog sitting in a small car alongside his owner, driving through Los Angeles, seeming to sing along to the classic song ‘I’m a Man’ (think Spencer Davis Group and Steve Winwood, 1960s), that makes this commercial so appealing? And just what is it saying about the product?

These questions were quickly answered by Dylan Harrison, the copywriter at DDB London who dreamt up the spot with art director Feargal Balance. “We wanted to move the Polo message on having previously established the association with the car being small and well-made, giving you protection. Now the agency knew that we needed to dig into that to get across the benefits of protection. We realized that the benefit is that it gives you confidence.”
And that’s it. That is the message of the commercial, that is the explanation of the crazy little scenario of a Jack Russell dog apparently singing along happily to an ancient pop song while being driven around in a small car. You watch this spot and without being able to put words to it, you get the feeling that this little dog is nervous out of the car but oozing confidence when he sits in the passenger seat and appears to know the words to ‘I’m a Man’.

“The Polo is a small car you can feel confident in,” says Harrison. “We wanted somehow to capture that confidence you have when you are singing in the shower, the complete confidence and sense of abandon that you have.”

Through the thought processes that only a confident creative team working on one of the all-time great accounts can have, Harrison and Balance took this idea and transformed it into the scenario of ‘Dog’. Their creative juices somehow flowed and settled on creating a highly cinematic experience in which a nervous little dog is clearly transformed by the confidence-inducing properties of the Polo. Out of the car he trembles and looks worried; inside he is cocky and sure of himself.

A Jack Russell was the breed chosen because of actually having similar characteristics – at times nervous, at other times full of life and confidence. Cody and Bear are the twin dogs that were cast in the role (of course, you only ever see one but two are needed to get through the shoot day without totally exhausting the star) and they carry off their Jack Russell-nature perfectly. They are method actors because they wouldn’t know how to be anything else.

But why Los Angeles? “It needs to be in a sunny climate – you don’t want to think the dog shivers because he is cold, but because he is nervous,” explains Harrison. “And the slight fantasy element of LA also helps with the cinematic appeal.” OK… although I suspect many creatives might just admire the chutzpah of getting to sell a small European car by shooting in California.

Director Noam Murro of Independent was chosen to shoot the spot. “Not only is he an all-round great director, but he is fantastic at blending in special effects and he is great with comedy timing,” adds Harrison. The effects were particularly needed for the sense of the dog singing along to the song, which is done lightly enough so that the mouth movements look fairly natural, while also clearly signalling singing.

“He got straight away that this was all about the dog’s world and he made that look real.” And that is quite an achievement – we suspend disbelief and we go along with the ride, enjoying and feeling the confidence of the dog.

All this makes sense, emotionally speaking. As with most great commercials, retelling the idea or story in words doesn’t do much to really capture why it works. If it did, you would write an article for an ad rather than make a film. But it absolutely needs to be the little film that it is – the dog, the music, the location and, of course, the car all fit together as if this is how they must be. And that’s why VW Polo ‘Dog’ will probably do a good job at selling one small car with a strange emotional advantage over its competitors.

LOVE, HATE, EAT

Jan Burney is a writer and editor on the creative industries.

As this is Europe’s leading advertising award, with participants from the Baltic to the Black Sea and beyond, many of you may struggle to understand the culture behind the winner of the press Epica d’Or. The strengths of this innovative campaign from DDB London for the launch of Marmite Snacking products could be lost on you just where it matters most.

Yes, you might get that as a print campaign Marmite ‘LoveHate’ has a highly desirable graphic punch to it. You might appreciate the cool lines, bright colours and the short copy. You might admire how both a packshot and a product shot has been smoothly incorporated into every ad. And, most of all, the simple but tricky genius of creating a visual that says two different things when turned around will delight creatives everywhere.

But there is no getting around the fact that unless you have a little schooling in the meaning of Marmite, which requires years of exposure to the British Way of Life, then the charm of this campaign may pass you by.

“It’s a very British brand and a very British tone of voice,” says Graeme Hall, who with Noah Regan made up the creative team behind the award-winning work. “It’s a bold thing for a brand to not take itself too seriously and Marmite does this with a very particular tone. It knows people either love it or hate it and working with those big concepts is both wonderfully stimulating but also very demanding. You have to get the balance just right.”

And in this case, it wasn’t enough to just get across the love/hate mix that has made Marmite advertising so strong. The new campaign is not just for the core product but needs to promote a range of Marmite snacks. The salty, sticky yeast extract that is usually spread on toast, has now been imbued into various hand-held foodstuffs (rice cakes, breadsticks and similar fare) and this rash of new products is the spur for the campaign. It was important that customers appreciated the new products on offer while also responding to the uniqueness of the Marmite flavouring. “We couldn’t allow ourselves to get carried away with having fun on the love-hate thing while not really getting across the new products.”

The chosen medium of press became highly influential in helping Hall and Regan arrive at their concept. “We were looking for something that could help us get across the two ways of seeing the product, and this lead us to play with the medium. We got to the idea of turning the page physically as a trick to really get this across,” explains Hall. “The finished ads are really quite close to what we drew up when we developed the approach.”

“Bog Mouth was the first execution that really worked and once we got that, with the flat 2D style working, we were away. Other treatments followed quite quickly. We probably came up with about 30 different executions of varying success. At times the idea was stimulating, at times a bit of a straitjacket, but it certainly gave us a strong framework.”

‘Bog Mouth’ is Hall’s way of referring to the one where a rice cake is being put into a simple graphic mouth. Or, other way up, it is being dropped into a lavatory bowl.

“It was challenging to convince the client that people would get it, would turn the page and appreciate the two meanings,” adds Hall. “But in fact it is not really that essential. The branding and message comes across anyway and if it takes a while to fully appreciate how the image works then that can add something to enjoy later. We had a lot of conversations about how much we should make it clear for the consumer but I am glad that we did not put any more signposts on the page about how to view it.”

As you can see from the roughs on this page, the creatives had a close working relationship with illustrator Al Murphy, finessing their strong underlying ideas into graphic executions that have charm and simplicity.

Since the campaign Noah Regan has headed back to Australia, while Hall continues to enjoy the appreciative client base of DDB London. “We have some great brands here, with campaigns that are institutions in many ways and that give great opportunities for good advertising.” He is even working on a couple of new Marmite Snacking treatments. So how does Hall feel about Marrmite? Love or hate?

“I hate the stuff. Of course, I had to eat some of the snacks in the course of my professional duties. All I can say in its favour is that the Marmite taste is quite light on the snacks. But I know just how much some people love the stuff.”

Oh yes, they do, Graeme. Marmite – I for one can’t live without it. Thanks for a great campaign, despite yourself.

 

ABSOLUT MACHINES: ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY

Mark Tungate is a journalist and writer based in Paris. He is the author of Adland - A Global History of Advertising.

Art is such a human endeavour that it seems unlikely that a robot would be very good at it. Nonetheless, a famous vodka brand, a Swedish digital agency and two teams of wildly talented designers got together to explore the virgin terrain of “artificial creativity.”

Ted Persson, creative director of Stockholm agency Great Works, takes up the story. “Since the 1980s, Absolut vodka has supported creative professionals in the fields of art, music and fashion. It was almost the first brand to become seriously involved with the art world. And for Absolut this made perfect sense, because choosing the brand was a form of self-expression.”

In parallel, Absolut ran a long and highly popular print campaign based on the unusual design of its bottles. Then, last year, Absolut bravely ditched this successful strategy in favour of a new slogan: “In an Absolut world…” The idea was simple: what if we lived in a world where everything was as perfect as Absolut?

Persson says, “We started thinking about how this might apply to technology and the internet. In order to be true to the brand, we felt that it should involve art in some way, so we began looking for ways to blur the borders between art and technology.”

After talking to dozens of design teams, Great Works narrowed its choice down to two. In Sweden, it decided to work with a collective called Teenage Engineering. In the United States, the agency turned to Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, both from MIT in Boston. “We chose them essentially because we liked their initial ideas,” explains Persson. “After that, it was a case of working together on the final concepts.”

Teenage Engineering came up with Absolut Choir, a robotic choir of 22 endearing singing characters of various shapes and sizes. It relied on a complex fusion of sophisticated speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence. It was installed in the PUB department store in Stockholm.

Paluska and Lieberman responded with Absolut Quartet, an awesome “electro-mechanical” sculpture. On show at an event space in Orchard Street in New York, it consisted of a giant marimba played by balls shot from a robotic cannon, wine glasses caressed by robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments. The fourth member of the quartet was the internet user.

That was the ultimate challenge of the project: having collaborated on the construction of the machines, the agency and the designers had to make them interactive. The machines were exhibited between January 31 and April 27, 2008. While physical visitors could experience them live, online users could interact with them at absolutmachines.com, creating music in real time. The interaction was filmed and broadcast live on the internet.

Each machine worked in a different way. For Absolut Choir, users typed a phrase that could be a song title – for instance, “I Need Love”. The choir would then harmonise a song using those words. The Absolut Quartet was marginally more complicated: users played a tune on their keyboards, which was then interpreted by the machine.

Says Persson: “Only one user could interact at a time. Each machine was filmed by four cameras and after your interaction, you received a video clip that you could send to friends or post on your website or blog.”

The machines were at the core of a wider campaign aimed at raising awareness of Absolut’s new positioning. Articles in the art and design press promoted the project. Print ads were run in media likely to appeal to opinion formers. The machines generated press coverage around the world and wide internet buzz. DJs took samples of the tunes played by the machines and remixed them.

Today, the interactive element of the project is over. But the machines are currently touring the world’s art museums. And Ted Persson found the project personally fulfilling. “It was one of the most enjoyable campaigns I’ve ever worked on. It wasn’t just about selling vodka or putting a picture of a product on a page. Scientists followed our efforts and we made genuine progress in the field of artificial creativity. We contributed something to the world.”

 

SELLING ILLUSIONS

Lewis Blackwell is a creative director, writer and strategic consultant. He is the former editor/publisher of Creative Review and worldwide creative head of Getty Images. His new book Photowisdom is a collaboration with many of the world’s leading photographers.

Take a look at these posters, winner of this year’s Epica d’Or for outdoor, and you see not only a great idea and stunning execution – you also see a confident client who knows what they are and where they want to be. This is always the case when you look behind a great campaign.

John Lewis is a chain store with a difference: owned by its staff, able to pay bonuses even in heavy recession, known for its long-lasting slogan of ‘never knowingly undersold’. It trades on quality while being reassuringly safe on delivering great value.

“Our challenge was to elevate John Lewis from being a place where you go to buy any old present to a place where you could find the perfect gift for somebody who you knew well,” says copywriter George Prest of the campaign he created with his art director Johnny Leathers at Lowe London.

“There is the underlying fact that John Lewis doesn’t sell any old rubbish, and they are a store that is very selective, careful about what they stock. But this back story is difficult to put across in words, let alone as a visual solution.”

Inspiration came in the form of an image of shadow-play – a motorbike depicted by the shadow of numerous forks - from the late, great Japanese designer/photographer Shigeo Fukuda, along with some other examples of illusions that Leathers and Prest had been toying with for a while. “We had been looking at shadow stuff and we even had this picture up on our wall for ages that we really liked,” says Prest. “We realized if you could make the shadow of the person who could receive the gift through the range of gifts that they could receive, then that would be a lovely, elegant solution.”

Leathers adds: “John Lewis has a certain restraint as a store – it’s not a loud, brash retailer. Whatever we came up with had to reflect the qualities of the brand.”

The next step was working out how it could be done. It’s one thing to imagine the solution and quite another thing to deliver it for real. And it is for real – there is no photo-manipulation to fake the effect, but instead the objects really had to make the illusions being sought.

Numerous sketches were required, Leathers drawing intensively to try and visualize how the compositions might work, how to position objects in front of a light to create effects, and thinking of what silhouettes they wanted to make. And then a master photographer was needed to achieve the illusion. Fortunately, they had one in mind and he said ‘yes’ – Nadav Kander, an artist who is almost expected to deliver award-winning work.

“When he said he wanted to do the job it was a great moment,” said Leathers. “These objects could have looked a bit dead on the page but he lit them brilliantly, really brought it to life. We also had an amazing stylist/art director, Rachel Thomas, somebody else I really wanted to work with, and we spent a lot of time working with her on getting the objects right.”

Leathers did ‘about a hundred drawings’ roughing the ideas out and then there was a test shoot to show the client that it was possible. On the days before the proper shoot, they worked with Thomas to go through various options to settle on the ones they really wanted.

“This was the hardest thing we have ever done,” says Prest. “Our whole thing, and Nadav felt exactly the same, was that this had to work in-camera. You couldn’t retouch it heavily as that would ruin the magic. Pretty much what you see is what we did.”

Finally three compositions were produced out of a week-long shoot. The client approval process was ‘fluid’ recalls Prest. “There were certain items they wanted to promote for Christmas but beyond that they were remarkably flexible as to what ended up in or out of the composition, which really helped. There was a great leap of faith from them in going with this idea.”

Thousands of products were on tap, lined up in the studio to be used as potential elements in the construction, which indicates just how much creative space the team were given by the client in coming up with a successful composition. John Lewis had their eye clearly on the overall effect as much as thinking it was going to really push any one product.

As it happens, this highly successful work experience resulting in top award-winning work is the swansong of the Leathers and Prest team. After 10 years together they have taken up big new roles elsewhere. This interview was one of the last things the team did on their final day in the Lowe London office, before Leathers headed off to become head of art at Publicis and Prest took up the executive creative director spot at Delaney Lund. The team certainly went out in style.