I guess you could say the guys who get into this Renault are unsuspecting. Perhaps unsuspecting is this year's campaign idea.

And it reminds me just a bit of this BMW "viral," from last year, too for that matter.
At least the acting from the unsuspecting males is pretty decent.

This three minute case study proves that if Coke manipulates us by putting us under with the help of a hypnotist, we'll believe Coke Zero tastes like Coke. Power of suggestion indeed.

Maybe it's just me but If this were a thirty second spot, it would feel like a goofy pepsi spot. Instead, it's Coke, but still goofy. Weird.

On a side note, when this came through the inbox, I mistakenly thought it had something to do with Hipgnosis. Pity it didn't. Because that's a concept I could really get behind no matter what it was.

1 out of 3 Belgians watch their favorite shows in delayed mode, meaning they fast forward through the commercials.

"DDB and Volkswagen now come up with a creative solution that rethinks the standard tv ad format. To promote the new Volkswagen Beetle Cabrio we developed the so-called 'slowmercial'."

That's really cute guys, so cutting it's like whoah, it's like nobody ever thought of that before. Except Markenfilm in Germany. in the 90s. And those rumored TiVo fast forward ads in the early 2000s in the US. Welcome to the future. Nice ads.

I mock because I love guys, it's really kinda clever.

"Imagine.. It's the middle of the night. You're sleeping. Your best friend calls for help...."

And so it begins, the stunt set to take over after the Biker cinema stunt, and hoping to spread. In this scenario, a friend is called to a poker game to help their friend get out "Bring 300€ or they won't let me go". The game is played in a seedy part of town, the heroic friend is greeted by beefy guards, then directed to walk past people boxing, hookers fighting, have to share an elevator with a creepy old chinese men eating mystery-food... and finally they reach the room where the game was played.

So how did Duval Guillaume follow up TNT's "Dramatic surprise on a quiet square?" Buy doing a sequel but setting it in the cold.

For the client Newspaperswork, the marketing platform for all Belgian newspaper publishers, Duval Guillaume Belgium created a little stunt that, which like their red light district stunt, and the dramatic surprise in a quiet town square, this might play better for us viral viewers.

TBWA Belgium's new commercial shows ever so gently how renewable energy and natural gas go hand in hand, and just like the one last year everything knitted grows on stuff like kudzu. The film was directed by Olivier Babinet and produced by Lovo Films for the Belgian Natural Gas Association. Am I the only one thinking that little terrier was going to turn into a knitted dog?

Toyota wanted to get the word out that ,any car accidents happen when the driver is backing up. So, along with Happiness Brussels they got a bit of art on for Toyota.

The carmaker commissioned a series of 3d street paintings from artist Ernest Zacharevic , who painted a series of murals in a Brussels parking lot. The murals depict innocent kids playing and having fun, right in places where drivers are most apt to back up.

Along with all of them is a line: "Protect what's behind you. Drive with a rear-view camera."

Emotional without being sappy. Straight and to the point. And the drawings are quite beautiful, too.

Nice one, guys.

See also the post with the images of each painting for full story.

How do you announce that with the TGV you can travel non-stop from Lyon's to Brussels? Why not invite the people of Lyon, one person at a time? On the morning of September 21th, Lyon woke up to find a 3 meter high cube in Place de la République. The cubes had little face-sized holes in them. Underneath the simple hole the message read "Take a look at Brussels". Many curious person had to poke their head in it.

During two days, hundreds of inhabitants of Lyon got caught up by their curiosity, and to their surprise, found themselves thrown into Brussels. Yes! The inhabitants of Lyon were received live from Mont des Arts by the mayor of Brussels, his official band and the people from Brussels, faithful with the reputation of Belgian hospitality. Tres bizarre!

DEMORGEN and Famous in Brussels created the website reclame-erfgoed.be and explain it thusly.

Reclame Erfgoed ( Advertising Heritage ) is a website that allows users to add vintage painted adverts on an interactive map. Not just any interactive map, the entire webiste including the navigation are painted on a wall in Belgium and streamed on the site.

Happiness Brussels, who brought you the award-winning IQ Font , are now beating Google to the punch in Belgium. As it turns out their over-sized Google Map cars can't get through the small streets, so the wee IQ decided to act all superhero and complete the google maps route for them. All the residents on the wee streets will receive a DM from IQ when their street is available on www.iQstreetview.com, showing off the cars small-street skills to the exact punter who might have use for it. Clever.

The European Commission decided to try and attract more ladies to science, by equating them with pretty models doing a cat-walk thing near lab-coated men? Yeah, it makes no sense at all.

Enchanté/Adhese's work for the Foundation Against Cancer is a weird cross between "Big Brother" and a bizarro "Wife swap". They flew five couples to a sunny desitnation, and while they're sleeping the girlfriends sneak out of bed while their own mothers take their spot. Cue boyfriends waking up and freaking out (one even snuggles his mum-in-law for a bit first). “Make sure your girlfriend protects herself against the sun, or she’ll start looking like her mom far too soon" reads the line at the end. So the boyfriends were targeted so that they could tell their girlfriends what to do? Wouldn't a young woman's appeal to vanity work better than turning any significant others in her life into nags? I suppose this clip is meant to spread on the hilarity/nightmare of waking up next to your mother-in-law but it's not tickling my funny-bone. Maybe it's a guy thing.

To launch TNT - "we know drama" - in Belgium, Turner decided to take the drama to the streets. In a small town square where usually nothing at all happens, they placed a big red button and encouraged people with a giant arrow to push it to "add drama". Oh dear god I wish I had been one of the people who pushed that button, it's brilliant. Suddenly there's cops and robbers, motorcycle ladies in lingerie and really clumsy ambulance drivers....

Check out http://www.tnt-tv.be for more.

Nice Shoes Colorist Ron Sudul recently finished a pair of stirring international spots for the nonprofit group One Million Trees. The studio teamed up with The Academy of Film & the Arts Directors Armondo Acosta, Frederik Cassiers and Martijn De Schrijver, expertly modifying their raw black-and-white footage with wisps of color.

The projects are journeys through the forests of Flanders, Brakelbos and Overpelt in Belgium. A mix of aerial views and shots from the dense forest floors, the spots explore the human relationship with trees. Friends in Trees features a man and young girl ascending into the soaring branches. Lost without Them follows a fleet of helicopters in pursuit of one man wandering through the woods.

How do you grab the attention of an entire city on a boring topic like renovation loans? Simple! Install a weeping house on a trafficated street and wait for the press and people passing by to react, then make the house stop crying. Every house could use some upkeep, and now owners know who to turn to for a loan.

See also the photo of the weeping house

So many things I love here, the fact I can send my ripped DVDs to a frine via an Openl banner is just one of them. ;) It's a banner ad that works like yousendit and similar file transfer site. 2 GigaBytes can be uploaded and sent to a friend, for the small cost of allowing Opel to deliver a little note about how their Molvano vehicule can carry 3,5 tons of crap in the real world. (Their adorable typo)

Carlsberg and Duval Guillaume decide to pull a prank on unsuspecting movie going couples. They filled the cinema with the baddest boys around, and left only two seats in the middle empty. The reactions are priceless, I especially like the pencil-necked guy who grabs onto his girlfriends arm as if he just wants to hide behind her. Those who did brave their way through the scary looking crowd - an older couple among them, little ol' ladies don't scare easily - were treated to a spotlight beam, a round of applause and a Carlsberg.