ING: OUR HEROES ARE BACK

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: ING
Agency: JWT, WE ARE FIRST
Category: Best Acting Performance
Advertising campaign: OUR HEROES ARE BACK
Director: Coen Stroeve
Executive Creative Director: Bas Korsten (JWT Amsterdam)
Production Company: Isaacs
Producer: Linda Jansen (JWT Amsterdam)
Deputy Managing Director: Edgar Molenaars (JWT Amsterdam)
Strategy: Marcel De Jonge (JWT Amsterdam)
Creative: Nick Van Beijnen (JWT Amsterdam)
Creative: Rik Eysink Smeets (JWT Amsterdam)
Production Company: Brenninkmeijer
Business Director: Natalie Verhoeff (JWT Amsterdam)

Effectiveness
Awareness:Our message reached the prime time news of Spain, US, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium and Russia, complimenting it's cultural and creative character. Over ten million people saw the Night Watch return.Consideration:Not a negative tweet was amongst the more than 100.000 very sweet tweets and comments. Established media also complimented ING on the piece; The Huffington Post called it 'a wave of epic brilliance,' and their 'favorite flash mob ever.'

Strategy
We had to claim their sponsorship in a sympathetic way. This meant coming up with something that would surprise people, that would actually contribute something creative. The idea was this: After ten years the wondrous works of the Rijksmuseum are back. So ING would take the most famous painting of all -Rembrandt's Night Watch- and let it 'return'. We let thirty 17th-century characters take over a shopping mall, all in hot pursuit of a 'thief'.

Relevancy
ING is one of the main sponsors of the Dutch Rijksmuseum. However, the museum has been closed for over a decade and nobody really knows about their sponsorship. The challenge: how could they promote the reopening while claiming their sponsorship?The big hurdle was that ING was perceived as the bank that cost the Dutch a huge amount of tax money. So they couldn't really do much right.

Campaign Description
ING is one of the main sponsors of the Dutch Rijksmuseum. However, the museum has been closed for ten years, and nobody really knows about their sponsorship. Now the museum is reopening, ING wants to claim its sponsorship. Since most banks have a debatable reputation (with ING being no exception), this needed to be done sympathetically.So we needed to step away from 'expensive' traditional media, and do something that would surprise people, that would actually contribute something nice, and would hopefully tilt the skeptical public opinion about the bank.The idea was simple; After a long decade, the famous works of the Rijkmuseum are back. So we took the most famous painting of all, Rembrandt's Night Watch, and let it 'return.'We timed the launch of our film so that news media could make it accompany actual news about the opening of the museum, about two weeks in before it. We seeded the film, but again stayed away from obviously paid media. It then spread rapidly. News shows from all over the world picked it up. People spoke lovingly about the bank and their stunt in over 100.000 tweets and comments. Established media also complimented ING on the piece; The Huffington Post called it 'a wave of epic brilliance,' and their 'favorite flash mob ever.' Within a week, more than 10.000.000 people saw our film, from Argentina to Russia, and learned about ING's sponsorship of the Rijksmuseum.

Client Brief Or Objective
1) Everyone knows that ING is the main sponsor of the Rijksmuseum, and..2) Likes them for it.

Execution
We focussed two pillars:1) News media. In the context of the opening of the Rijksmuseum, this piece could travel into newspapers and news shows.2) Online spread. We made a deliberate choice not to use obvious paid media (like pre-rolls for instance), so it would hold its sympathetic character. We gave the film a little push online, seeding it on several Dutch media. When the international potential became apparent, we manually dropped it into countries that didn't pay attention to it yet.