For the announcement of the latest Swedish detective series (crime series), Canvas – Flander’s quality TV station – ordered a campaign at Duval Guillaume Brussels. Over at DGB, they came up with an alternative for Sweden’s number one export product: IKEA. Very funny how they approached this assignment. It’s a fact that when you say ‘Sweden’, the first thing that comes in mind is the DIY store. It’s a logical as Marco is followed by Polo. So, the guys over at Duval’s took this fact as a standard rule (probably after some brainstorming) and created DIY murder weapons. So clever, so simple and so obvious. Hah!
Copy (on the full ad):
“Mankell’s Wallander – The new Swedish crime series”
“Get acquainted with Sweden’s newest export product: Mankell’s Wallander. The detective series (13 episodes) is is written by bestseller-author Henning Mankell and is named to be the biggest Scandinavian television project ever made. You’d have to have a good alibi to miss this series.”
Client: Canvas
Agency: Duval Guillaume Brussels
Account Team: Sylvie Verbruggen, Inez De Pooter
Creative Directors: Peter Ampe, Katrien Bottez
Copy: Tom Berth
Art Director: Geert De Rocker
Art Buyer: Elly Laureys
Print Production: Elly Laureys
Media Planner: Lieve Vankeerberghen, Brand Connection
Strategy: Tom Theys
Illustration: Lim Sijmons, Touch De Clercq, Geert De Rocker
Photographer: Kris Van Beek
Retouching: Chris Den Das
Media: Magzines, dailies, posters
Peter Gaudiano
November 23, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Brilliant and very clever.
There are two things that ruins this, though:
1) Pistol is spelled “pistol” in Swedish too.
2) The character “Ø” is not a Swedish letter – it is Danish/Norwegian. We Swedes use “Ö” for that sound – but you can not write “pistöl” since the pronunciation would be fscked.
Coolz0r
November 23, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I didn’t know that, and obviously the creatives didn’t either. Thanks for pointing it out!