Like last year, there was no way we were going to miss out on that. Jef took some pictures for your enjoyment.

Here are a couple of fun stop-motion films we made recently for HK. Top is A-Kasse Vs B-Kasse, a short film highlighting the world of difference in unemployment insurance from HK and the offerings from various discount unions. More info here.

The second film, for HK Handel, is aimed at students who work part-time and encourages them to know their rights in the workplace. More details here.

If you’ve been following our Gaming Updates on Slideshare, you know that we strive to give you the freshest news from the gaming industry every month. But the industry’s changing faster than ever before and we want to bring you the most relevant gaming news as fast as possible. That’s why our dedicated Twitter channel will be our central gaming hub from now on. On top of that we’ll be giving you a  distilled version of the most important news right here on Advance.dk.

Here’s our first ’editor’s pick’:

Become a Kinect developer

When your new big-selling toy gets hacked, most companies would start panicking. But sometimes it’s better to take a step back, relax, see the benefits and open up to the crowd. Which is exactly what Microsoft did when people started using their Kinect motion control sensor for everything but the Xbox games it came with. From motion-controlled robots to 3D vizualization tools, it’s been a very fruitful year for Kinect hackers.

But if it is up to Microsoft, 2012 is going to be an even better year. With the launch of Kinect Accelerator they will give ten ‘developers’ the chance to turn their hack into a startup. This chance comes in the form of mentorship, office space, $20,000 in funding and other resources. At the end of the ride participants will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, media and industry influentials.

So if you are a hacker who is willing to relocate to Seattle or Washington, this is your chance! You have until February 8. Better get your hands dirty soon!

Video game sales down

Last holiday season wasn’t a very good one for the American games market. Sales for December were down a brutal 21 percent compared with last year, according to an NPD research report. Still leaving the industry with a revenue of almosy $4 billion. But games weren’t the biggest losers. With a 28 and 27 percent drop, hardware and accessories sales went down even more. Is everyone waiting for a new Xbox or PlayStation to come out?

Over a 12 month period, the picture is a little less dark, but still quite gray. Video games went down 8 percent compared with 2010, and contradictory to popular belief, the digital market didn’t escape. In-game purchases, extra content, subscriptions and the likes went down 2 percent. Still generating a bit more than $16 billion. Time to buy more virtual swords and cupcakes people!

PlayStation Vita’s augmented reality tricks

Follow Advance_Gaming on Twitter.

We’re launching some new work for Toys ‘R’ Us today to tease a big upcoming Star Wars event in their Nordic stores. AD Tim has the full story:

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The brief from the client was to put a splash on the front of their catalogue to tell people that Darth Vader was coming and that you could meet him at Toys ‘R’ Us. After considering it for a while we returned with a completely different recommendation.

I was surfing YouTube for Star Wars inspiration when I came across a video with more than 2,000,000 views. The film shows the Galactic Empire from Star Wars ‘invading’ San Francisco and I thought something similar would be a funny way to advertise Darth Vader’s arrival at Toys ‘R’ Us. We wrote Mike Horn, the creator of the film, and asked him if he would be interested in coming to Copenhagen to make a similar film for one of our clients. Thankfully he thought it was a great idea!

Working with Mike was great. He turned out to be a one-man film production army and, even better, he knew everything worth knowing about Star Wars.

Mike and Tim (right)

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We were all sad to see Mike leave earlier this month but we managed to grab a quick interview with him before he took off:

First, can you tell us a little about you and your professional background…

I went to film school at NYU & SVA in New York City, and became a freelance editor, cutting everything from indie feature films to reality cooking shows and tv commercials. Over the years I taught myself After Effects, and in 2008 released “Death Star Over San Francisco”  a Star Wars fan film that went viral overnight.

What did you think when we first got in touch with you?
At first I was skeptical, because I’ve had many offers from other people and businesses that wanted me to craft similar viral-style videos, but nothing panned out into anything real. When I checked out Advance’s website and saw they were legit, and saw all of their killer Lego work, I got very excited, and just kept my fingers crossed the job would get green lit.

Have you gotten a lot of work on the strength of your video’s success on YouTube?
I was working at a TV channel called Current TV when I made my two Star Wars virals (the second viral being “Death Star Destroys Enterprise“. Those videos got me noticed by the Current TV executives and turned into a few opportunities to direct some promos for the network. They also helped me get on the directing roster of a commercial production company in San Francisco called Rehab, which in turn got me a few directing gigs for Lego and Pentax.

What were your thoughts about this project?
I had so much fun making it! It was a dream getting the chance to experience Copenhagen for a few weeks. Tim Ustrup Madsen, the Art Director, and Trine Schou, the Producer, were such smart and fun people to work with. I wish the fun didn’t have to to stop, and we could keep making more Star Wars spots forever! The project was also a step up from my previous Star Wars films in that I used more 3D, and learned some new skills such as 3D motion tracking.

What did you like or dislike about working with us?
Advance is one of the coolest office environment’s I’ve ever worked at. Even though they have a lot of employees, the camaraderie between them seemed strong. It seemed like everyone knew each other much better than at similar sized companies in the US. I think the catered lunch they offer everyday in the cafeteria helps contribute to the tighter employee bonds. In contrast, my experience at a few similar sized companies in the US, is that 3 years could go by before I actually learn another employee’s name. Lunch is every man for himself, and is often eaten at your desk. The only thing I didn’t like about Advance was lack of cold water… we’re big on water coolers and refrigerated water fountains in the States.

How does it compare to agency life back home?
I’ve never worked at an agency in the US, but have worked with a lot agencies and agency people, so as an outsider looking in, my take is that Advance seems a lot more humane in comparison. I found it amazing that many people were able to go home to their families at 17:00, where it often seems in the US, you’re signing away your life to the work and are lucky if you make it home by 21:00. I was also surprised at how long I heard some of the employees have worked at Advance, some people spanning multiple decades. It seems like there’s a higher rate of turnover at US agencies, that it’s more cut throat, and everyone moves to another agency after 2 years in order to get a pay bump, as if it’s impossible to get promoted within your own company.

What did you think of Copenhagen?
It has the best food out of any city I’ve been too. Even the cheap pizza shwarma places were really good. I thought San Francisco, where I live, was a green city, but CPH puts it to shame… it’s the little things like automatic timers on light switches, or glass bottles being re-washed for reuse, as opposed to being crushed and melted back into brand new glass like in the US. I also feel like the citizens of CPH have a lot more respect for their city and its upkeep compared to citizens of many US cities, like NYC, where many people simply discard trash on street, even if a trash can is close by.

Would you come back?
In a heartbeat! I hope to experience CPH in the summer time.

What’s next for you?
I’ve just started working for IGN and their START channel, where I should have the opportunity to continue making viral mashups of other geeky franchises. Tron is on my radar next, and I’m starting to think of ideas for my next Star Wars fan film, that I can enter into the official Star Wars Fan Film Festival this July.

Mike hard at work

But, over time, it became increasingly clear that the partnership had served its purpose. Over the years our digital knowhow has grown to the point that digital is no longer a separate ‘thing’ in the way we work. It’s integral to almost everything we do for our clients and, thanks to a mix of training and sensible hiring, we now have the right skills in-house.

As part of the separation, we’ll be taking on four Wasabi employees, giving us an even stronger digital core.

The evergreen Christian Faber was the subject of a lovely profile in Politiken’s Careers section earlier this week. It’s a must-read for Bionicle fans but it doesn’t seem to exist online so I can’t link to it alas.

Kim fashioned this striking idiot box and made it available to the agency. Henceforth, anyone caught saying anything particularly idiotic spends five minutes inside.

2011 was a tough year for the economy and a tougher one for the industry but I’m proud to say that we’ve come out the other side a wiser and even a bigger agency. As I write, most forecasts indicate another challenging year ahead and we’re focused on making sure we continue to evolve our offering.

Clients need agency partners to work faster, smarter and cheaper. These pressures are not new but have been accelerating in recent years to the point that the industry is barely recognisable from just ten years ago.

The digital transformation is the most obvious change but while we’re retooling to ensure we up our online skills, we’re just as interested in the way the contract between advertisers and consumers is being transformed. We’ve always said the best communication is a great product or service and this simple saying is truer today than it’s ever been.

We’re intrigued to see how the relationship between brands and people continues to evolve in the months and years ahead. We hope and believe the transparency of the Internet will continue to push companies towards more responsible practices and we think more of our time will be spent helping clients stay on top of societal changes, as well as those affecting the way brands communicate.

Anyway, here’s a quick look back at some of our 2011 highlights as an agency, and here’s to a great 2012.

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Our LEGO team had another busy year with the launch of LEGO Friends on December 26 the culmination of several years of intense work. We’re proud of our contribution to what was one of the company’s most important launches for some years.

The LEGO Universe experience was bittersweet. We invested a great deal of energy in this project and we can be proud of what we achieved. We were deeply saddened when LEGO decided to close the game but our time on the project made us smarter and strengthened our gaming credentials.

One of our most high-profile projects was our Caroline Wozniacki campaign for COMPEED. The partnership has helped the brand re-establish its athletic heritage and given it an injection of star quality.

Our campaign for Øresundsbroen was hugely effective with over 35,000 motorists signing up for the half-price bridge pass in the first few weeks alone.

Elsewhere, we’re continuing to do interesting work with Coloplast. The company is on a mission to be more customer-focused in its communication and this has led to some powerfully compelling work with the voice of the user increasingly central.

Customer insights are also at the core of our thinking behind the creation of the Bloom retail brand for Widex. This was an extremely challenging project that involved the creation of a brand for over 500 retail shops around the world in a very tight timescale. Hearing loss is daunting and complicated – our goal was to create a brand that made it seem less so. We’re still on the journey but we can be proud of what we’ve achieved so far.

I was also proud of the work we did in helping P2 communicate its switch to digital. We made a great little short film with a limited budget and in rapid time.

We also had a solid year in terms of new-biz, being awarded the business for two global product launches from Nycomed (now a Takeda company) and winning CoRo Foods in a pitch. Perhaps more significantly we didn’t lose any business, a plus in a year when many agencies lost clients or closed altogether.

On a personal note, my highlight of the year was our agency masterclass at Hyper Island. The three days we spent there gave us a massive energy boost and brought us closer together. We came back full of hope for the future and full of ideas about how to work smarter and more creatively. It was a great way to end the year.

We’re launching an exciting new Hero Factory project soon that will have some social media elements built into it. Yesterday was spent preparing, building and experimenting… (more news soon.)

A while back we stumbled across an archive of VHS tapes that had been locked up in a cupboard and forgotten about. We had them digitized and, to our delight, they turned out to hold many of the old LEGO commercials we’ve made over the years.

We got in touch with the Brothers Brick – one of the best LEGO fan sites around – and they agreed to serialise the commercials on the blog together with the exclusive backstories of how they were made. For many of these old commercials, it’s their online debut! So if you’re a fan of vintage LEGO, keep an eye on the Brothers Brick over the next few months.

To give people a chance to see all the videos in one place, we’re also gradually posting them in a special Blast from the past playlist on our YouTube channel.

Working as the principal strategic and creative partner for the last decade, Advance has played a key role in developing COMPEED from a technology to a Pan-European brand grossing USD100m a year.

The Details

Johnson & Johnson acquired the COMPEED brand from Coloplast in 2002. Since then, J&J has continued to build the brand throughout Europe with Advance as lead agency on all communication and all media.

From the start, COMPEED has had to negotiate a highly complex path to success. Its portfolio of plaster products encompasses both physically and emotionally demanding conditions (principally blisters, corns, wounds and cold sores), its target groups hail from the worlds of fashion and sport, and it operates in markets of varying degrees of maturity. Our initial task, then, was to find a red thread that would give the brand its reason for being. Knowing just how effective its products are, we focused on performance.

Some early print and TV work:

Key to the development of the brand was a tight strategic platform, developed jointly with the client, which incorporated the highly attitudinal payoff – Be Unstoppable. We had successfully positioned COMPEED as a highly effective enabling product (COMPEED believes nobody should be stopped in the pursuit of their passion) but it was this payoff that gave the brand its flavour.

As a brand, COMPEED has never rested on its laurels. In 2009, the decision was made to reconnect with its sport heritage. A two-year sponsorship deal was signed with the ATP. The following year, a similar deal was negotiated with women’s tennis world #1, Caroline Wozniacki.

Both deals gave COMPEED renewed impetus with the athletic half of its target market while Caroline Wozniacki’s burgeoning profile added credibility and exposure. Advance’s job was to put together the strategic and communicative platforms to maximise the brand’s return on what was a significant investment. The sponsorships gave COMPEED a wealth of collateral:

After a decade of consistent growth, COMPEED has become a must-have product for dynamic, high-achieving individuals who refused to be stopped in the pursuit of their passion. Advance continues to play a key role in its success.

In the afternoon, we had wine, tapas and speeches and LEGO presented Christian with some special gifts – a Bionicle mask made by an avid fan from the US and a custom-built Bionicle figure with Christian’s face! They’d also gathered in tributes from Bionicle fans and employees who’d worked on a franchise that Christian has played such a key role in building over the years. Here’s some pics from what was a lovely afternoon:

The green room – lots of Skittles on the rider.

The other half of the agency had their Hyper Island masterclass this weekend. As was the case with the first group, the effect seems to have been electrifying.

There’s been a palpable upsurge of positive energy in the agency the past two weeks and we’ve been experimenting with new ideation techniques and trying to disrupt and rethink many of the ways we work. There’ll be a lot more to come on that in weeks to come I’m sure as we get the time to reflect more deeply on everything.

For now, here’s the immediate thoughts of three of last week’s masterclass attendees:

Sofie Svarre, Head of Planning

The Hyper Island Digital Masterclass is much more than ‘just another digital course’. It’s a patchwork of inspiring lecturers, intensive workshops and personal reflections – and the pieces have been carefully arranged so as to form a beautifully tailored whole.

I came to Hyper Island with an open mind and barriers lowered but also with fuzzy expectations about the content and the eventual outcome. I wondered whether I could really overhaul my thinking in just three days.

But I left feeling genuinely enlightened and determined to dive even more into the digital sphere – to learn  by doing. I’m also equipped with new methodologies for simple and effective ideation and an array of new ideas that I’m dying to dig more into and present to our clients. And last but not least  I left with renewed pride in my clever and energetic colleagues, all ready to rock on!

Carsten Løvig, Art Director

I came away with three main learnings:

Learning by doing

Technology is a moving target and as the speakers appeared, it was clear that none of them pretended to have the right answers to everything. Instead, we were constantly asked to reflect on what we heard and then share it with others. To me, this was the real genius of Hyper Island – you were simply forced to think for yourself, listen to others and then make your own learnings.

Transparency – it’s all good

Another key takeaway was that, contrary to popular belief, it’s not possible to maintain a fake image of yourself in social media.
The web is simply too transparent for anyone to fake for very long. And that applies equally to brands as it does individuals and it’s
perhaps a hard lesson for “Mad Men” who have spent decades creating brand images that were not necessarily true. But social media has put an end to that. People now decide if they want to call bullshit on the brands.

It’s still just about ideas

The fast intense brainstormings were fun and the collective creativity in the room was electrifying. We were taken through exercises that put people in just the right mood for creating – an irreverent, energised state of mind where there are no stupid ideas – that is in stark contrast to the overly serious mood that seems to develop when working on client projects.

The speakers at Hyper Island are awesome and the interaction with them was natural and inspiring. One of them claimed to get his best ideas hungover. A concept that most of us experimented with Saturday and Sunday morning. No doubt we all got a fuel injection that will last a long time. We got the mindset and tools needed for the ride ahead of us. Thank you Hyper Island and thank you Advance for getting our asses up there. A very bold statement.

Gavin Mulligan, Art Director

I guess the best way to summarize what I got out of my experience is to refer to what I consider to be one of the most beautiful and inspirational moments in film, a scene from American Beauty.

The scene features the intense Ricky Fitts, the local drug dealer, who uses the money he earns to support his hobby: videotaping the world around him. We see him sitting in his bedroom with his new girlfriend and hear him ask, “…You want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?…”.

His video simply depicts an empty plastic bag, caught in a Fall breeze, spiralling gracefully in the air. As we watch the bag rise and fall in gentle, wistful loops, we hear Ricky reflect: “It was one of those days… where it was a minute away from snowing and there was this electricity in the air… you can almost hear it…right? And this bag was just dancing… with me…. like a little kid begging me to play with it… for fifteen minutes… Yesterday I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid… never… Video is a poor excuse I know but it helps me remember, I need to remember…”

Simply put, communication is everywhere; we just have to open our eyes and our minds to see it.

Half the agency just returned from a masterclass at Hyper Island in Karlskrona (the other half go this weekend). Here are the thoughts of three of the attendees:

Kurt Hansen, ArtWork Lead
Hyper Island was, for me, a total wakeup call. They were really fun and intense days where my idea of my work, the future, and my self got turned upside down. Chaos is back in my life and it excites me. A thousand doors have suddenly appeared and behind each of them is the future. I’m really looking forward to taking this exciting journey with all you fantastic people. So let’s go kick some doors in!

Stina Marie Omdahl, Acount Manager
Hyper Island – Before going the name alone made me think of Baudrillard’s bleak vision of society as a hyper-real world of simulated experiences. However, during the three days of intensive “learning by doing” and getting a much deeper understanding of the great potential of digital, my mindset has definitely changed. If I were to sum up my experience of the weekend in one sentence, it would be: Keep up – don’t give up! Forget all the frustrations of feeling that you can’t keep up with the pace, but start participating instead.

Peter Stampe, Senior Adviser
The first word that comes to mind is: Wow. Hyper Island has really broadened my perspective on the possibilities (and the threats) the digital revolution presents to marketers and companies in general. For too long, branding has been about attaching emotional value to a functional product or service. It’s both frightening and truly inspirational to think that digital is giving us more and more tools that actually produce true value for the customers. We need to stop interrupting consumers with “great” manipulation and instead work with our clients on how we can create more value. In the future, advertising agencies’ core business model will evolve around these kind of great ideas and less print and TV. I feel like Hyper Island has come “back from the future” and told me something extremely important. And I need to prepare myself….NOW!