The SpinAwards are an annual price for creativity in interactive communication. Companies can send in their work and it’s judged by an independent jury. It’s held since 1998 and today there were this year’s presentations.

The SpinAwards Inspiration Days started not at best with presentations for the nominees in the category ‘best use of media’. ‘Best mobile concept’ was missed by me, so I cannot comment on that. The presentations were a bit below standards, exceeded the given five minutes almost every time – which would happen a lot more often during the rest of this day – and most of the presenters failed to get to the core. The nominees for the category ‘best use of media’ showed how they had ‘pimped’ (get the mouthwash) hyvespages and made MSN-winks, not very impressive to say the least. The criticism of the jury would not reach further than complaining about the lack of marketing figures most of the time. And of course; these figures are very important, to measure awareness etcetera. But in this case there was given too much attention to these numbers, which caused the creativeness of the presented cases to appear of lesser value. When it was made clear by the candidates that there was no access to the numbers, there is no point in spoiling more time over it.

The presentations for ‘best interactive video’ were, to my relief, of better quality. The music channel ‘TMF’ presented their show ‘reaction’, in which viewers at home can interact with the hostess from behind their webcam. Another concept presented was that of the Dutch birdwatchers, who had installed webcams at the nests of six different bird families. Enabling the viewers to watch the birds 24/7 while they fight, feed and make sweet bird love. ‘White Noise’ by ‘3voor12′ turned the viewer into a VJ. During this interactive television show – only receivable if you have digital television by UPC – the viewer can manipulate the shown images by entering keywords. The application uses Flickr to get images relating to the keywords and fires them back along with dance music. Nice idea, although the remote control used for digital TV might be a big shortcoming. Achtung! presented their interactive music box they made for the Dutch band ‘Krezip’. Viewers of the video can adjust the speed by circling the mouse around. Try it here.

Pool presented their project for ‘Het Nederlands Online Film Festival’. With only a small budget (2250 euro) they have produced three movie trailers that give a whole new meaning to existing Dutch Movies like ‘Zwartboek’ and ‘Van God Los’. Its goal was to attract users to the website of the client, which is meant for filmmakers and the movie buff. Selmore presented their campaign against irresponsible use of (display)fireworks. They have created a very funny combination, where terrorists are using these kinds of fireworks, but not in a safe way, like terrorists using explosives. There is a serie of Youtube video’s that had a huge viral effect. You can see them here.
CCCP was the last company in this category and they also came up with a viral campaign, for the dutch brand HEMA. In this viral you can see the products that HEMA sells, interacting with eachother like in the old videogame called Tim’s Incredible Machine. Different from most virals is that this one has a real connection with the product and isn’t yet another funny youtube video. Take a look, it’s worth it: HEMA.

The final website that I want to mention is created by Woedend!. They did this thing for a shoe called the Onitsuka Tiger made by Asics. It was in the category for the best website concept. I already knew the printed campaign and just found an animated version of it.
The concept isn’t that spectacular but it’s a great technical experiment, and really nicely done. The shoe itself exists out of images that relate to Japan and are found on the web, the whole theme around this shoe is about Japan. See it for yourself: Made of Japan.