Sonox.com is a Swedish site that sells underground, hard to get your hands on music on the net.

They , being music-buffs themselves, dig further to find new unknown but terribly talented artists and - unlike Napster - take good care to give the artists their rights to each song.

Since the site caters to the deep into music types, with updated music information and clubland tales of dirty deeds, complete with places on the site for playlist-swapping and trade information about gigs, the ads were designed to attract only those in the know, and the very curious.

At the same time, they spit out an affordable CD, in any way you like it. Pick your favorites, buy per song, and have sonox burn the CD and ship it off to you.

Early one morning posters popped up in musically strategic music hot spots all over Amsterdam, framing not an ad, but the view behind it.

Like a three dimensional rebus you can only see what the poster means when you stand in front of it and look straight through it.

On one site the poster frames a large rock, and adds the word "+Steady", so the result reads "Rock Steady", a style of music available at sonox.

There are hundreds of music sites on the net that burn CD's and sell MP3's. We are simply not interested in gathering the Britney Spears crowd to this site of rare grooves.

We want to speak to the hard core music obsessed people.

This was the first poster in series of riddles placed along musically strategic routes (next to vinyl-shops and close to concert halls) in Amsterdam.

These posters got attention. Not only from the Dutch Tradepress such as NiewsTribune and Adformatie, but also from Creativity Magazine across the atlantic. Bassic Groove grooved to the idea too.

In other areas around Amsterdam, posters frame trunks of trees with the word = "Roots", for the style of music called Roots. In another the poster frames a ship, ("-S +Hop") to read Hip Hop, and yet another framed a large electric box ("-ric +ronica") to read Electronica. Even streetsigns were used as a "Dead end" sign becomes the "T" in trance.

press clippings

"The underground site sonox.com brings you music from rare labels and artists."

My dutch is terrible. I can't really translate what the
Nieuwstribune (above) said, but it was all good.

Dabitch is Back
ad age's Creativity magazine march 2001

Though every new hotshops boasts that it's "not for everyone" for Amsterdam agency wa, the claim may actually be true . wa meaning harmony in japanese, was formed by Ab winsemius, a former "strategy guy" at Kesselskramer, and Åsk Wäppling. an art director by day and maverick industry commentator by night. Wäppling is the mistress and founder of ad-rag.com, a web destination for industry news, gossip, and rants, her online persona is called 'Dabitch'. The site is very popular with ad insiders, despite, (or thanks to) its many caustic comments.
Wäppling is not particurlarly worried that her sharp wit will affect her business prospects with wa. "The clients who will be talked badly about on the site are not the ones we want to work with," she shrugs. And the clients she does want are finding their way to wa's door; she has already produced an unusual outdoor and print campaign for swedish music site Sonox.com , and the agency is slated to work on Jolt Cola's dutch advertising.
"I realized that you have to follow Bill Bernbach's rule," says Wäppling: "Don't work for clients you don't belive in."