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Movings/Shakings: 21 August

Banking on Benseman

Susan Benseman has returned to Spark PHD as the new media director and will look after the agency’s major banking account, ANZ. 

Benseman has 14 years of experience in the media industry, and was a foundation member of Spark PHD after first joining the team in 1999 as a business graduate. Her major clients included DB Breweries, Bunnings Warehouse and EMI. 

Most recently working for Starcom on accounts such as Telecom, Toyota and Emirates, Susan has been on maternity leave for a year and is looking forward to different challenges ahead.  

“I’m excited to be back at Spark. My initial stint at Spark PHD totalled nine years, which is a long time in agency-land,” she says. “My return is a real testament to the people and culture at Spark, which is something I’m thrilled to be part of again.”

Along came a spider

CAANZ has confirmed international guest
judge Charlie Robertson to head this year’s executive judging panel for the
2012 Effie Awards in association with TVNZ. 

Once introduced by a
client as ‘an engineer from Glasgow brought in to sort the brand’, Robertson is one the world’s most experienced and highly regarded strategic planners. He started his life in planning at Boase Massimi Pollitt and went on
to become head of planning at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in the ’80s. Since 1994 he has been the strategic
evangelist at Red Spider, the independent brand consultancy firm he founded in
1994, advising companies such as Qantas,
Foxtel, NAB and MLC.

“We’re thrilled to have someone with Charlie’s
credentials casting an expert, independent eye over the Effie judging process,” says Effie Awards chair David Thomason.  “We also look forward to catching some
inspiring words of wisdom while he’s here.”   

After many late nights of drafts,
re-drafts and checking of facts, a tremendous response of 169 Effie
entries are in and ready to be judged. Preliminary judging started in Wellington yesterday and concludes in Auckland tomorrow.  Finalists will be announced on Thursday.

Convener of judges Lew Bentley believes
the large number of judges (160) lined up to judge the preliminary rounds
reflect the positive, industry-wide reputation that the Effies have for
excellence in the craft of advertising.  

Robertson, who has been convener of judges at the
Effie Awards in Australia, will lead the Executive Judging Panel who will decide
the winner of the Grand Effie and a handful of other judge’s awards. And his words of wisdom can be heard at the Effectiveness
Function on Tuesday 4 September. Tickets and more details will be available
through the CAANZ & ANZA websites shortly. 

Allergic reaction

National charity Allergy New Zealand has announced a new partnership with Healthy Life Media to publish Allergy Today magazine, with the award-winning publishers of Healthy Food Guide magazine taking the helm in December. 

“The magazine is such a key part of our organisation and is highly respected by our members, health professionals and people living with allergies, says Allergy NZ chairman Tim Tenbensel.  “We have worked with Healthy Life Media for over three years in relation to the Gluten Free Food and Allergy Show. They also have a long and proven track record at developing specialist titles like Healthy Food Guide and we are very excited about the future of the magazine. We believe that, through this partnership, Allergy Today magazine will become even more important to New Zealanders in need of information and advice regarding allergies.” 

Healthy Life Media’s managing director, Phil Ryan, says the magazine will be developed to broaden its reach and appeal and Healthy Life Media has committed to supporting the charity by donating a portion of the magazine proceeds annually. 

“We already have a large readership who is interested in healthy lifestyle choices and Allergy Today will provide them with more specialist information. Likewise we currently work with many advertisers to this market and understand their needs for a credible vehicle to put forward the products they have on offer.”

Allergy Today is the only magazine in New Zealand dedicated to people with allergies. Published quarterly, it covers the latest allergy news and research, practical advice for those living with allergies, eczema and asthma, columns from leading specialists, real life stories and recipes. 


Something to crow about 

AdSchool graduates Jake Barnes and Liz Richards took out the top award for copy at this year’s International Crowbar Student Awards, making it the fourth year in a row that AdSchool graduates from Media Design School have won the top award. The same campaign for Lea and Perrins also won a Silver Crowbar press award.

“It’s been a good year for them,” says AdSchool course leader Kate Humphries. “Liz won the student Axis Award this year, they’ve been hired by DDB and now they have a couple of Crowbars to their names.”

AdSchool also picked up three bronze Crowbar awards for integrated campaigns by student teams Anna Paine and Henry Wall; Anna Paine and Owen Bryson; and Henry Wall and Mitchell Sutton.

“It’s usually way too early in the course to enter integrated work into Crowbar but the students had some good ideas, so we decided to pitch them up against work entered by northern hemisphere schools in the final weeks of their courses. And we’re all really delighted that they’ve all come out of it with a bit of metal,” says Humphries.

Going corporate

The PR Shop has ramped up its corporate PR offering, following on from client demand and the appointment of Amanda Politzer as group account director in March this year, who brought with her 15 years of corporate and B2B PR experience.

“We’ve always provided corporate PR, but up until now our positioning has very much been around consumer PR, product PR in particular,” says director, Sally Frewin. “Clients have always loved our straight-up, no bullshit approach and the fact that we offer a media relations guarantee. Recently there has been a trend for our clients to ask us to handle more corporate work just because they loved working with us on the consumer side and wanted to maintain the relationship across all aspects of their communication. Our senior team has solid corporate PR experience so it’s a no-brainer that we would want to tap into that knowledge to benefit our existing clients and also reach out to new clients who wanted to work with us, but previously saw us as a consumer PR agency.”

The newly invigorated corporate PR division has already notched up a new client, The Laminex Group, on a corporate brief to assist with internal communications and media relations on a retainer basis. It will also use The PR Shop to support the launch of My Dream Kitchen, a kitchen-planning tool for consumers looking to renovate, as well as other PR projects going into 2013.

TEDx appeal

TEDxAuckland is bringing together some of the country’s top scientists, artists, educators and technologists for a full day of stimulating talks, discussions and learning this October. And event organiser Elliott Blade hopes this year’s event will be the beginning of an inspiring relationship between New Zealanders and the TEDx platform.

“It will be a great day of dynamite presentations from eighteen of New Zealand’s brightest. The event will present a diverse mix of speakers, both familiar names and emerging talent, that we hope will ignite some great conversation and encourage people to discover new ideas.”

Speakers in this year’s line-up include physicist, decathlete and political advisor Sean Gourley; change development specialist Paul Wood; physicist and pursuer of the Higgs boson ‘god particle’ David Krofcheck; materials and biomedical engineer Michelle Dickinson; internationally recognised architect Andrew Patterson; director of surgical research at Auckland Hospital and co-founder of medical start-up SIMTICs John Windsor; art director of Apropos and founder of the 100 Days Project Emma Rogan; CEO of Arvus Group Matthew Simmons; and dental surgeon and founder of ICARE Assil Russell.

TEDxAuckland will take place on Saturday 6 October at the ASB Theatre in the Aotea Centre (get your tickets here).

Brady bunch

Adobe Systems Incorporated has appointed Suzie Brady as communications manager, Australia and New Zealand, reporting to Julie Cleeland Nicholls, head of corporate communications, APAC.

Brady will be responsible for driving Adobe’s communications strategy in traditional and social media, as well as leading executive and employee communications. She has more than 10 years experience in strategic communications, media relations, stakeholder engagement, government relations and event management. Suzie’s experience includes over three years as a radio journalist in regional New South Wales and Sydney, as well as senior media roles within the New South Wales and Australian governments. Most recently she was senior media advisor to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy.  

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