It’s Tip Top’s 75th birthday this year (check out some of Kiwi company’s classic ads featured in the last edition of NZ Marketing here). And to celebrate, it’s handing out 50,000 free Jelly Tips in 11 different locations around the country today. So, if you’re in Whangarei, Auckland (Takapuna and Pakuranga), Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill at 3.30pm, you’ll have 75 minutes to get your hands on “the darling of ice creams”.
“We’re proud to be celebrating our 75th year as a fully owned New Zealand company. It’s a real milestone and we want to acknowledge the loyalty New Zealanders have shown Tip Top for the past 75 years with free ice cream. Most Kiwis would be able to dig out an old baby photo which captures the moment they ate their first ice-cream—it’s a quintessential picture, a Kiwi tradition, and that ice-cream is almost always guaranteed to be a Tip Top ice cream.”
The ice-cream giveaway is thought to be the biggest ever seen in New Zealand (Jelly Tips were chosen around four million of them are eaten every year) and comes days after a Wellington family won $10,000 in the first golden Ticket of the Great Tip Top Ice Cream Hunt. The Golden ticket was found at Eastbourne Dairy.
Tip Top has a number of celebrations planned to mark the occasion this year, including the incorporation of some of the legendary Kiwis it has worked with in the past.
Youtube Video The Trumpet commercials were the first big break for our most successful international fashion model, Rachel Hunter.
“Happy Birthday Tip Top. I can’t believe you’re 75. In Los Angeles, there’s nothing I miss more than a Trumpet,” she says, presumably at the behest of the PR company.
The company chose Jelly Tips to celebrate the milestone because New Zealand’s 4.3 million people consume around four million of them every year and the icecream on a stick has become a symbol of the brand.
Bret ‘Flight of the Conchords’ McKenzie and television presenter Dominic Bowden also appeared in Tip Top ads as young tykes.
The 75th birthday summer campaign out of Colenso BBDO has been very successful so far, and the latest spot for the recently returned Grapefuit and Lemon Fruju was named the winner of the inaugural Colmar Brunton Ad Impact Award.
Youtube VideoThe nation will be hoping the undies/togs man is the next to make a comeback.
