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Y&R files for Fairfax divorce

A few months back, .99 was awarded the Sunday Star Times business after a competitive pitch that involved Simpatico and Y&R Auckland. But that decision doesn’t seem to have gone down too well with Y&R, which has decided to resign the Fairfax Network trade account it held. 

When asked if the loss of the SST played a role in its decision, Y&R’s new managing director James Hurman says “had we won that it may have changed the dynamic of the account”. But he put the decision to part ways down to the fact that it was a small project that came up once a year or so and didn’t involve any of the larger Fairfax products. And it was hard to make it work financially. 

Fairfax uses a range of agencies, including Shine, Simpatico and now .99, but Hurman says it would “get better value out of having fewer agencies and fewer account service teams”, so it made sense to hand it over. 

That’s not how Fairfax sees it, however. Communications and marketing manager Nicola Igusa says the size of the account or financial considerations weren’t given as reasons by Y&R’s executive creative director Josh Moore when he resigned the account via email. She says it was because he “read between the lines” of the release that was sent out about .99’s win and felt that it insinuated Y&R’s pitch wasn’t up to scratch. 

She admits they didn’t spend much money on this part of the business, but she says group marketing manager Sandra King had a “really great business partnership” with Y&R, so they were surprised to receive such a response. 

She says Fairfax is currently looking at its options at the moment and King is talking with a few agencies about taking over the account, but there’s no news to report yet about whether it will go to an agency already on its roster.  

Speaking of Fairfax, Auckland Suburban
Newspapers has launched ‘Mighty A’, “a never before seen sharply priced
integrated advertising offer” that lets advertisers reach Auckland’s market of more than 808,000 readers aged 15 and over,
including 79.2 percent of all Auckland women aged over 20. 

“Mighty A offers a
cost effective way of reaching Auckland’s largest audience, one that has been
engaged in reading our compact tabloid format newspapers for more than 70
years,” says David Penny, general manager of Auckland Suburban Newspapers. “Our readers love the high
quality local news our newspapers deliver, which is reflected in our readership,
which sees us reaching 74.1 percent of Aucklanders aged 15+ every week. Couple that
with our steadily increasing online audience of more than 75,000 regular
subscribers and advertisers achieve massive, unequalled coverage of every major
demographic category in the Auckland market. That is compared to our closest
competitor in the Auckland market which has an average weekly reach of 60.7 percent and an average issue readership of only 35.4 percent of the Auckland population aged
15 and over.”

The Mighty A network newspapers include North Shore
Times, Manukau Courier, Western Leader, Central Leader, East & Bays
Courier,  Eastern Courier, Rodney Times,
Papakura Courier, Nor-west News, Auckland City Harbour News
and Waiheke
Marketplace
. A4-colour full page advertisement across the
Mighty A network will cost $12,000, a half page vertical $7,500, a half page
horizontal $6,500, a quarter page horizontal $3,500 and a quarter page vertical
$3,000. Advertisers can choose their day of publication
over a seven day period and can also tailor the creative execution to target a
certain geographical area. 

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