In what has become an annual tradition, the students at Media Design School have developed a quirky campaign to encourage the nation’s ad folk to attend their end-of-year show. In the latest iteration, a series of cut-out headshots of the nation’s admen are accompanied with some humorous sound effects.
While the clip is well executed, the inflated heads got the team at StopPress thinking that a collectible campaign might’ve been a better option for the students. As evidenced by the success New World’s ‘Little Store’ and Z Energy’s ‘Blokhedz’, nothing gets Kiwis as excited as the thought of collecting figurines with little or no utility.
In fact, StopPress might start handing out bobblehead collectibles of villainous journalists and the advertising’s heroes and heroines to those who read the most stories (now we just need to convince our publishing overlords that this is a viable scheme).
Notably, none of the faces featured in the short video clip created by MDS belong to women—something which serves as an indictment on the state of the Kiwi creative industry.
But the lack of high ranking female creatives isn’t unique to New Zealand. An American study has shown that only three percent of creative directors are female, despite the fact that women control 80 percent of consumer spending. And findings such as these have led to the establishment of ‘The 3% Conference’, which was hosted recently with goal of championing female creative talent.
