Sanitarium, Mastercard and Safekids perform a victory dance this week.
Browsing: bcg2
Safekids Aotearoa, in partnership with ACC and the Starship Foundation, has released a new campaign via bcg2 and Mediacom, with the aim of preventing Kiwi children from being hit by cars on driveways through methods as simple as having a key ring with a safety message and your child’s picture on it.
Industry happenings at Ebiquity, Chemistry Interaction, Thick as Thieves, bcg2, Bauer Media, Sky and VeNA.
With the rise of smartphone photography, it’s tough out there for most camera manufacturers. The experienced and enthusiast photography market is the logical place for them to play and Canon is doing just that in a new campaign to show off its lenses and the difference they can make to telling a story. PLUS: how Apple, Samsung and other mobile manufacturers are changing the industry.
FMG, Tourism Fiji, Daikin and Cuca have the luck of the Irish this week.
From the moment FMG and bcg2 met each other at the pitch process, there were sparks. The rural insurance company was already with Saatchi & Saatchi, but that didn’t seem to matter. bcg2 has since been awarded the creative contract for FMG going forward.
The judges for News Works’ Newspaper Ad of the Month competition didn’t deem any entries worthy of winning in either August or September, but three ads—DDB’s Reflect, Ogilvy & Mather’s Auckland Council Elections, and bcg2’s Ezetrol—were given special mentions in September, earning them one point each on the Agency League table.
Audi, Warehouse Stationery, Sony and a Vietnamese hospital get a gold star this week.
Last year, after six years in second place, BMW knocked Audi off its perch and reclaimed the top selling premium car mantle in the New Zealand market. But Audi isn’t far behind, it’s still growing and it’s decided to tap into the nation’s patriotic fervour with one of the German brand’s first locally shot campaigns.
Samsung’s entertaining sales pitch and Tonga’s classic tourism marketing approach pass go, collect $200.
The Manukau Institute of Technology and bcg2 took the animated approach in its last campaign. And it’s gone to the other end of the ad spectrum this time with a campaign starring Samoan media personalities Sela Alo and Pua Magasiva that confronts the misunderstandings many prospective students can have about studying in an effort to boost mid-year enrolments.
Job losses and a high-profile departure at APN, Tim Wood heads to Rapp Tribal, Paul Hancox heads to TV, Jordan Dale snaps up bcg2 scholarship and Pead PR bolsters its tech team.
The shots were downed at the door, the undies went flying onto the stage regularly and the screams were deafening last night as seven bands came together and rocked the hell out of the King’s Arms for the fifth annual Battle of the Ad Bands, a night that some jokingly—or not so jokingly—call the most important in advertising. And after being there or thereabouts in previous years, the worthy rock gods and goddess in Barnes, Catmur & Friend’s Friends Electric finally took the top prize, prying it from the cold dead hands of TBWA\, which had won it for the past two years but didn’t feature in this year’s festivities.
Sometimes the best form of attack is defence. And that was certainly the case for Pfizer’s brave, innovative and hugely successful launch of Avigra into the local market to combat the effects of generic knock-offs.
As the bean counters might say, if advertising doesn’t improve the bottom line, it’s really just art. And expensive art at that. And the agencies that improved their clients’ businesses the most this year have been announced, with perennial Effie performers Colenso BBDO and DraftFCB on top with 22 and 16 finalists respectively, followed by the bolter Barnes, Catmur & Friends on ten and DDB on nine.
The profitability of Big Pharma’s brands can collapse suddenly when patents expire and generic ‘knock offs’ flood the market. When this happens, the accepted norm is for up to 90 percent of an originator brand’s volume and share to be lost almost overnight and it’s an issue the industry hasn’t yet been able to resolve, so, typically, blockbuster compounds and their brands are simply written off or retired. But the local Pfizer branch wasn’t going to take the early patent expiry of Viagra in New Zealand lying down, so to speak, so it took the very unusual step of launching its own generic brand called Avigra and trying to migrate consumers to the cheaper, Pfizer-made alternative. And now, after a pun-laden press campaign and a bit of TV masthead activity, it’s stiffened its resolve by creating a new TVC.
Coinciding with a few new business wins, recent recognition at the Pharmacy Awards and the promotion of Robin Powell to creative director, BCG2 has expanded its creative department with four new arrivals: Alex Dyer, Anita Young, Matthias May and Matt Watts.
As you wind down and get set for your two days off ahead of the next week, spare a thought for Colenso BBDO’s copywriter Simon Vicars. The poor bloke was sitting in an airport lounge when we called him, getting ready to wing his way to Fiji for a week’s “work”. Then we had to break the news Colenso BBDO had won the May round of The Glossies with 34 percent of the votes for its ‘Idiot’ print ad in NZ Rugby World. ‘Idiot’, part of DB Export Dry’s ‘The Wine is Over’ campaign, put itself a fare distance ahead of its closest rivals. Bettle’s Langham ad, featured in New Idea, placed second with 22 percent of votes while BCG2’s effort for Audi in Metro earned it third place with a 16 percent share of votes.
February was the last month of the ORCA year and two very different ads came out on top. BCG2’s Chris Long and freelancer Martin Brown took the win with the euphemism-heavy ‘Ridiculously Refined’ ad for Jesters Pies. While at the other end of the spectrum, Sarah Litwin-Schmid and Emily Drake from Saatchi & Saatchi took the Merit for their powerful ‘Jane’ ad for Women’s Refuge.
Mike Knowles gets a slice of Farrimond, Tangible bids adieu to Julian Andrews, digital agency Gladeye shifts from a budgie cage to an eagle’s nest, CAANZ and The Sweet Shop announce their Young Lotuses, Audi and MIT share the love, Australasian promotional products don Bill Kestin takes up an international post, and say hello to our little friend, new Movings/Shakings sponsor The Pond.
Judging by the amount of recruitment news this week, it appears plenty of folk began the year looking for greener pastures. Thick As Thieves has stolen Colenso BBDO’s art director Jae Morrison, marketing maven Simone Iles finds a new Post, Wellington Tourism gets some absolutely positive additions to the team, Paul Gardiner crosses the line wearing lycra, Gareth Davies joins RedYeti Films, Fee-fi-fo-fum finds the Ideas Shop, Market Pulse reaches for ignition, Hitchcock directs Flying Fish (no birds in sight), APN Outdoor’s Friends in High Places line-up gets a shakeup, The Sweet Shop moves even further into Asia, Prodigy signs Bradstreet boy, and Blair Haeata joins Ngage.
With the huge—some might say completely OTT—number of courses available in New Zealand, education is a very competitive sector. And, as is usually the case over summer, a range of academic institutions are currently ramping up their marketing activity in an effort to get more students to sign up. The last phase of Unitec’s year-long docu-ad series went live recently, AUT is pushing its interesting new campaign, and many smaller, more specialised schools are also advertising. But two new ads caught our attention this week: one featuring the inspiring ‘and not but’ message for the Open Polytechnic, which was created by Ogilvy Wellington and follows up from the very successful ‘Open World’ campaign, and the other a nice animated spot for the Manukau Institute of Technology, which was created by BCG2 and Cirkus.
Yeah yeah, we know it’s a bit late, but we love a sexy pun, so in case you missed the two full page newspaper ads BCG2 that ran over the last two weeks for Pfizer’s new ‘little blue pill’ called Avigra, here they are.
Tongan supporters have certainly drawn a lot of attention over the Rugby World Cup campaign and riding on the back of that enthusiasm comes the unveiling of the country’s new tourism campaign ‘Tonga – The True South Pacific’. Featuring a brand overhaul, the campaign comes courtesy of agency bcg2 and sister agency Mediacom.
… as Countdown’s marketing doyenne departs for the Aussie mothership, MediaWorks looks inside to fill the sales manager role in its integration department, DNA’s Aaron Carson changes tack, Miranda Gregg says goodbye to AJ Park, bcg2 welcomes a New York import, ecostore’s not-for-profit arm Fairground Foundation appoints its first employee, Tourism Australia finds a New Zealand marketing manager, Lily & Louis joins Kim Kardashian after winning the local Skechers business, and online/social media agency VeNa appoints a New Zealand country manager.
bcg2 Health and Spitfire have snaffled a couple more Pfizer brands, after the two combined forces to win the haemophilia treatments pitch for the Xyntha and BeneFIX products in the Australian market against two Aussie agencies. This win adds to the New Zealand haemophilia business that was won in November last year.
When we last spoke with indie agency Zephyr at the start of the year, they had just won three new pieces of business. Now the three sausage-loving partners—Robert Coulter, Warwick Delmonte and Quentin Pfiszter—may be cooking up a few more celebratory bangers after winning Lion’s McKenna bourbon account in a pitch involving Special Group and BCG2.
‘International indie’ bcg2 has picked up an account double, and they’re at opposite ends of the ad spectrum: the Tongan tourism business and Pfizer’s Avigra from Viagra incumbents M&C Saatchi.
It was all about ‘reverse integration’ for bcg2 this year, after it merged with Grey Global Group. And with some solid work for Lion and Audi, as well as the recent acquisition of the Esquires account, the new relationship seems to be going fairly swimmingly so far. Director of strategy and planning Abe Dew (who’s written a great piece on agency/client relationships in the latest NZ Marketing magazine, by the way) pipes up on 2010.
… as Subway shacks up with Publicis Mojo, bcg2 sweeps Esquires of its feet, BallantyneTaylor gets into grass growing and Lily & Louis is appointed to manage the PR campaign for the relaunch of Line 7’s menswear range.