Browsing: content

News
BrandWorld celebrates 20 years by reflecting on its past
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Last night, in a Freeman’s Bay bar, Brandworld celebrated 20 years in business with its staff, clients, friends and many glasses of wine. Alongside a trip down memory lane with a few speeches by managing director Richard Stevens and founder Bill Peake, it farewelled industry legend John MacDonald, by sharing his successes and bad calls, and remembered its former executive director Mike O’Sullivan, whose passing last year was felt across the industry. We chat to Stevens about the agency’s approach to content marketing and its enduring work.

Features
Facebook looks to move from social to mass media
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Tom Hyde, Facebook’s creative agency partner across New Zealand and Australia, dislikes the word ‘content’, almost as much as he dislikes the fact Facebook is being used as a dumping ground for so much of it. We chat to him about how he’s working with local agencies to move the platform from being a social afterthought to the centre of advertising to a mass market.

News
Late Night Big Breakfast returns and The Civilian becomes an online show as NZME launches new video offering
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NZME has since the beginning of this year released over 12,000 videos, which have accumulated 42 million views, and the media company is looking to further consolidate its video offering with the launch of a production studio called NZME Vision and a new content hub dubbed WatchMe. Rolled out earlier this week, the WatchMe website has already been populated with a collection of comedy shows; a combination of established and upcoming talent, all produced through NZME Vision. StopPress chats to NZME about why it’s making this move.

News
TVNZ to launch short-form play, aims to collaborate with advertisers
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As part of its new season launch, TVNZ announced the impending introduction of a short-form platform called OnDemand Shorts, which will be housed with the overarching TVNZ OnDemand offering and feature three- to five-minute video clips. And the broadcaster’s looking to collaborate with advertisers to fill the new platform with content.

News
Ford gets chatty with the All Blacks
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New Zealanders are well-accustomed to getting whacked over the head with rugby ads and sponsorship activations. And that only increases in the lead up to—and during—the Rugby World Cup. Many of the tournament sponsors like Land Rover, Heineken, Mastercard and Coca-Cola have played their first promotional hands. And, among the All Blacks sponsors, Adidas has embraced the players’ inner animals for Force of Black, Air New Zealand has upped its sponsorship and its efforts around the #crazyaboutrugby platform, Steinlager has teased the return of the white can and NZ Rugby even decided to do its own campaign. Now Ford and JWT have joined in with an online video campaign called The Driven that talks to three All Blacks about their driving habits and their favourite models.

News
Attracting a digital audience: New Zealand’s top ten YouTube channels
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Collectively, the top 10 Kiwi-based YouTube channels have over four million subscribers and, although that obviously also includes an international audience, this number is impressive given that New Zealand, as starting base, only has a population of around 4.5 million people. Here’s a rundown of the ten YouTube channels with the highest number of subscribers.

News
Horse’s Mouth: Jonathan Allan, Xero
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If, as suggested in the media recently, New Zealand is set to be one of the world’s ‘rock star economies’, then Xero would have to be the rightful lead singer. General manager of marketing Jonathan Allan talks about ‘doing beautiful business’.

News
Digital children’s book wins first round of Mix & Mash
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By combining beautiful illustrations, a simple narrative and highly interactive data – Sadaf Lourie (writer), Riccardo Scott (illustrator), Jarred Bishop (designer/developer) and Alex Gibson (data/developer) have won the May Showcase Award from the Mix & Mash competition – along with a $500 cash prize.

News
Supplying Ondemand: TVNZ’s Tom Cotter on the free-to-screen evolution
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There are a few major trends in TV consumption at the moment and they seem almost diametrically opposed, with second screening leading to an increase in the popularity of programmed ‘event TV’ that can be discussed with the community, and technology that allows viewers to watch content on their own terms. TVNZ is tapping into the former with its range of existing shows and its new branded content initiative, and, as TVNZ’s general manager of digital media Tom Cotter says, the latter is being taken care of with some big changes to its Ondemand platform, including a Samsung Smart TV solution and the region’s first ever iOS and Samsung apps.

Opinion
Conference call: Social Media Junction 2 in review
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Six international speakers and a range of local big brains from varied marketing and communication backgrounds came together in Auckland this week for the second edition of Social Media Junction and  presented their perspectives on acheiving ROI from social media activity. But ROI is perhaps the wrong phrase to describe what was discussed. With the benefit of hindsight, it was more about content marketing: you’re on social media platforms, but what are you saying, how are you saying it, when are you saying it and are the customers listening and then actually buying or recommending to someone else who buys? Anyway, enough with the questions, here’s what the speakers had to say.