It’s a regular feature in any modern home, a lifeline even for those who live in it and yet the broadband modem gets little notice for anything other than its function. But Orcon hopes to banish the boring, by bringing together New Zealand artists to turn the modem into a work of art in a designer series.
Browsing: Orcon
People love to complain, particularly when it comes to ads. “Why does it always become louder during the ads?”, “I hate this ad”, “I swear they screen ads longer than they used to” – are all common complaints heard around the endangered television set. The Advertising Standards Authority has released a report on the top 10 most complained about ads from last year, here’s the rundown.
Orcon has also taken a few shots at its competitors by pointing out that they throttle customers’ broadband speeds. This criticism was first introduced via an Orcon TVC released last year that introduced Kiwis to Raoul, a revolutionary figure clad in purple military fatigues who seems determined to bringing to what he sees as ISP injustices. And this colourful character—with his oscillating accent—has returned in a new spot that is even more bizarre than those that came before.
Kiwis are now choosing to pay to stream TV and videos instead of turning to BitTorent for pirated content and online shoppers are looking to China for their precious goods, according to recent data-gathering by Slingshot.
“Orcon is shining the spotlight on bandwidth throttling used by big telcos, including Vodafone and Spark, in a new campaign that encourages Kiwis to look at the fine print before signing up to broadband plans that could unnecessarily be slowing then down,” touts the media release from Orcon that accompanies the launch of its new campaign featuring a plum-dressed dictator of ambigious origin removing the wig of what is meant to be the chief executive of a major telco (seemingly Spark, if the colour scheme of the faux promotional material is anything to go by). UPDATE: ASA confirms that complaints have been lodged.
MyRepublic, a new internet service provider offering ultra-fast fibre broadband, has touched down in New Zealand in its big purple rocket, and it’s using William Shatner to communicate with us slow-internet users.
Orcon, a double for ANZ, Lift Plus and Semble walk under our guard of honour this week.
Orcon is taking a leaf out of the ‘Politician’s Handbook’ by attempting to mobilise the Kiwi masses through a petition, which aims to break Sky’s hold on the broadcasting rights for live rugby games. The petition is hosted at a microsite called FreeMyRugby.co.nz and draws attention to the fact that only New Zealanders with a Sky subscription—available for $74.75 a month on a Sky basic and sport package—are in a position to watch the All Blacks play live. And while sharing this common knowledge is unlikely to cause a riot, it does draw attention to how the media landscape is changing and how this might continue to impact Sky’s hold sports broadcasts.
This morning, yet another bombshell hit the SVOD space with the announcement that Slingshot had introduced its global mode, which will give Kiwi subscribers access to services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer. This announcement comes only a week after Telecom launched its SVOD service called Lightbox and two weeks after Sky sent out a release saying that it was planning to launch a similar service in the near future.
As Kim Dotcom shifts his attention to the political arena with the formation of the Internet Party (and he’s a step closer to making it official following the approval of his sign-up app), his time as Orcon’s mascot is coming to an end.
The Research Agency has continued to grow rapidly this year, with big clients like ASB, VW, Vodafone, IAG, Fonterra and NZ Lotteries entrusting it with their research needs and a number of new staff added to the roster to help deal with the new business. Managing director Andrew Lewis, who has penned a host of great columns for NZ Marketing, and the team opine on 2013.
Orcon has appealed an Advertising Standards Authority ruling that upheld a complaint about its TV ad which featured Kim Dotcom saying, “join today and start living with truly unlimited broadband”. The telco says it’s got rid of the Fair Use policy that was the bone of contention.
Orcon is bidding for awesome with a new dashboard that stitches together what it thinks are the internet’s most fun, frivolous and factual things. The Awesome dashboard was the winning idea out of several from Auckland digital and social agency Us and Co.
Anti-capping, pro-holidaying and station swapping make it onto the dais this week.
A new Orcon campaign with Contagion gives the ISP a chance to get new customers and frontman Kim Dotcom a chance to push his political barrow. Orcon is using what it calls a “fun, cheeky” video featuring Dotcom, and social media activity, to push its $99 uncapped internet plan on fibre or ADSL.
Orcon has released an app for iOS and Android (developed by Kiwi dev shop Sush) which lets its users take their homes phones with them, where ever they are in the world.
Kordia has sold its residential ISP arm Orcon to a group of New Zealand investors in order to shift focus back to B2B.
Gravity Coffee’s week-long intern experiment, Sky’s awkward dead air, Orcon’s new feline ambassadors, Cool Charm’s street cred and Ogilvy’s Shopping Channel clasp the TVC of the Week trophy to their bosoms this week.
There is perhaps no greater force in the online world than cat videos. Wired recently delved into what it called the online cat-industrial complex, ad agency John St spoofed the feline fascination brilliantly with the world’s first cat advertising agency, and a recent cat video film festival in the US drew 10,000 people (it was won by Henri 2: paw de deux). Now Orcon is embracing the zeitgeist with a new campaign starring animated cats Daisy and Gav.
JWT’s Angus Hennah comes home, Rachel Ellerm kicks off her new female-centric strategic consultancy Frock, Pluk continues to grow, Orcon puts its weight behind CanTeen, The PR Shop pulls a deuce, and 2degrees and TBWA\ put their Ad Impact gloves on.
May not be a picture of painting spiderbots
Robots, social media, spray cans and three of the world’s leading design creatives are coming together in Auckland this month at design conference Semi-Permanent as part of Orcon’s Spider Art, which is believed to be the world’s first art painted by Twitter-controlled ‘spiderbots’.
As of tomorrow, New Zealanders will have another option for viewing, with Australian movie and TV subscription service Quickflix launching and ISPs Slingshot and Orcon unmetering the new offering.
With the big shoots few and far between these days, it’s pretty tough out there in production land at present. But there’s still no denying the power of the visual medium to get a message across and, whether it be Mammoth Dips, Whittaker’s ‘Swear by the Slab’, or Sky’s ‘Do Nothing’, Flying Fish managed to churn out plenty of stellar work last year. Executive producer James Moore pipes up on 2011.
Orcon has appointed M&C Saatchi as its advertising agency. Taryn Hamilton, general manager retail at Orcon, says M&C Saatchi was chosen on the merit of the team’s creative thinking and strong team focus.
First Orcon and DraftFCB got a serve from HeyDay for getting the date the internet was born in New Zealand wrong in its recent TVC. And now it’s in the eye of a social media storm after its new Genius all-in-one broadband/home phone product proved too popular for its own good, leading to a host of jilted customers venting their displeasure with the telco.
Last year, Wellington digital agency Heyday embarked on a big project to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the nation’s connection to the internet with www.downtothewire.co.nz. And the boffins are baying for blood after DraftFCB got its facts wrong for the latest Orcon campaign, which claims the internet arrived in New Zealand 18 years ago.
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” class=”oembed” > Advertising is a funny old game. One minute you’re winning global creative accolades for clients, the next you’re wiping away salty tears after being cast aside. That’s pretty much what happened after Orcon dropped Special Group late last year and shacked up with DraftFCB and the new pairing have come up with their first major piece of work, a rather retro, extremely bright and entertainingly self-aware retail campaign to sell its flash new hero product, Genius.
Over 10,000 entries were submitted from around the world and the nominees for The Webby’s, AKA the Oscars for nerds, were announced this week. And Special Group’s ‘Living Office’ web banner, New Zealand-based Drugs.com and Supply’s ‘Scam Machine’ for Netsafe are the only local contenders up for an award, while Resn, DraftFCB, Alt Group, Oh Baby, Fairfax and APN all received the next best thing, official honoree status.
In the Direct Response section, Colenso took gold for Yellow Chocolate and a silver for ‘A Rubbish Idea’, while Special Group also took gold for ‘Orcon Business Banner’. And in the Direct Campaign, Colenso came home with both awards, a gold for Yellow Chocolate and a bronze for TVNZ’s ‘Real Stories’ to promote its show The Pacific. In the Direct Mail category, ‘A Rubbish Idea’ and ‘Real Stories’ both took silver, as did DDB’s Catalogue & Tee Shirt Folding Machine for AS Colour.
Special Group, Salt Interactive and Orcon took the humble web banner to places the web banner has never been before in New Zealand and took gold in Online Advertising for their efforts with Orcon. And, by adding Twitter and Facebook functions, it became a rare beast: a banner that was actually shared among friends, showing that interactive utility shows its stripes when impressive content is created to suit the medium. Special Group also won bronze in the branded content for the Volvo ‘Blindfold’ campaign.