Browsing: Powershop

News
A nice touch
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Marketing doesn’t always have to shouted onto a television screen, splurged across the pages of a mailer or hammered into a Gmail inbox. Sometimes, the most effective marketing comes instead as a subtle suggestion. As was discovered by a member of the Tangible Media business team, sometimes this suggestion can take the form of a friendly email, which in this instance came from Powershop asking a customer moving out of a home to remember to leave important information—such as the rubbish day, neighbours’ names, best local takeaway and the nearest dairy—for the next person moving in.

News
Politicians help Powershop cash in
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Powershop is cashing in on the gaffes of politicians through a refer-a-friend campaign that laughs at our past and present leaders in various states of strife. After poking fun at Judith Collins and pissing off John Banks, the retailer is back with a campaign that has Mana Party MP Hone Harawira the butt of the joke.

News
Design working: a rundown of the Best Effect Award finalists
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Design, said Apple founder Steve Jobs, is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Or, put in a commercial context, whether it helps a company make money. And the Best Design Awards’ ‘Best effect’ category, whose finalists were announced this week, celebrates design that has produced a measurable effect on the success of an organisation or product, whether it be productivity, staff engagement, sales growth, bottom line or customer experience.

News
Powershop partners with menacing dictator
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Powershop has a thing for dictators. The company’s previous ad campaigns have featured Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong-Un. The company apologised for offending people with its ‘Chairman Mao’ campaign, which featured Mao Tse Tung, a man who had millions of people killed.

News
Same power, different latitude: Powershop takes on Australia
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Powershop has managed to find a solid niche in New Zealand’s energy market as a cheeky challenger brand that gives its more than 50,000 customers additional information about their energy usage, lets them buy power online and shows them plenty of love. And now the Meridian-owned business is taking that model to Australia.

News
Awards rewards: Simon Coley
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As part of our push to remind you marcomms folk to get your entries in for the 2013 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards (there’s still 15 days left) we’re asking some past winners to tell us about their glorious victory, what it meant to the business and why these awards are different. Here’s why Simon Coley, design director of Powershop and co-founder of All Good, reckons you should enter.

News
Powershop’s two-wheeled diplomacy sees Kim Jong-Un pedalling for peace
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Powershop has got plenty of marketing mileage out of showing dictators, warlords and hard nosed politicians in oxymoronic situations as part of its long-running and at-times controversial ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign. Given recent global events, many wondered why its last ad chose to show Mao Tse Tung dancing to Gangnam Style rather than North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. But it has now obliged, with another image by Doublefish showing the portly ‘Supreme Successor’ embracing his inner MAMIL, squeezing in to some lycra and going for a pedal.

News
Memes and Mao collide as Powershop goes Gangnam Style
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David Cameron, Barak Obama and John Key have all been seen dancing Psy’s Gangnam Style and Ban Ki-Moon has hailed it as a “force for world peace”. Now Powershop and DoubleFish are using it to sell electricity, with hot new band Mao Tse Tung and the Great Leap Forward performing Gangnam For Freedom as part of its long-running ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign.

News
Same power, different beatitude
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After kicking off its ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign with a few friendly dictators, Powershop and DoubleFish then moved into fictional territory with ads featuring Jaws, Daleks, Darth Vader and Frankenstein. A cease and desist letter from LucasFilm moved the campaign back in the direction of well-known humans, such as a free-lovin’ Margaret Thatcher. And now the brand has either bravely or foolishly taken things in a much more controversial direction with a new ad that wouldn’t be out of place on a St Matthew in the City billboard and features Pope Benedict XVI presiding over a same sex marriage. We predict fire and brimstone Powershop’s way cometh. And, if we’re lucky, maybe even @pontifex’s first Tweet.

News
Retail & Emerging Business/New Brand: Z Energy
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Buy the assets of one of the world’s most respected brands. Then throw that brand equity on the scrapheap and start from scratch. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but for Z energy, the decision to create a new, more localised, customer-centric brand was a master-stroke.

News
Wells goes up hill, down dale and cross country for Meridian’s renewable tiki tour
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Meridian Energy has released some consistently good ads over the past couple of years and created a point of difference by loudly banging its renewable energy drum. And, following on from its quirky West Wind and Ross Island ads, which were conceived by Assignment Group and shot by Perendale, the team has sent Jeremy Wells on another entertaining journey in an effort to celebrate the country the company generates all of its energy from—and, of course, get more customers around New Zealand to “sign up to a better energy future”. 

Opinion
The Year in Review: Simon Coley
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It’s been a massive year for Simon Coley, one of the main men behind both Powershop, which was judged the fastest growing company in New Zealand this year when it was awarded top prize at the Deloitte Fast 50, and All Good Organics, which won the sustainability gong at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. Here’s his pick of the 2011 bunch.

News
Powershop disturbs the LucasFilm force as The Sound of Darth gets pulled
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In our humble opinion, Powershop’s ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign is one of the best campaigns of the year. But we wondered aloud a couple of weeks ago whether its latest execution featuring Darth Vader prancing through a field like Julie Andrews crossed the IP line. Turns out it did, and the LucasFilm patent lawyers have been in touch telling them to cease and desist. They’ve done as asked, but, with a dose of challenger brand cheek, they’ve also taken a leaf out of 42 Below’s book and, with the help of its PR agency Sputnik, decided to have a bit of fun with the apology letter. 

News
The power of the force: does Powershop’s latest ad cross the line?
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Powershop’s ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign by DoubleFish was well-received by the StopPressers when it was launched in July. And, while some offense and distress led to the images of Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein being removed from the campaign, it’s continued down a similar creative path with its follow-up ads. But we received an email from a reader wondering if its latest effort had also gone a bit too far. 

News
Retail giants rejoice as Progressive and NZ Lotteries dominate TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards
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The 2011 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards were dished out last night at the Langham in Auckland in front of around 450 industry bods and a host of game changers and bar-raisers—some well-accustomed to collecting such awards, some venturing up on stage for the first time—were announced. But it was Progressive Enterprises that came away with the most coveted award of the night for merging three of its supermarket brands into one and forging a bold new positioning based on an enhanced definition of consumer value.

News
Powershop fuming as Aussies rip off rebel
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Slacktivists the world over see Che Guevara as the personification of rebellion and often wear t-shirts to show just how rebellious they are. As such, he’s become something of an unlikely advertising icon, used to sell everything from lip balm to Smirnoff to mousepads. But local electricity retailer Powershop, fresh from a well-received satirical campaign featuring various dictators using their power differently, is up in arms after an Aussie energy drink company called Powerbeverage ripped off an online banner featuring the freedom fighter.

News
Absolute power entertains absolutely in new PowerShop campaign
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Playing around with some of the nastiest dictators to have ever set foot on earth might seem a touch risky, but for online electricity upstart Powershop, it’s hoping a new campaign by DoubleFish, staring the likes of North Korea’s Kim Jong II and Saddam Hussein, will give the company a point of difference against its larger competitors.

News
Looking for that perfect Christmas gift?
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Thanks Handjob! You’re the perfect stocking stuffer! Or, for a slightly less risqué gift, how about a marketing action figure.

Banana smoothie spoofery pokes fun at condescending Westpac animation.

Bodacious boogie-boarding sensation Vincent Heeringa: the early years.

What exactly is the …