Monthly Archives: September, 2009

News
Colenso BBDO has TVNZ brand in hand
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The big boy’s club gets bigger at TVNZ. From today it has appointed Colenso BBDO as its brand agency to complement AIM Proximity, who has been TVNZ’s digital agency for the past 15 months. It’s a clever collaborative Clemenger Group consolidation.

The agency has “big amibitions” for …

Awards
Ecostore hosts Twitter party
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Set your alarms for 3pm NZ time on Thursday 1 October: ecostore founder Malcolm Rands, also known as Eco Man, will be hosting a one-hour party in cyberspace via Twitter. This is your chance to chat tweet-to-tweet and get some sustainable living tips from this successful and insightful eco-entrepreneur. His …

News
Mitre 10 ‘sandpit kids’ NZ’s fave ad
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The Mitre 10 ‘Sandpit kids’ ad has been voted by the NZ public as the Best Ad in Fair Go’s annual ad awards. It crunched the competition in the votes it received (view the nominees list here). Its five-year-old stars, Ruben and Benjamin, truly stole the show and won …

News
The people have spoken: iSnack2.0 sucks
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Illustration by Cathy Wilcox from businessday.com.au

Kraft Foods has admitted to making a massive mistake when naming its new Vegemite product iSnack2.0. Our previous post reports Kraft defending the name, saying it “was chosen based on its personal call to action, relevance to snacking and clear identification …

News
Fair Go’s best and worst ad nominees
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Fair Go presents its annual Best and Worst Ads tonight on TV One at 7.30pm. Last year’s awards episode was the 2nd most popular show in 2008, drawing nearly 750,000 viewers (just behind Dancing with the Stars).

As well as the main awards and the Student Ad …

News
Peter Myles out – “bureacracy” wins
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Peter Myles, director of Omnicom Media Group, is to step down this week.

A leading figure in New Zealand media buying, Myles is a “victim of bureaucracy” according to former media boss Martin Gillman.

In 2007 Myles was appointed executive director of OMG (at times styled as Opera) a jointly …

News
Competition winners: Rodney and BOTAB
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The winner of the Battle of the Bands caption contest is … B!

Mexican-wrestler-wielding-guitar fancy dress penis suit wins judges hearts.

And Suzanne McNamara made us giggle the most with her entry to accompany Rodney Hide’s pic in Headline op missed.

Sharples only comes up to here on me.

You …

News
More racing and football on telly
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The Media Counsel asks this week: Why do we need a second racing channel, TAB TV? What two channels now screen free-to-air football from the Oceania Football Confederation? Who were the top-selling artists in downloads and ringtones in the Telecom Mobile Music Awards?Big clue

Read it all here. MediaMonitor …

News
TBWA namecheck in NY
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Advertising Week in New York last week was the 6th annual gathering of creatives Stateside. The five days were filled with discussions and showcases on what’s making waves across all the advertising mediums. It even had a Battle of the Ad Bands concert. One notable presentation was by Jessica …

News
VW does Escher
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Released last month, these VW 4Motion print ads by DDB NZ get a woop from us. Eye-catching, clever and an homage to the exceptional MC Escher.

News
Bulldozer wants hungry MD
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Are you a “hungry world-class MD”? Love junk food? You might want to wing it to Sydney to apply for the top position at Bulldozer Inc.

The agency has just won the Kettle Chip account after a four-way pitch. The client was handled by DDB for the past five years …

News
Flurry of dust storm ads cloud market
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Nothing like a meteorological phenomenon to pep up your copywriting talents. Stuck in their offices, surrounded by flying red dirt, some agency creatives quickly came up with these print and online ads to make their brands most topical in the face of impending suffocation.

News
Conversant unleashed
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A cuddly retro orange C is the logo behind internet phone company, Conversant. Brewing for a couple of years now, the company’s mission is “to help medium and small business escape the tyranny of the big telecom providers”.

The new website launches Conversant into the sandpit with the big …

News
Microsoft to pay US$290m to i4i?
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Last week, a US federal appeals court heard the case of i4i vs. Microsoft following the August 11 Texas court ruling that ordered Microsoft to pay US$290m to i4i for infringement of i4i’s patent of an XML tag editor.

A simple version of the backstory can be read …

News
Fear and loving in Facebook
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In The Media Counsel’s consumer report, results from a US social media study show that 86 per cent of retailers have created a Facebook fan page for their product. But their biggest fear is that “people can trash my products in front of large audiences”.

Consumer Counsel Social Media …

News
Vegemite’s cheesy name
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With nearly 50,000 names submitted, including the inventive Wow Chow, Ruddymite and 2ritemite, Kraft Australia has named its new Vegemite spread, wait for it … iSnack2.0. WTF? The winning name came from 27-year-old Dean Robbins, a web designer (no kidding).

Responding to a demand for a spread that did …

News
Aussies won’t pay for online news
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Despite Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp making serious noises about charging for its online news, a recent Pure poll of 18,000 Australians are not impressed; 78 per cent don’t want a bar of it.

Only 5 per cent said they would pay for “high-quality articles” and only 7 …

News
Wynyard blasts critics, swears success
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Glenda Wynyard

Glenda Wynyard has come out firing, with all guns swinging and six cylinders blazing in response to the loss of PMAA accreditation for her media agency, The Media Counsel.

Mashed metaphors can’t quite capture the gutsy response from the flamboyant media buyer.

“I’m a fucking street-fighting …

News
Advertisers smell a rate behind TVNZ cut
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Advertisers and agencies smell a cost increase behind TVNZ’s bold move to cut agency commissions to 10 per cent by 2011.

TVNZ yesterday announced the results of a review into agency remuneration. The proposal to halve media commissions to 10 per cent, in January 2011, was met with swift …

News
Walden: TVNZ move gifts Aussies upper hand
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Andy Blood (L) and David Walden

TVNZ’s proposed cut to agency commissions will shift power and creative leadership to Australia, warns CAANZ president David Walden.

“We have for a long time punched above our weight in attracting top talent like Andy Blood, Nick Worthington, Toby Talbot and others. That …

News
Ads@6: 18-24 Sep
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A week of the most expensive ads on NZ telly for your viewing pleasure. New campaigns by Fresh’n Fruity, Sovereign and a very curious cat collection launched this week.

TV3, 24 September 2009

Arnott’s Vita-Weet crackers Harvey Norman, 10, 10, 10 deal G-Force movie Bunnings Pearl …

News
Facebook leads the social media revolution
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Further to our story of Nielsen shacking up with Facebook to create a 300+ million market research base, our mate David MacGregor alerted us to this vid from Socialnomics, which claims if Facebook was a country it would be the fourth largest in the world. Test your memory retention in …

News
Oldies, foodies & girlies clicking the most
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No real surprises that the most visited lifestyle websites for unique browsers last week were Stuff, Yahoo and NZ Herald, according to Nielsen analysis. Stuff.co.nz is the clear winner, and looks the nicest too in a category that suffers from a lot of cluttered design. Voxy also makes …

Opinion
Hit for Six: DraftFCB
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Welcome to our new feature, Hit for Six, where we put agency heads in the inquisition chair for six quick questions. Let’s get to know our marcomms community. Prepare to be enlightened. First victim, Justin Mowday from DraftFCB.

Name: Justin Mowday, Managing DirectorCompany: DraftFCBNo. of staff: 120 …

News
Throng TV launches first online episode
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Congrats to Throng TV for launching its first online episode on its website this week. It’s NZ’s first digital portal dedicated to all things TV. Some teething problems with sound but it’s early days and there’s no holding back this gung-ho gang of media wannabes.

Producer …

News
Saatchi wins trans-Tasman MSN award
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In a win that surprised their own team, Saatchi & Saatchi DGS takes out round one of MSN’s trans-Tasman Butterfly Award for creative online advertising. The winning banner for Westpac delivered on the criteria of powerful brand building, clever integration within a larger mix and creative cut-through.

The Saatchi team …

News
Nielsen gets poked by Facebook
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It’s a weighty brand match made in marketing heaven – Nielsen and Facebook are joining forces in a “multi-year strategic alliance to help marketers better use the Internet to develop and market new products”.

Facebook has the ability to reach a ginomous global consumer network and Nielsen has the market …

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