Monthly Archives: June, 2010

News
Design and Cyber Lion mountain now classified as hillock
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Further shortlists have been announced for the Design Lions and Cyber Lions categories, with spokesperson and Professor of Listology at Cannes University, Dr Jean Luc Baguette saying the announcement of the contenders has significantly reduced the danger of passers-by being crushed by debris falling from the shortlist mountain. Helping minimise the peril to the general public are Alt Group and Colenso BBDO, both shortlisted for Design Lions. Colenso was shortlisted twice in the Cyber Category, with TBWA\Tequila\Digital\Shift and Tribal DDB receiving single nods.

News
Last minute and lots: entries flood in for awards
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The fingernails were being bitten feverishly late last week as the New Zealand marketing community used every last second at its disposal (and a few more on top of that) to get the entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. But all’s well that ends well: the number of entries has swelled to more than three times that of last year.

News
Adshel and Everything get creative with timely new campaign
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The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (NZBCF) has seen the light – and the dark: its new Girls’ Night In fundraising campaign, which launched today, 22 June, and runs for two weeks, is putting a new, more contextual twist on the outdoor medium, with 20 of Adshel’s Create sites delivering a different image depending on whether the ad is seen during the day or at night. 

News
Hey Pam, meet John
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Who it’s for: Pams by Barnes, Catmur & Friends

Why we like it: Quirky, cute and catchy, this rhyming foody animation tells the tale of Pams and manages to bring a dose of personality to a brand that many assumed was of the ‘house’ variety. Neither Tim Burton …

Opinion
Agency Plankton achieves goals, lives Gallic clichés, gets Cannestrated
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On 21 May we floated Plankton IPO for a meagre $10 a share in the effort to raise enough cash to get us to Cannes. Against all odds and with the help of more than 70 investors from across the globe we actually made it. 30 odd hours and more than a few B-grade movies later and we’re here, eating croissants, dodging scooters and paying through the nose for everything.

News
Young Lions roam French savannah, mix business with pleasure
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It’s not just the grizzled old leaders of the advertising pack that can be found wandering the halls and corridors of the Palais des Festivals. Slinking along in their shadows, sniffing the air for any sign of weakness are the Young Lions. Our maan in Cannes (or, depending on your pronunciation, our mans in Cannes), Martin Bell risks his personal safety in pursuit of Leonine quarry.

News
New Zealand 13, Italy 9, Paraguay 0
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The 57th Annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is underway with the announcement of the first three shortlists in the Direct Lions, Promo & Activation Lions and PR Lions categories. And, in keeping with the theme de jour (that’s French, don’t you know), the Kiwi contingent are off to a flying start, with 13 campaigns making the grade. Choosing another similar long skinny country as a random point of comparison, Italy has nine campaigns shortlisted in the same categories.

Opinion
Charity begins at home (and ends up here)
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There is often great creative work found coming from charity and social messaging. It may have to do with the fact that often the only measure of success is if it gets people talking. Also, it is often done for free, so there are fewer pressures put on creativity by clients asking to ‘improve’ ideas. And perhaps ad creatives believe in the product more than if they were flogging toilet cleaner. Whatever the reason, there is plenty of good stuff to be found. 

Awards
Time spent with cats is never wasted
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Setting up and maintaining a server for your business can be a costly and time consuming affair—not so with Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. From email to shared calendars and contacts, or file-sharing to online collaboration, Apple’s Snow Leopard Server can deliver immediate tangible benefits with no fuss. Come and see why it’s [warning obvious cat pun ahead] purr-fect for the job at 4pm, Thursday 24 June at the Stardome Observatory. And you could also take home an iPod touch just for coming along.

News
Time waits for no man, last day to ensure marketing glory
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Pressure, as they say, makes diamonds (it also makes heart attacks and oil spills, but in this case, let’s stick with diamonds). And the pressure is on to get your entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards, with the gates officially closing at 5pm today. But, if you require an extension, break glass, call Sylvia Devlin on 361 7763 or email [email protected] and plead your case.

News
All Blacks press the flesh, Dan’s pressed flesh gets brushed
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Ah New Zealand, what an egalatarian paradise you are, a place where you can shake hands with the Prime Minister without fear of being tackled by secret service agents, where anyone can play golf, squash or tennis without being harrassed by bogans for being an aristocrat and where an All Black can deliver your mail and make you a cup of tea.

News
New digi-award gets stuck on traffic
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MEC is first cab off the rank in Yahoo!Xtra’s new quarterly Digital Strategy Award, taking the inaugural trophy for its Caltex with Techron online campaign. And, in other digi-news, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is on the hunt for Bolly Award entries and has also secured the services of a couple of digital gurus to discuss the importance of online advertising in the automotive industry.

News
It’s not the sizzle, it’s the sausage
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Harrington’s small goods is setting out to spread the meaty truth and destroy the sausagey lies with New Zealand’s first official Sausage Awareness Week. Of course, every week is unofficial sausage week in New Zealand, but the real one will run from 5-10 July and aims “to help Kiwis recognise that ‘what goes into the sausage goes into you'”.

News
Show us your Kraken
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Come with us now on a nautical journey into the belly of a terrifying beast as we tell the tale of the many-tentacled killing machine known as the Kraken, which lives on whales, sailors and spiced rum.

John Clarke’s take on the BP oil spill …

News
Cannes Kiwis: meet the chosen ones
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If they haven’t been washed away by the flash floods, six lucky New Zealand bastards are currently swanning about in the South of France. Of course, business is being mixed with pleasure: they are there in a professional capacity as judges for the Cannes Advertising Festival awards, which, as the world’s biggest and best advertising event, invites the world’s biggest and best advertising brains along to do the deciding. So here’s to them.

News
Revealed! New Zealand’s trustiest, favouritest and choicest brands
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As someone (it’s usually Einstein) may have once said, perception is nine tenths of the marketing law. And the results of the third Attitude New Zealand survey, which delved into the strange and mysterious world of the Kiwi psyche, have shed some light on the perceptions around the nation’s brands, as well as revealing plenty of other interesting consumer and social trends that may have implications for marketers.

News
Not-for-profits fixed up, soon to look digitally sharp
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yMedia, a social enterprise that aims to solve some of the digital communications issues faced by not-for-profit organisations through the power of creative collaboration, has just kicked off. And this time round, twenty student teams, a host of industry professionals and their respective community groups will all be going head to head in the annual new media competition.

Opinion
Radio changes stations and social media goes pro
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In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: What’s the frequency, Kenneth? Big corporates to social media: ‘Hey, you can actually make us money’. So how can New Zealand businesses tap into it? Virtually possible: eWestfield on the cards. Rupert Murdoch begins his paid content experiment in earnest as the timesonline.co.uk closes its doors. Close enough is not good enough when it comes to advertising, as one Christchurch car yard recently found out. Google plans its next assault. This time, music.

News
Stuff gives people more power, representatives of people shudder
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Fairfax Media is harnessing the raw power of the crowd to try and weed out a few more dodgy financial dealings from our elected officials, giving the public the chance to trawl through the thousands of pages of credit card transactions and receipts from 2003  to 2010 that were collated by The Department of Internal Affairs and review them online.

Opinion
Made-up number used to show benefits of World Cup ‘victory’, non-sponsors ambush e-chatter
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After the stunning All Whites victory last night, which 593,800 Kiwis watched on TV One and 150,500 watched on Sky, FIFA’s worst nightmare, a New Zealand vs South Africa final, is still on the cards. And while a range of lying geeks pull numbers out of the air in an attempt to quantify how much the “lost productivity” will cost the nation, stunning new research by StopPress reveals the victory has actually made the nation more than $45 million in terms of increased patriotism (text received after final whistle: “I am having kittens. I have died and gone to heaven. I love sports.”) and vuvuzela sales. Anyway, everyone knows the result of the match (apparently we’re part of Australasia now). But who’s winning the World Cup brand wars?

News
‘Tats amazing’ says man with bleeding head
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Who it’s for: Rascals

Why we like it: Slim pickings for TVCs this week, so instead we’ve chosen this, a video that details the lengths some agencies will go to in order to create the perfect billboard. As you can see, this billboard is slightly more …

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