Monthly Archives: June, 2010

News
Boo! Hiss! Roar! Moan!
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It seems Kiwis have found plenty to grumble about, well, when it comes to advertisements anyway. The folks at the Advertising Standards Authority have been kept very busy according to their 2009 Annual Report, receiving complaints about 829 advertisements (up from 703 in 2008), with 1339 total complaints.

News
Ads@6: 3 June – 9 June
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This week on Ads@6, various commercial entities try to sell things through the power of free-to-air television. Of note this week, not much, although soup month is finally upon us. And it should be a worthy follow up to 2008’s international year of the potato.

News
Chorus of trumpet blowing ensues after announcement of Qantas Media Awards
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It’s fairly standard practice for publishers to beat their editorial chests after the Qantas Media Awards are dished out. Of course, victory is always in the eye of the beholder (and, given the number of awards handed out and the size of the New Zealand market, there always seem to be plenty of beholders). But this year APN has nabbed the big ones: the Herald on Sunday was judged to be New Zealand’s Best Weekly and Best Overall newspaper for the second time in its five year history and The New Zealand Herald took the award as the country’s best daily newspaper. 

News
Fairfax faux pas roils rural rivals
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Fairfax Media hasn’t been making too many friends recently: last week it decided to close business newspaper The Independent. And now it has fallen foul of a rival publisher after incorrectly claiming ownership of a magazine in some of its recent sales material.

Opinion
McDonald’s turns on the gaydar
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This week on Wammo, Pound and Mash, fast food gets political in France; Australian cuckolds up in arms after an Ashley Madison ad gets banned; Hi-Tec ignores the laws of physics and tricks the gullible by inventing a fictional sport; and Google gets a slap in the face with a fish from one of its competitors. 

News
Crunch go the numbers (this time in a good way) at NZ Post
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With physical mail fighting a difficult fight against “electronic substitution” and potential cost-cutting measures at New Zealand Post have been in the news recently, the postal workers may be disgruntled. But the marketers shouldn’t be, because the Targeted Communications department has just launched a new website filled with insights and data that aims to help make targeting easier.

News
Awards deadline looms ominously, foreboding music plays in background
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Want to be the envy of all your marketing friends? Want to turn up to industry events and social functions with an even ‘smugger’ grin on your face? Want some ammunition to back up your request for a raise? Well, you’d better rattle your dags, because there’s only one week left to get your entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards.

News
Write a fake headline, win copies of Every Bastard Says No
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To get 42 Below to the point where multinational booze behemoth Bacardi wanted to buy it, Geoff Ross and his gang of merry vodka purveyors had to master the dark arts of PR and viral marketing. They were shameless, controversial, funny and confrontational, and, as a result, they managed to tap into a wide array of media networks to help establish the brand’s reputation.

News
Drafty Mangoes set sail for Bold Horizon
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DraftFCB has been appointed to provide advertising and specialist media relations services to Statistics New Zealand for the 2011 Census; Mango has taken the Tourism Malaysia PR gig; JML gets to talk up the Velux 5 Oceans around the world yacht race; and Bold Horizon will be doing the digital work for the National Fieldays Society. 

News
Halcyon used to describe days as Munter goes back into mists of TV time
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It’s been a rollercoaster of televisual emotions recently after TVNZ delved into its archives to celebrate 50 years of Kiwi telly. And NZ On Screen has joined the nostalgic fray with a couple of new promos starring Outrageous Fortune’s Tammy Davis that aim to showcase the array of Kiwi television, film and music videos available ‘online’.

News
Adshel puts some LED in Vodafone’s pencil
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Adshel has continued its recent streak of outdoor innovations with the release of its new LED advertising display technology, which will feature on selected Adshel Create bus shelters. And Vodafone’s latest campaign to promote the joys of mobile internet is the first to put it to use. 

Opinion
Trade me jumps on the e-commerce bandwagon
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In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: Trade Me gets with the daily deals programme iAds steam ahead in the US The BBC begins what might be a new paradigm for paid content online Social media reaches the tipping point RIP, Independent What will this year’s most popular sales and lead generation strategies be? Get your names in the hat for the third Social Media Marketing eCourse. And there’s even a new option available for the ‘time-poor’.

Opinion
Dolphins frolick gleefully, eventually go under
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Close your eyes for a moment and think about insolvency. What do you see? Financial despair and suffering? Complicated court proceedings? Defamatory anonymous comments on websites? Aggrieved creditors chasing dodgy shysters through the woods with pitchforks and flaming sticks? Or frolicking dolphins, leaping about playfully in the ocean?

News
Ads@6: 27 May – 2 June
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This week on Ads@6, dogs will once again be seen going whacko for Smackos; Harraways Oats and the mysterious case of the stilted delivery; Tower insurance mows the lawn and displays moobs; ’tis the season for Damp Rid; a new Mercedes-Benz campaign; Skechers promotes its new shoes for lazy people; and Bluebird, like many other chip manufacturers from foreign lands, is obviously too lazy to come up with its own varieties, so it’s left the decisions in the hands of the chip eaters with the nifty ‘Do us a Flavour’ campaign.

News
Gratuitous football post shows awesome murals and annoyingly clever 3D ad
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Here’s a few visual treats to ease you back into the short working week, honour the birth of our Dear Queen and also prepare you for the start of the FIFA World Cup this weekend: to promote its coverage of the football fest ESPN’s agency Wieden & Kennedy, New York, commissioned a group of Capetown artists by the name of Am I Collective to paint 32 fairly outstanding murals of each of the countries participating in the tournament.

News
TVNZ trumpets ratings gains, gets punked by pro-whaling trickster
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Ever since TV3’s Sunrise and ASB Business bit the dust back in April, the Mediaworks press releases about news and current affairs viewer numbers seem to have dried up. Not surprisingly, NZI Business and Breakfast have reaped the benefits after the departure of its main competition, but there’s also been some significant ratings increases for Te Karere and Q+A over the last year and ONE news has also held firm.

News
All hail the Goog for it is wise and all-knowing
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In news that you probably already knew, online intelligence outfit Experian Hitwise has released figures that show Google is the dominant search engine in New Zealand. But, with its recent moves to increase the focus on national search domain identity, the local arm. Google.co.nz, is on the up and is now receiving over 86 per cent of all New Zealand searches.

Opinion
Facebook: it’s about money, not privacy
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There have been lots of conversations recently about privacy, specifically in social media. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho at Facebook, got very sweaty when discussing the topic recently. So if Mark Zuckerberg, one of the pioneers of the share everything world we live in, is getting sweaty about ongoing privacy concerns, then perhaps we should all be worrying.

News
.99’s ‘Dear Listener’ named ad of the month. But does the competition promote the medium?
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The newspapers were the real winners of the May edition of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau’s (NAB) Ad of the Month competition after Air New Zealand’s chief executive Rob Fyfe, with the help of its agency .99, decided to take his grievances with the Listener public by producing a video and running a few full page print ads. And it just kept getting better for the papers when the Listener decided to follow suit, continuing the stoush with a few full-pagers of its own.

News
The Ad Show usurps TVNZ7’s download throne
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As it nears the end of its first season, the signs are auspicious for The Ad Show: it’s taken the channel’s top spot for download numbers, the studio audience members are “hanging from the rafters”, a few extra episodes have been commissioned and there are high hopes that the hand that feeds will commission a second season. 

News
DraftFCB and Kirwan get interactive with new depression campaign
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Phase two of the Ministry of Health’s highly successful National Depression Initiative (NDI) has just kicked off and John Kirwan, much-loved former All Black, Japanese national rugby coach and straight talking past depression sufferer has returned as the frontman after his star turn in the first installment. But this time he’s starring in a new, more instructive and much more interactive, role.

News
Instant gratification – the musical
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Who it’s for: New Zealand Lotteries/Instant Kiwi by DDB NZ, Good Oil and Images and Sound

Why we like it: Exploding old people, mediocre dancing, a moonwalking cameo from Mexi-Doug, the funny dolphin noise, huge amounts of unbridled joy and the promotion of gambling makes for …