Pacific Magazines’ slogan is “we create magazines people love”. But APN News & Media will soon be creating at least three of the core titles those people love, after New Zealand Magazines acquired the licence to publish the weeklies New Idea and That’s Life, and the monthly Girlfriend.
Another edition of Movings/Shakings hits the shelves, and this time there are a few big names in the mix.
Wammo, Pound & Mash delves into the dark, mysterious arts of selling sweet confections and refreshing beverages.
Who’s it for: Campaign for Action on Family Violence by DraftFCB
Why we like it: DraftFCB has been staking a serious claim for the title of social change specialists in recent times (and in very recent times it has apparently started production on what has …
Some wine is good. Some art is also good. So why not combine forces for a new wine, thought a wine company and an artist. The result was the seemingly socialist booze that goes by the name of The People’s Wine. And we’ve got heaps of it, in two different colours, to give away.
If you happened to look up from your iPhone as you strolled past a bookstore, dairy or supermarket, you may have noticed a collection of strange things made out of paper. They often call these quaint periodicals ‘magazines’. And a fresh, shiny new September-October NZ Marketing could just be among them.
Everyone seems to be taking the American approach and neither confirming or denying who has nabbed the Lion Red and Waikato Draught business, but after talking to psychics, futurists and a few other humans, it seems fairly safe to assume that Lion’s unloved children have found new parents in the form of DDB and Josh&Jamie/Assignment.
Alan Dale, left, and Kelly Addis
When he was growing up, Kelly Addis dreamed of being a rock star. His first job as a butcher’s apprentice at Onehunga Foodtown was pretty much diametrically opposed to rockstardom. But now, almost three decades on, he’s living the dream, heading up award-winning Melbourne ad agency BoilerRoom. And last weekend he was honoured by his alma mater as one of three inductees into the Onehunga High Business School Hall of Fame.
Turns out TV isn’t dead: in the middle of what TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis calls “the media industry’s greatest international downturn”, the national broadcaster has reported underlying earnings of $12.9 million for the financial year to 30 June, a $2.8 million (28 percent) increase on the previous financial year.
The good ship Special Group continues to steam ahead, taking home yet another Grand Prix (and US$10,000) for its greedy ‘Orcon + Iggy’ campaign at the AdStars gala awards at Busan in Korea.
Since April, Positively Wellington Tourism has been on a mission to lure more of our Aussie friends across for a visit and smash a few misconceptions. And all indicators suggest the ‘There’s No Place Like Wellington’ campaign, which aims to showcase the region and its creative edge, has worked very well so far. But it’s taking things up a notch and getting experiential with WLG, a pop-up restaurant that will be operating in Sydney for two weeks next month in a bid to generate some buzz about the city.
Wondering what to get the blog-hater who has everything? Well, young Wellington designer Josh Barr has the answer: Blog Roll, a sculptural piece that “challenges the notion of graphic design as two-dimensional and questions the value of digital communication”. And it’s so good it’s been selected to show at the upcoming Anti Design Festival in London.
The modus operandi of Eshe, a Kiwi streetwear clothing company that was started in 2008, is to take things back to the glory days of skating counter-culture; to slaughter a few metaphorical sacred cows. And it’s managed to inspire some fairly contrived controversy with a combination of sacrilege and old-school Garbage Pail kids imagery with a new poster campaign in Auckland.
There may have been a few quiet drinks in the marcomms sector following this week’s Government announcement on alcohol law reform, which included advertising reform. But there was certainly no big party.
The numbers have been crunched, the Kiwis have been canvassed and the companies that consumers believe are the best—and worst—have been announced, with New Zealand Post coming out on top and Telecom bringing up the rear.
The first, rather large musical instalment of APN Outdoor’s ‘Friends in High Places’ series was a fairly successful and well-attended venture (particularly given the distinct lack of B2B activity from APNO during the previous year). And the next event in the series is tapping into the Next Top Model phenomenon in an effort to discover adland’s dreamy hunks and smokin’ babes.
Tasty nuggets of news—now with 10 percent more guarana, taurine and pseudoephedrine.
It’s pretty hard to get any weirder than the Skittles tree boy ad. But this one comes very close.
It’s all about targeted magazines at the moment. And you don’t get much more targeted than Ancient Gravies.
For those of you …
StopPress always feels a little bit sorry for Radio NZ journalists, partially because they’re poorly paid bureaucrats, but primarily because they’re not actually allowed to accept free stuff. We sold our journalistic integrity many years ago (on Trade Me) and are firm believers that getting free stuff is easily the best part of the journalist’s job. Still, sometimes we have to wonder why so much of this free stuff is sent to us by PR companies, as a large proportion of it is of little editorial interest. But occasionally something fairly interesting gets delivered, like The People’s Wine, which looks as good on the outside as it tastes on the inside.
It was a night that had almost everything: surprisingly loud and seemingly dangerous explosions; a fair bit of rowdiness from the 2degrees/TBWA tables; a hilarious mad scientist poking fun at everyone; strange glowing beakers; an array of confusing acronyms; polite clapping; attentive listening; and prodigious amounts of inter-company sexy dancing as big names from big and small Kiwi companies got dolled up for last night’s TVNZ-NZ Marketing awards at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. And the general consensus was that the quality of the winning work was world-class and that the awards themselves just keep on improving.
The New Zealand marketing community was in celebration mode at the 2010 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards at the Langham Hotel in Auckland tonight. And, after months of trawling through a huge number of entries, some rigorous judging and a fair bit of finalist back-patting, New Zealand’s newest, quirkiest mobile network 2degrees came away with the most back pats on the night, winning three of the big gongs.
As I’m sure you’re all aware, this week is SMEG Awareness Week. Social media expert guru (SMEG) numbers have been increasing in New Zealand in the last 12 months due to a combination of the tidal impacts on the Orinoco river and the recession. So here’s a handy field guide to help you spot them.
OMD Auckland and TVNZ have developed what they claim is a New Zealand first and almost certainly a world first: an ‘Ad on Pause’ for Fonterra’s Primo brand.
In this instalment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: In the supermarket, it’s all about the shopping list. And it’s being made before going inside. Sky TV releases its annual numbers. And gets back into internet TV. Kiwi bucket list shows we’re really pretty boring. The numerous business opportunities of the iPad explained. Networks squeeze through football broadcast loophole across the ditch.
The humans are digitising. And the adspend is following suit. Hell, you can even get fridges that connect to the internet these days. So, given that it’s still considered by many to be a rather intimidating, mysterious realm, it’s not surprising to find that the marcomms community can’t get enough of that educational digital stuff. As such, the Marketing Association/Jericho’s Brainy Breakfast gathered together a few of the country’s successful digital exponents to offer some of their insights and tell marketers how they can convince their corporate gatekeepers to fully embrace digital marketing.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of dealing with corporates, government departments or academic institutions presumably knows there are an almost limitless number of seemingly ridiculous rules that have to be obeyed. Many of these rules fly directly in the face of common sense and are generally frustrating time-sucks. But StopPress can’t recall a rule that seems quite as ridiculous as this one from Apple.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have released the online advertising expenditure figures for Q2, 2010. And whaddya know, yet more massive growth, especially—and surprisingly—in the often-lambasted display advertising category.
It was less than two years ago that BNZ released its cute, fluffy, cloud-like logo into the wild. Some thought it was fresh, different and looked like toothpaste. Others thought it was too fresh, too different and too toothpastey and, therefore, lacked history and gravitas. And it seems the BNZ brand boffins agreed with the latter, because it’s gone back to its astronomical roots and changed its logo again, adding the classic Southern Cross back in, reducing the fluffiness and chopping that cheeky vestigial tail off the B.
Pauline Hanton has announced her departure from Adshel after three highly successful years as the company’s New Zealand sales director in exchange for a role helping to set up a new media company specialising in instore.
It’s a mysterious realm for most, but in this digital world, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is also an extremely—and increasingly—important one. And New Zealand-based SEO specialists now have a chance to showcase their talents in the inaugural SEO Challenge.