Not surprisingly, there’s been no shortage of opinions on Droga5’s massive new ASB campaign/rebrand, which went live over the weekend. And we’re giving you even more chances to judge, with the first two TVCs ‘Chance’ and ‘Mint Sauce’, a few press ads/posters that were created by three upcoming Kiwi artists and some online executions.
It hasn’t been an avalanche this time round, but the usual dollop of press releases hit the desk today full of language reminiscent of The Property Press, with virtually every magazine claiming the publishing equivalent of “north facing sun-drenched decks” and “indoor/outdoor flow”. Still, purple prose aside, the latest readership numbers for the mags look pretty good for an industry that has taken a battering over the last couple of years. And this data will be welcome relief to those hoping the good news of three months ago was not an aberration.
Sandy Moore, chief executive of DDB Group New Zealand, has been elected president of CAANZ for a two-year term, taking over from DraftFCB’s Bryan Crawford.
2009 was a bit of a watershed year for cider in New Zealand. And to celebrate, Monteith’s recently launched its new Crushed Pear Cider—which is made entirely from good old fashioned New Zealand pears, not from apples like some of its pear-flavoured competitors—with a rather unique take on comparative advertising and a fake protest outside DB HQ. You’ll be overjoyed to know that we’ve got some of the delectable nectar to give away to parched StopPress readers and because everyone loves sloganic frivolity, we want you to come up with a slogan for Monteith’s Crushed Pear Cider. Add it to the comment wall and the three best efforts will get 12 bottles of the good stuff to sup on contentedly during these warm tropical nights. Extra points for bad pear-related puns.
Hey, look, Masport celebrates in 100th, too much Countdown family, facial topiary embraced for Movember, Wanganui attempts to lure domestic tourists, Unilever continues to make almost every product on the face of the Earth, New Zealand’s taxi companies unite under a blue bubble and kudos directed to the Sovereign ads that play before TV One’s sports news.
Adshel recently moved back to Parnell after spending a few years in a city office. But that’s not all that’s new: as of next week it will also have a new sales manager, with ex-MediaWorks, New Zealand Rugby Union and Oggi man Nick Vile proving to be the standout candidate in the search to find a replacement for Pauline Hanton, who recently announced the arrival of her new shopper marketing offering Hypermedia.
Call of Duty’s star-studded war epic by TBWA LA gets military on yo’ asses.
Ole! Kahlua embraces ‘antic whimsy’ for its entertaining new campaignino.
Don Draper gets a bad case of the ‘whats’.
Appropriate punishments dished out fashion criminals …
With a collection of interesting characters and adversaries, some fairly intriguing back-stories and plenty of moolah at stake, the move of ASB from its agency of over ten years TBWA\ to Droga5 in June was one of the year’s most captivating stories. Not surprisingly, there’s been plenty of interest around the traps as to what Andrew Stone, Mike O’Sullivan, Jose Alomajan and the team would come up with—and whether the Droga5 mythology was all it was cracked up to be. Well, with a massive refresh of the bank’s brand and a new positioning statement around ‘creating futures’, you can now judge for yourself. But if the responses of the bank’s 5000 staff to the new brand and the confidence the main protagonists have in it are anything to go by, turns out it just might be.
It seemed like a promising start—and it also seemed like a win-win scenario—but the commercial realities have hit home for public bike provider Nextbike and it has been forced to suspend its operations and remove its bikes from the Auckland streets due to a lack of advertising revenue.
I’m always reluctant to get into discussions about logos because I don’t think I’m overly qualified to talk about them (and because everyone else thinks they are overly qualified to talk about them). Generally, those that bleat the most about logos are those that know the least about marketing; the ones who think branding is a sticker you put on an apple before you export it to Japan. But I feel the need to make a wee exception.
Let this raging torrent of information wash over you and be cleansed by tales of NZ Herald iPad upgrades, new Tiger beer websites, Air New Zealand’s new charity promotion, DraftFCB’s tremendous victory, creative bangers getting mashed in Make Something, Down to the Wire looking for your e-memories, Telecom’s new roaming offer, #Markchat delving into a debate about agency collaboration, DSA awards deadlines and someone slapping design in the face.
The Breast Cancer Research Trust (BCRT) certainly raised awareness with its ‘no big deal’ billboards last year. But it also raised the ire of some of those most affected by the disease. This time, however, the charity that aims to find a cure for the disease by 2018 through funding for innovative research initiatives and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi have taken a more traditional approach to putting breast cancer in the spotlight with an emotive new integrated campaign called ‘1 in 9’.
It must be written into our neighbouring country’s constitution that all television commercials promoting the region must include some kind of extremely cheesy musical element. The all singing, all dancing ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ epic by DDB was touch and go, but it’s Queensland, the same province that brought the world the amazing, multi-award-winning ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign, that really deserves to be taken to task, because it is responsible for two of the biggest toe curlers in recent memory.
With Kiwi consumers increasingly heading online to do their buying, Loyalty New Zealand has added another five e-tailers to its Fly Buys e-stores list, which brings the total to 23 after the service was launched late last year.
DDB’s latest campaign for The National Foundation for the Deaf (NFD) has taken a rather unique approach to blokey calendars—and raising funds—by giving Kiwi men what can only be described as a glimpse of muff.
More than 700,000 New Zealanders tuned in to say their final farewell to Outrageous Fortune—and to the much loved West family—last night, with TV3 nabbing a 51.5 percent share in 18-49 demographic and a 24.8 rating for the last ever episode of what was New Zealand’s favourite drama.
In what could only be classified as a tease, Derek Handley, mobile marketing pioneer and the co-founder of recently acquired Hyperfactory, will be announcing a unique global opportunity for New Zealand’s leading marketing entrepreneurs at the Marketing Association’s Marketing Forum 2010 on 29 November in Auckland. But you have to be there to find out what it is.
In a sordid tale of intrigue, subterfuge, poaching and skullduggery that could be worthy of a cover story in itself, ACP has made an already uber-competitive sector even more competitive by signing up Women’s Weekly editor Sido Kitchin as the new editor of what was not too long ago her avowed enemy, Woman’s Day, and also bringing Weekly’s deputy editor Fiona Fraser into the fold.
The entire PlaceMakers advertising business has gone up for pitch and while no-one will confirm who’s in the running, Ogilvy’s managing director Greg Partington says it certainly won’t be his agency, which has had the account since 2008.
There was an impressive haka, there was cheese (literally and, with Pippa Wetzell and some guy in orange overalls to open proceedings, figuratively), there were 560 RSVPs and there was a solid dose of market leader mentality on display as the national broadcaster launched its New Season 2011 line up for ONE and TV2 last night.
Who’s it for: Interislander by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington and The Sweet Shop.
Why we like it: Take the romance of the ferry, some classic New Zealand summer imagery and a surprisingly uncringeworthy ukelele version of the classic Interislander jingle, and you’ve got yourself an ad that …
Yellow has won plenty of awards for its advertising. But it’s still in dire financial straights and it’s not faring so well against its rather powerful directories adversary Google. One of the big reasons for that is its poor user interface and search platform. But Yellow New Zealand has announced a new partnership with Yahoo!7, one of Australia and New Zealand’s leading online media companies, and will use its digital resources to “power and bring to life Yellow’s search and content experiences”—and, in return, Yahoo users will have access to Yellow pages business data.
There’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a man at his most natural and a new spot for Speight’s Summit lager by Publicis Mojo that was directed by The Sweet Shop’s Steve Ayson has got all the required elements to become a new contender for beer ad of the early summer (ie man standing in river, man growing luxurious beard, man hurling rock, man yelling from mountaintop, man chasing deer, man punching boar and, of course, man drinking beer). It’s certainly much better—and much easier to understand—than man being teleported and running around the Savannah being chased by a Lion.
More stunning moves than Kasparov versus Deep Blue.
After purchasing the former Pinto plant in Tauranga, signing a big distribution deal in the UK and welcoming former Fisher Funds Management chief investment officer Warren Couillault into the shareholding fold this year, Kiwi-based VnC Cocktails is well and truly beefing up and planning on tripling its already impressive sales next year. And winning a highly competitive global tender to supply its premium pre-mixed cocktails to Etihad Airways’ First Class services is certainly a pretty good start.
The November/December edition of NZ Marketing magazine is out. And, as you’d expect from a title with such a name, it’s filled to the brim with what experts refer to as ‘essential marketing intelligence’, including the cover feature/call-to-arms that was written by three academics from the University of Waikato who detail why they feel the discipline is currently suffering from a ‘worldwide identity crisis’.
Our chums at Idealog couldn’t help but laugh (at their own expense) when they laid eyes on a bit of a whoopsie inside iSubscribe’s Christmas subscription promotion recently.
Republik recently achieved a fairly rare feat within Kiwi agency land when it was appointed to run the Asia Pacific business of Rentokil Initial. And it’s nabbed another piece of business (with some more to be announced soon, apparently) after being named as Kiwi-owned optometry group Visique’s new brand agency, beating out Interbrand/DDB Shop and Religion in a pitch and taking over from the incumbent Radiation, which had the business for five years but chose not to pitch.
In November last year L’Oréal announced it would be parting ways with its media agency ZenithOptimedia after three years together and that a new agency would be announced in May this year. Zenith had inherited the business after L’Oréal’s agency Universal McCann ran into trouble in New Zealand a few years back, but although it was invited to pitch for the business, it declined. Since then, the business has been floating around and Zenith remained in place during the tendering process (some insiders feel the delay is because no-one actually wanted the account due to low margins and L’Oréal’s reputation as a fairly difficult client). But Universal McCann is now back in the fold and will take up the role as media agency in the Australia/New Zealand region.
You know you’ve done something right (or wrong) if you get a concerned call from Bill Ralston after posting a story. And that’s what happened when we found out Pauline Hanton had resigned from her sales director position at Adshel to take up a role with a retail/instore media outfit supposedly linked to Ogilvy. Turns out the rumours were true and now Hanton, along with Paul Kenny and Suzi Hood in sales, have officially set their new, fully integrated in-store media channel and shopper marketing specialist Hypermedia into the wild, with Countdown as the flagship client.