DraftFCB may have missed out on the big NZ Post account after it was beaten to the letterbox by Clemenger BBDO, but it can take some comfort in the fact that it has just won another piece of guvmint business, taking the Maritime New Zealand account off Mission Hall after a four-way pitch.
It’s a funny old world. While tens of thousands of New Zealanders got overly excited about KFC’s Double Down late last week (if you want a real heart stopper of a meal, check this one out), over half a million Kiwis also tuned in to see two amateur cooks creating the exact opposite of that for the final of MasterChef. We’ve already talked about how much of a commercial juggernaut the show is for TVNZ and its owners, both because of its heavy commercial slant during the show and the ad dollars able to be raked in during the breaks, and with improved ratings numbers on the first season, that looks set to continue
Michael Carney on the reasons consumers pay retail prices, the results of the 2011 Film Census and their effect on the enforcement of the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act, how sentiment analysis can improve your interactions with customers and the difference a place in the organic search listings can make.
At the start of summer, Cadbury and DDB set themselves a goal: to Share the Joy with the country and find out exactly what joy sounded like to New Zealanders. This manifested itself in cool experiential efforts like the giant snowglobe in Auckland, clap-activated Christmas lights and a massive sprinkler that travelled to beach hotspots around the country and a call to fans to send in their own sounds of joy to add to those recorded for the impressive launch TVC. Now the campaign is getting close to its denouement, with a new ad that was launched last night to promote “the first song created by the joy of a nation”.
…as Image Centre Group fills up some space with a few newbies, The Research Agency appoints an associate director direct from London, Pead PR prints out four new swipe cards, Interbrand adds an exotic foreigner to the mix and Spark PR & Activate wins the Dermalogica account.
You’ve probably seen the TVC. Now the digital component of Colenso’s V paintball campaign has been set free. And it employs some pretty nifty online artistry to entertain the energy drink guzzling demographic.
Most notable this week is TelstraClear with a raft of metaphors in a rather politically directed effort to convince us that netball hoops should stay the same height at each end of the court. Countdown are still staying exclusive with One News, which means we went for the second ad slot for a few of One’s breaks. As for the rest, creepy Dan Carter continues to lounge around at precarious heights for Daikin; George Clooney, it seems, likes Nespresso more than beautiful woman (it can’t be that good); The home of eggs is Hokitika, just kidding, love Eggs throw in a weird ad; Learning Crochet sounds like so much fun and of course Mazda have a long list of reasons why zoomzooming is good.
It’s been a week filled with movings and shakings, including the fine folks at Tangible Media who have relocated offices to the mighty Mt Albert. But the movings and shakings are widespread. MSN has taken on three new hires while TVNZ’s publicity team makes way for motherhood and an appetite for travel. And although its Australian offices are already open, communications Agency The Church has only recently found its Australian general manger. There’s a new chief at the helm of mobile software and services experts, Run The Red, and Lightfarm Studios gets a touch of G-force with its new marketing and client manager.
Obama got Osama, but George Bush got the gopher (see it here).
Michael Bolton returns to ruin hip hop.
Talking dog taunted by meaty treats.
This is what it looks like when a shy man robs a bank.
Whittaker’s took the top spot in the April Ad Impact Awards for its fun take on good ol’ fashioned kiwi honesty in the Swear By The Slab campaign by Assignment Group.
When Shell’s fuel business was sold to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Kiwi infrastructure company Infratil in April last year (for a cool $695 million, we might add)—both of which are owned and operated by Greenstone Energy—the wheels were set in motion to replace the brand with something Greenstone Energy describes as “entirely Kiwi”. $35 million later, the new petrol stations, called Z Energy, are being unveiled across the country as part of a complete brand overhaul. And, coupled with extensive market research, the finished product comes courtesy of a number of industry players, including Cato Partners and Assignment Group.
Market research always does its best to enter every facet of our lives, but Christchurch mobile feedback start up company Texsys has taken it to a whole new level, asking Christchurch residents what they think of the recovery effort—while they’re on the dunny. They’ve done so by developing a software that allows multiple question surveys to be systematically completed via text message.
An entry that seamlessly blends two curious elements together—Amish culture and Calvin Klein undies—has won the 2011 Fairfax Media Young Print Lions competition, beating out 26 other entries. Called ‘Reach the Unreachable’ the print ad is the clever work of young’uns Pip Perkins and Jennie Ko from DDB Group NZ.
We were thinking of what approach to take when looking at KFC and their Double Down. The ridiculously effective campaign that proved any PR is good PR managed to run some stores out of bacon (we are presuming it’s real bacon), some stores to have queues outside and some stores probably with broken toilets.
But after looking at the most popular trends on Twitter in New Zealand, aside from seeing #doubledown at number four, something that stood out was the number one trend which had a “promoted” badge next to it. That trend? #McDFrozen.
For over ten years now, Tourism New Zealand’s 100% Pure New Zealand campaign has been a staple brand for marketing New Zealand to the world. But whether we ought to be laying such a pure claim at all has come under fire on many occasions, most recently on BBC programme Hardtalk where John Key was left sweating after host Stephen Sackur put some tough questions to the Prime Minister about the clean and green image on which New Zealand prides itself.
Loyalty NZ’s Fly Buys programme has captured the attention of another telco after Telecom pulled out of its partnership with the rewards programme close to three years ago. 2degrees has announced it has joined up with Fly Buys to rake in some loyalty points with its ever rising number of customers.
Smartphones just keep getting smarter and smarter. Even the NZ Hi-Tech Awards think so, hence awarding mobile voucher company VoucherMob the Ministry of Science & Innovation Best Hi-Tech Start-up category at the Hi-Tech Awards held in Wellington last week.
While the way of the woman may be a little difficult to figure out at times, Colmar Brunton is hoping to gain a little insight by working with nzgirl.co.nz. The two have teamed up to to create the Colmar Brunton Women’s Monitor, a monthly survey that nzgirl innovations director Jenene Freer says will take a unique approach to questioning on attitudes.
When it comes to wildly impressive imagery, it doesn’t get much better than National Geographic, and National History New Zealand’s (NHNZ) Moving Images knows all about it. The stock library has been selected by National Geographic Channels (NGC) Worldwide as the first and only footage sales agent for more than 20 years of accumulated footage from its blue-chip factual programming library, including hundreds of hours of HD footage.
Get your physics hat on for this week’s TVC
Who’s it for: Volkswagen by DDB and Robber’s Dog
Why we like it: As Volkswagen seeks to deliver its first ever ute into the New Zealand market, and with Toyota the dominant player in the market …
The 64th Cannes Film Festival kicks of this week in France and while we mentioned a couple of week’s back that Sweet Shop director Sam Holst’s short film ‘Meathead’ has been selected to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or, there’s another Kiwi nominee thrown into the mix.
Clients signing exclusive deals with media owners is an issue we’ve been hearing about a lot recently. And it seems to have come to a head, with ACP fronting up to the Commerce Commission to defend the practice and rumours abounding of editors not attending product launches and threatening to pull editorial endorsements for companies that have signed exclusive deals with competing publishers.
Everyone loves a good awards show and as we head into awards season, developments keep rolling in, starting off with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The new Creative Effectiveness award, which Colenso BBDO’s James Hurman is serving as a judge on, has taken in a whopping 142 entries, with five of those coming from New Zealand.
By the time you finish reading this paragraph, another daily deal or group buying site will have been set up in New Zealand—or at least that’s the way it feels at the moment, with so many recent launches overwhelming our senses. We’re reminded of the days shortly after Trade Me was sold to Fairfax, when something like 70 new auction site operators clamoured into the marketplace, hoping for a similar nine-figure payday. Where are they now, we wonder?
Omnilab Media’s online delivery baby Adsend has launched its new digital asset delivery surface for NZ and Oz, called Certified Soft Proofing (CSP). Successfully launched and well received over in the UK, the soft proofing tool is selling itself on its ability to, in the words of Adsend chief executive Grant Schuetrumpf, “accurately simulate a print ad on the desktop as it appears when printed in the magazine or newspaper publication”.
How do you make your booze brand stand out a little more? Creating a reality-type series that leverages the smart ideas generated by creatives is one way, and ratings for the Smirnoff Night Project, which made its debut just under two week’s ago, point to it being an effective concept (read all about the campaign, spearheaded by Special Group,here).
If you’re confused as to what exactly gamification is, the term refers to an industry that brings together game mechanics and marketing to create engagement and solve problems.
But don’t take it from us. Thanks to CAANZ Digital Leadership Group, world-leading authority on gamification, Gabe zicherman, is heading to New Zealand where he will discuss how game mechanics and funware can transform marketing, product development and operational processes.
Creative students at Media Design School’s AdSchool have triumphed at the 2011 Bees Awards winning the award for Best Student Brief, the only Kiwi win in this year’s awards. The international awards honour the best in social media marketing practices. Ben Andrews (art director) and Craig Douglas (copywriter), won the award for their campaign ‘Dreaming in a foreign language’, created to a special brief for client Mango Languages. The campaign shows innovative use of Facebook to market language learning software.
And the fresh TV work keeps on coming, with a new cerebral/agrarian spot for Volkswagen’s first ever ute, V takes street art to a new level with the help of Humpty Dumpty, Mitsubishi speaks the car-related, localised truth and Cirkus Animation’s TVC for Vietnamese stationery brand Thien Long.
It took a while to get there, but the official announcement has been made and Clemenger BBDO has been chosen as NZ Post’s new creative partner, beating out DraftFCB.