Photo by Paul Statham
When Lotto arrived in New Zealand in 1987, Kiwis were excited, the big ads were delivering the goods and the coffers were filling nicely. But when Wendy Rayner started her role as marketing manager for jackpot games in 2003, having come from accountancy, advertising and nine years at TVNZ, jackpot fatigue had set in, the products weren’t working and sales and player numbers were in decline.
Almost like the Dan Carter of advertising, DDB New Zealand’s creative sage Toby Talbot is set to depart Kiwi shores temporarily after arranging a 12-month secondment to DDB London.
ASB has announced the addition of Roger Beaumont to its executive leadership team in the newly-created role of executive general manager, marketing and online.
Place this in the ‘always check your mailouts before you push send’ category. We received an email from a Sydney-based market research company called The Seed asking us to fill in a survey being run on behalf of a “major out-of-home media company” that needed to remain secret because knowing its identity could influence the answers and compromise the findings. Unfortunately, despite an explanation for the anonymity in the body of the email, the subject line read: Adshel benchmark survey 2010. Whoopsie daisies. There but for the grace of God go us. In discussion with Adshel, the survey has been recalled and the research has been canned. But, on the plus side, The Seed is still honouring its commitment to the prize draw of 10x $100 Westfield vouchers.
3 Wise Men is a clever company. It sells good products to men at a good price; its largely print-based ad campaign by Josh & Jamie/Assignment Group is always entertaining and memorable; and its policy of only working with good bastards is a noble business strategy. Now it’s become the good bastard by launching two limited edition Cameron Wilson shirts as part of its summer collection, with $20 from each shirt sold going to the cancer charity the range is named after.
Snapr, a Kiwi-conceived free photo sharing and geo-tagging app has made a bit of name for itself after being given some cash by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, endorsed by Microsoft and used to show the glamour shots during New Zealand Fashion Week. Now it’s added a dose of the digital marketing term du jour—gamification—to the recipe with a photo sharing game called Capture the Flag that’s captured the attention of some major Kiwi brands.
It was a 21 gun salute for Kiwi agencies at Spikes Asia, and Colenso BBDO was the sharpest shooter, taking the Digital Grand Prix for its Pedigree adoption drive, two golds, a silver and two bronzes.
Things are looking pretty rosy for Sky at the moment. Huge demand saw it briefly run out of MySky HD recorders in the lead-up the RWC and, judging by recent revenue and subscription figures, one could argue that it’s actually the national broadcaster. But, as this typically entertaining new ad from DDB and Curious Films shows, the company’s not content with its lot just yet and is adding to its product offering with ‘Guest Select’, which gives its hotel and motel customers the opportunity to put a decoder in every room.
When they’re not opening bars in Britomart, the good folk at Shine Ltd are getting themselves a bit of a reputation as one of the country’s hottest indie ad/design shops. In addition to its stellar work for Fonterra’s Mammoth and Lion’s Mac’s, it’s recently won Speight’s, Freeview and Stuff.co.nz. And where there are account wins, there are generally new staff to work on them. Enter Julian Andrews, a highly awarded and experienced creative boffin from the UK who’s just been appointed as the Auckland agency’s deputy creative director.
Independent New Zealand B2B agency BallantyneTaylor has won the CallPlus business after a strategic presentation to the company in July. The account was previously with Republik, which won it in February last year but resigned this year.
It’s full speed ahead for Rugby World Cup orientated advertising in this latest round of Ads@6, with Coca-Cola, TV1 and the Warehouse all taking a piece of the rugby pie. Elsewhere, fat green monsters make an appearance for Mucinex, Mini Countryman cars multiply and take over a city, and Pak’nSave pulls out its stickman star once again to help celebrate its birthday.
Back in June, Boundary Road Brewery, the newly rebranded Independent Liquor, launched a campaign to celebrate the launch of a ‘craft range’ that asked Kiwis to be the arbiter of taste and choose their favoured variety of beer, with the winning brew eventually released commercially. The print campaign asking for tasters took out the NAB ad of the month award and now it’s followed that up by acknowledging the 999 humans who tasted and chose the Chosen One beer with an ad in The New Zealand Herald that listed every one of them by name.
Rugby World Cup (RWC) sponsorship activity is already rampant and as some visitors get set to make the most of the tournament by heading along to the games or watching them at Party Central, they’re being given a taster of what they’re in for, quite literally by way of taste. RWC sponsor Brancott Estate, in conjunction with EYE and creative agency Pim, has created a virtual vineyard at Auckland International Airport that stretches across both arrivals halls and extends onto travelators, walls, floors and ceilings.
Who’s it for: Smirnoff by Leo Burnett Sydney and Curious Film
Why we like it: It was a bit of a coup for Darryl Ward to get this shoot. But, as you’d expect from a chap who won two Cannes Grand Prix awards in one year …
Curious Film’s co-founder Darryl Ward has obviously got a thing for musicians. First it was Iggy and Orcon. Now he’s ventured stateside once more to work on a big project with musician and producer Pharrell Williams for Smirnoff’s ‘Start Pure’ campaign, which was conceived by Leo Burnett Sydney.
Just as we celebrate birthday milestones by perusing through old and embarrassing photos of ourselves, Mac’s Brewery is likewise harking back to the past as it gets set to celebrate its 30th birthday in November with a touch of 80s.
… as Federation adds both staff and clients, Designworks appoints an experienced business campaigner to the new role of client strategist, Magnum hits double figures, Eleven adds two new accounts, Mike O’Sullivan to pass judgement in London and video and social/casual gaming network VENA adds an Asia Pacific COO.
On 4 September 1991, a classic Kiwi slogan was born. 20 years later and, love it or hate it, the Absolutely Positively Wellington brand is still doing the business. So, to celebrate this auspicious anniversary, the good folk at Positively Wellington Tourism and Touch-Cast created a video charting the brand’s history.
After a record 3647 entries, the 55 jury members for Spikes Asia have released the shortlists for Print, Outdoor, Media, Direct, Promo & Activation, Design, PR, Radio, Digital, Mobile and Film. And DDB NZ is at the front of the Kiwi pack with 15 nominations, with Colenso BBDO close behind on eight.
ASB had Goldstein. ANZ has The Mentalist. The National Bank has a Black Stallion. And now, thanks to Special Group and The Sweet Shop, TSB Bank has an old alien.
Every man and his dog is trying to get a piece of the rugby pie at the moment, some officially, some not so officially. Barkers is the official formalwear supplier to the All Blacks, and to leverage its sponsorship it’s just launched the ‘Not Any’ campaign. But wait, there’s more: Barkers has also been named as the only New Zealand finalist in the Australasian Online Retail Industry Awards (ORIAs), the only awards in Australasia that recognises and rewards excellence in ecommerce retailing.
There are various ways you can deal with harsh public criticism and while managers will generally look to use practical public relations tools when they respond to protests, they should also consider legal options that might help close down unhelpful attacks.
Photo by Paul Statham
AUT became a university just ten years ago and while its compelling consumer-facing brand was doing the business, its 14 Research Institutes had grown organically until 2009 and had no overall marketing, brand or strategic direction—even though research success plays a big role in establishing a good reputation. Enter 30-year-old Max Woodhead, who worked in marketing for sport and recreation and applied sciences and whose job it was to help build a research brand from scratch, unify the view of these disparate research strands, get the notoriously headstrong academics and institute directors to believe in the project and eventually build AUT’s overall brand, attract better post graduate academics, foster better research outputs and bring in more funding.
In case you haven’t noticed, the nation has fully embraced the Rugby World Cup, as evidenced most clearly during opening night festivities, when, according to a special survey of all the individuals (15+) in Nielsen’s 500-home TAM panel, the opening game was watched by 81 percent of all New Zealanders, with 11 percent of those watching it at a pub or outdoor venue.
The latest annual report from Fairfax painted a fairly grim picture for the Australian-owned media company, with a loss of A$401 million on the back of a A$651 million writedown in the value of its mastheads and a 40 percent reduction in the value of its share price this year. In an effort to raise capital, local teacher’s pet TradeMe is set to be partially floated and changes are also being made within both the New Zealand newspaper and magazine divisions.
As all regular pub-goers know, alcohol often acts as a performance enhancing drug when it comes to playing darts, pool and, on rare occasions, ‘the field’. And while it’s generally accepted that it’s the opposite of a performance enhancer for practically everything else, and particularly rugby, infographics.co …
There’s been some major consolidation in the outdoor sector of late. APN bought Oggi and submissions are currently open should you want to have your say to the Commerce Commission about iSite’s bid to buy OTW. But while the big two fight it out, the smaller guys keep trucking on and Phantom Billstickers has added one of the country’s premier street poster sites at the corner of Symonds and Alex Evans St in Auckland to its arsenal. And it’s kicked it off with a nice bit of creative self-promotion.
…as the Ogilvy juggernaut keeps rolling, SparkPHD hires an ‘Irish media maven’, The Radio Network’s long-serving chief exec gets set to step down, Fluxx welcomes the co-founder of the Beige Brigade, Naked nabs a new comms planner, International Rescue adds five newbies to the flock, Media Design School tastes glory in Los Angeles, Lily & Louis wins a couple of accounts, ActionActors takes to the stage and Mark Hanson sets up a new kind of PR agency.
There have been quite a few changes at AIM Proximity recently. Adam Good left for the bright lights of San Fran and 12 staff have been sent up the road to work at .99 on the Vodafone account, which is about to go to pitch after moving from Colenso. But there are obviously still enough inhabited desks to make this nifty wee stop-motion video, which was created in one night by using items from employees’ desks.
The best taxidermy ad ever by the ‘Commercial Kings’, Rhett and Link.
Old Spice on the high seas.
For the love of sport.
Hmm. Some electricity is bad. But other electricity is good.
John Key’s RWC speech dubstep remix …