Monthly Archives: January, 2012

News
Kicking buts and singing songs
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Who’s it for:Open Polytechnic by Ogilvy Wellington, Firstlight Productions and Teaspoon Films.

Why we like it: A very well-made and engaging TVC that backs up the successful Open World campaign and zeroes in on the Open Polytechnic’s main competitive advantage: relative freedom. With time increasingly …

News
Shot, bro: Colenso launches musical ode to diminutive new BK burgers
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Burger King has been selling its tiny burgers overseas for a couple of years now (check out the “horniest, most boobstatic Burger King ad ever” from the US). And it’s just launched the seemingly lady-friendly products in New Zealand, with Colenso BBDO and Flying Fish getting together to create a new, fairly strange TVC that features some sweet electro funk, some fairly cool effects and some forced rhyming.  

News
Towning around: Clems and NZTA opt for jangly jingoism in driver fatigue campaign
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The NZTA and Clemenger BBDO have been pushing the advertising envelope recently. It released the most popular ad of 2011 at the end of last year, Legend, and followed that up with a controversial ‘you’re on candid camera!’ campaign to draw attention to drugged-driving at the start of 2012. And, as part of its summer push to reduce the road toll, they’ve taken a rather patriotic, jingly, kitschy approach to fighting driver fatigue, with three 15 second ads that showcase some of New Zealand’s classic and/or cringey town signs/tourist attractions to the tune of some down-on-the-farm Kiwi songs. 

News
Fiji looks to go large as tourism office puts feelers out for global agency
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Barnes, Catmur & Friends won the Tourism Fiji account in mid-2009 and set out on its mission to grow New Zealand visitor arrivals from 100,000 per year to 120,000 by 2011. Since it took over, and despite the ongoing political uncertainty, arrivals have gone up 18 percent on the back of some good creative comms, including an enticing TVC, a billboard that showed how hot it was in Fiji during the New Zealand winter and a well-received Adshel promotion that ‘Fiji’ed’ a few hundred locals. But, despite these local results, Tourism Fiji has decided the best approach to “ensure the best possible return on the Fiji Government’s significant annual investment in marketing Fiji to the world and to effectively position Fiji competitively into the future” is to find a lead global advertising agency to develop and implement a new global masterbrand strategy. 

News
Sweet confections vie for consumer affection with elaborate experiential campaign
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As brands try to rise above the rabble and somehow etch themselves into the minds of consumers in a positive fashion, experiential marketing—and the associated brand generosity—is becoming much more prevalent. And, as the multi-faceted Great Pascall Road Trip campaign shows, these experiential elements are increasingly becoming the glue that helps bind major promotions together.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: January 24
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DraftFCB says farewell (kind of) to another senior creative, Yellow brings in two foreign imports in its quest to go digital, Localist undergoes a restructure, Ambient Advertising adds one to the flock, Colmar Brunton welcomes a newbie, and Datamine kicks off 2012 with a triple treat.  

News
Kiwi cancer charity fights confusion and ‘compassion fatigue’ with new rebrand
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It’s tough being a charity at the moment. More charities mean there’s a heap of competition for the donated dollar, a drop in the level of donations seems to show that givers may be suffering from a form of ‘compassion fatigue’ that makes them immune to charitable overtures and, in many cases, there’s confusion about what the charity actually does, something evidenced by the story of the newly rebranded Leukemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand.

News
Ogilvy adds to retail arsenal with new shopper marketing division, kicks off with porcine victory
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Shopper marketing and retail activation is still in its infancy in New Zealand, but, given some figures show up to two thirds of purchasing decisions are made instore, things are starting to heat up. And Ogilvy New Zealand, which already has a solid presence in this space with connections to the Greg Partington-owned instore media company Hypermedia and product demonstration company Demoworks, is aiming to tap into this growth area by bringing these entities under one name and launching a new local office called OgilvyAction. And, in its first month of existence, it has already won the New Zealand Pork account in a competitive five-way pitch. 

News
SodaStream fights the plastic with The Cage project
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Plastic is bad, mmmkay. And SodaStream NZ, with the help of the PR Shop, is following in the footsteps of overseas markets and using shock and awe tactics to show it, with a large travelling cage filled with 2,000 empty cans and bottles that aims to visually represent the average amount used by a Kiwi household in a three-year period, educate the locals about the world’s recycling problem and, of course, show that SodaStream is a better, eco-friendly option. 

News
Selling the asset sales: agencies preen for big Treasury account
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It was not without a sigh and a grunt that agencies with relaxation on their minds received a notice from the Treasury on December 15 asking for interested parties to put their hands up if they wanted to work on the ‘extension of the mixed ownership model’ account. They obviously don’t know Christmas is a time of reflection for the marcomms industry. But it seems the biggest live pitch at the moment (aside from the decision on Vodafone, which is still thought to be in the hands of the global bods), is now down to the shortlist stage.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: January 20
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It is out with the old, and in with the new, in another exciting installment of “Who Goes Where?” TV3 loses feisty reporter Mihi Forbes to Maori TV, VENA NZ snaffles Grant Hyland from VIM, all the news from Fuse, NZ Geographic gets taken over internally – ouchies, a large benign growth in Traffic leads to Parnell relocation, viva la VivaKi, Botica Butler Raudon PR joins the Oriella stable, and this year’s new black – please welcome Tangerine Tango, soon to be seen everywhere.

News
Kieren Cooney opens up on Telecom’s Abstain campaign
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As everyone knows, Telecom’s Abstain campaign died a horrible death before it was even born and it was a regular inclusion in the ‘least favourite’ campaign category in our Year in Reviews. Vaughn Davis managed to pin down the former head of marketing Kieren Cooney for a chat about the campaign, the thinking behind it and its unfortunate leakage for Idealog before he headed off to Australia and we’re pretty sure you markety types will be interested in what he had to say. So put your finger on this. 

News
Of Auckland wankers, pink fists and offers of almost-free magazines
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Is Latte-Land really nothing more than a rabid trash hole filled with Remuera tractors and rude, abrasive people who think life doesn’t exist south of the Bombays? Idealog doesn’t think so, and it’s standing up for Aucklanders everywhere (yes, even the ones who don’t live in Auckland any more). The latest issue contends why the Auckland hate must stop and that embracing the inner wanker is key to our wealth and happiness. Property Council head Connal Townsend, Waterfront Auckland chief executive John Dalzell, and Heart of the City’s main man-about-town Alex Swny explain why Auckland is now so much more than just an international airport and endless traffic snarl-ups. Plus: former Telecom marketing head Kieren Cooney spills the beans on the company’s provocative pink fist (and how the campaign unravelled), inside IBM’s secret Kiwi lair, Peter Jackson’s tiny aero-empire that’s capturing the hearts of bearded middle-aged men all over the world, and some local blokes who turned down MTV’s millions (and lived to tell the tale). Fill your boots now. In fact, we’ll fill them for you. Subscribe to six issues of Idealog and 6 issues of NZ Marketing here and we’ll give them BOTH to you for the fantasmagorical price of $60 + GST! Hoorah!

News
The quest for bums on seats sees glut of academic advertising
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With the huge—some might say completely OTT—number of courses available in New Zealand, education is a very competitive sector. And, as is usually the case over summer, a range of academic institutions are currently ramping up their marketing activity in an effort to get more students to sign up. The last phase of Unitec’s year-long docu-ad series went live recently, AUT is pushing its interesting new campaign, and many smaller, more specialised schools are also advertising. But two new ads caught our attention this week: one featuring the inspiring ‘and not but’ message for the Open Polytechnic, which was created by Ogilvy Wellington and follows up from the very successful ‘Open World’ campaign, and the other a nice animated spot for the Manukau Institute of Technology, which was created by BCG2 and Cirkus. 

News
The death of TV just five years away?
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An interesting bit of biz news in from the States today, which has some relevance for this end of town. Namely that this year in the States, for the very first time, internet ad spending is set to eclipse total spending on all print media. But this has been long predicted. What is surprising is the e-marketer.com chart showing that online ad spending is set to overtake TV in the States by 2016.

News
Righting the wrongs of our graph gaffe
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Due to a short lapse in brain-functionality late last year as we dreamed of festive leisure, we made a bit of a whoopsie in the Jan/Feb edition of NZ Marketing by mistakenly running a graph that had featured in the previous issue. The graph was meant to show Nielsen’s TAM statistics about the huge number of New Zealanders who watched RWC games but, because of our error, it obviously made no sense at all and caused a fair bit of confusion. We apologise to all those who were befuddled by it. Here’s the correct graph, with the original story from Nielsen’s Caroline Atford.

News
DraftFCB takes main Air New Zealand prize, but Saatchi & Saatchi also gets in on the act
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In what will be a big blow to incumbent agency .99, Air New Zealand has chosen DrafFCB to be its lead agency after a competitive pitch, starting in March. But there is still some mystery surrounding the set-up of the account because Saatchi & Saatchi, which a few industry big mouths had thought was looking good to take the win, has also been included on the airline’s agency roster.  

News
More Grabbies pay via mobile
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Fourteen months after launching its mobile application, GrabOne’s mobile sales are at an all time high. Twelve percent of all GrabOne purchases over the Christmas period were via the GrabOne mobile application, up from 5.45 percent in November 2011 and 1.5 percent over Christmas 2010.

News
Click, type, win Wellington Sevens tickets
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Every year, tickets to one of the best events on New Zealand’s sporting calendar, the Wellington Sevens, sell out in minutes. The 2012 edition, which now has Hertz as naming rights sponsor, has already sold out, but never fear, because our cauliflower-eared friends at NZ Rugby World have got a couple of tickets to give away. All you need to do is send a message from your brain to your fingers, click here and fill in a few details. Then, if you win, you just have to come up with an amazing costume idea like this.

News
The taste of science: Sonny Bill signs up as Coca-Cola mascot, spruiks new energy drink
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Just before the RWC began, Sonny Bill Williams’ management kicked up a bit of a stink when the NZRU decreed that he wasn’t allowed to sign a sponsorship deal with a drinks company considered to be a rival to official All Blacks sponsor Coca-Cola. It turned out he should have been thankful for the denial, because the interested suitor, South Pacific Beverages, used actor Ben Barrington to front one of the biggest turkeys of the year for its Pure Energy brand and Coca-Cola then decided to sign up the man mountain themselves (for an undisclosed sum, of course) as an official ambassador to help launch its new fizzy 300ml Powerade Fuel+, which aims to snatch a share of the energy drink market.

News
Changing channels in tellyland
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Good news: World TV is launching a new English-language Freeview channel. Bad news: The plug has already been pulled on TVNZ 6. TVNZ 7 will be gone by June, replaced with a shopping channel run by Ogilvy. And Stratos TV closed down with nary a whimper on 23 December 2012, leaving the writing on the wall for Triangle.

Opinion
Again, behold the most creative country in the world
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Last year the token Kiwi at Special Group did the campaign for our Axis Awards, revealing to us that we’d won “the most Cannes Lions per capita of any country in the world in 2010 – one Lion per 155,989 people. Sweden was second with one Lion per 202,173 residents. The ‘we invented advertising’ UK? A sorry 4th with one Lion per 849,886 people. The creative powerhouse of the USA? 8th buddy, 8th! with just one Lion per 2,287,003 people. Yesiree.” So, as another of the tiny handful of New Zealanders working in New Zealand advertising, I felt a sense of duty to follow in Tony Bradbourne’s footsteps when Patrick Collister, editor of Directory magazine and The Big Won Creative Rankings, sent me his 2011 data.