Monthly Archives: March, 2012

Opinion
Air New Zealand’s rare loyalty miscue—UPDATED
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I fly a lot. I fly a lot with Air New Zealand. It’s my favourite airline in the world and I consider myself an honorary Air New Zealander (the name that Air NZ uses for its employees). Everywhere I go I evangelise my airline (Air New Zealand is owned, in part, by the New Zealand taxpayer so it is, in effect, my airline). So, given all this, it’s a sad day when I’m forced to write a post bemoaning a move that New Zealand’s airline makes.

Opinion
Mobile research: new platform, new thinking, new opportunities
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Although mobile research is sometimes considered the new kid on the research block, it has actually been available to researchers for a decade. In fact, the first SMS mobile survey was conducted by Ipsos twelve years ago. Despite this, development of the methodology has been very slow across the industry and even today mobile surveys account for less than 1.5 percent of global industry revenue. However, mobile research is ready to become a key tool in researchers’ (and thus marketers’) toolkits, with the industry predicting mobile surveys via SMS, mobile internet and mobile applications will be the biggest areas for potential growth this decade. So understanding the opportunities and developing the right techniques is the recipe for success.

News
Spray and walk away: Cut Collective heads outdoors for Nokia’s Lumia launch
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Otis Frizzell recently put his hand to the wall to brighten up Ponsonby’s Sohole and promote the new Samsung Galaxy Note, a very cool piece of kit that sits somewhere between a phone and a tablet and harks back to the golden age of cellular technology by being massive and rocking a stylus. And now some other talented Kiwi artists are using their skills to help launch another fancy gadget, with Cut Collective transforming a couple of billboards in Auckland and Wellington for Nokia’s new Lumia.

News
.99 leaps into action with BP billboard
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.99 hasn’t had a particularly good run of it recently, after handing the keys to both Air New Zealand and Vodafone over to DraftFCB. But we thought we spied a glimmer of light when we saw this leap year-related billboard for BP.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: 9 March—UPDATED
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Mike Knowles gets a slice of Farrimond, Tangible bids adieu to Julian Andrews, digital agency Gladeye shifts from a budgie cage to an eagle’s nest, CAANZ and The Sweet Shop announce their Young Lotuses, Audi and MIT share the love, Australasian promotional products don Bill Kestin takes up an international post, and say hello to our little friend, new Movings/Shakings sponsor The Pond. 

News
MasterChef as tempting as ever?
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Now in its third season, MasterChef has moved from Sundays at 8.30pm to Tuesdays at 7.30pm, so is it still pulling in the punters? According to Nielsen figures the show is more popular then ever, with over 200,000 viewers watching this season’s first episode. That’s up 40,000 from last season, and in its target demographic (25-54) it won a 29 percent audience share–up six percent on last year.

News
Special Group heats up, as AWARD Awards announce 29 Kiwi finalists
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Special Group has managed to get itself a spot alongside BMF and The Monkeys as a finalist for Creative magazine’s coveted Hotshop Awards, while Finch and Curious got the Hotshop nod in the production categories. And in the AWARD nominations, DDB Group picked up the most finalists with seven, followed by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop with six each. In the craft categories, Finch received seven finalist nominations, Thick as Thieves three and Curious Film also received a nod for its poignant Helena’s story, made for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.

News
2degrees drops its tangy fruits
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Since it entered the New Zealand mobile market, 2degrees has been running regular cinema advertising and offering deals like two tickets for $22 on 2degrees Day every month. And it’s continuing that trend with a new exclusive sponsorship that was brokered by Carat, features a fairly strange ad by TBWA\ about a well-moisturised, hibernating blue bear and aims to get moviegoers to turn off their phones before the flick starts.  

News
Boag joins forces with experienced PR campaigners, cuts ribbon on new agency
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After a one-year stint as executive director at Ogilvy, former National Party president and PR recruiter Michelle Boag has kicked off her newest venture, a strategic communications company with Cedric Allan, a former national president of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand, and Andrew Pirie, who worked as the strategic communications advisor for Auckland Airport and spent more than a decade overseas as the Asia Pacific head for global PR firm Weber Shandwick. 

News
Girl Guides take the biscuit, go on animated charm offensive
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Every year young girls lug boxes of biscuits around suburban neighbourhoods, knocking on doors and smiling sweetly as they try to raise some much-needed money by feeding what could be seen as a longterm national addiction. This year Assignment enlisted the help of Yukfoo for the fundraising campaign and, with the voice talent of three Guides and netball star Maria Tuta’ia, as well as a dose of Yukfoo’s typically impressive animation, it’s hoping the charm offensive will help boost the number of Griffin’s biccies being dunked around the country (if you want to avoid the grey sludge at the bottom of your cup, you’ll be pleased to know that mechanical engineers in the UK have devised a mathematical formula to ensure the perfect technique).

News
Ford and JWT turn the retail tables with self-reflexive sale campaign
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Negative commentary tends to flow freely in this industry and typically anonymous commentors are pretty quick to put the boot in on the comment wall if they don’t like something—or have an axe to grind. Unfortunately, praise for good work is always less forthcoming, but if a story about a new campaign is well-read and only has a few comments, it generally means readers are digging it. That seems to be the case for JWT’s just-released reality advertising campaign for PlaceMakers and while the agency rubs its hands with glee about that one, it has also recently sent another nice piece of work for Ford into the wild: a retail campaign that pokes fun at retail campaigns.

News
Must see TV: Dotcom, Bain, and Tamihere pull in the punters
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Hats off to some great gets in tellyland recently. John Campbell kicked it off on Thursday 1 March with a brilliant interview with Kim Dotcom. The interview garnered world wide attention, and was picked up by international networks Rtl Germany, NBC America, and Reuters. Then on Sunday both David Tamihere and David Bain broke their silence for the first time in a night of must-see TV. Both did time… but did they do the crime?

News
Building, living and crashing
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Who’s it for: PlaceMakers by JWT NZ and Exposure

Why we like it: Like a nature documentary—but with tradesmen as the focus. A classy reality advertising campaign that shows the nuances of the building site very well, portrays the builders as craftsmen who like …

News
PostClick comes out to Play
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Online revenue figures show no signs of abating at the moment, and one of the newer players in the local ad network scene, PostClick, is aiming to get a bigger slice of the pie by launching a new multi-unit online video product called Play, which national sales manager Ben Osborne says simplifies the fragmented online video industry and makes it easy for agencies to buy pre-roll ad space. 

News
Share a slogan, win a hefty L’Oréal hamper
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‘Just do it’, ‘The best a man can get’, ‘Show us your crack’ … They’re all slogans that have in some way captured our attention, seared themselves into our consciousness and given us a powerful catchphrase to remember a brand by. And this year marks the 40th anniversary of another successful catchphrase, L’Oréal’s ‘Because I’m Worth it’, which was thought up by a 23-year-old copywriter in New York in 1971 “when a new spirit of feminism was in full swing”. We’ve got a hamper containing an assortment of L’Oréal Paris skincare for both men and women, hair care products and cosmetics worth more than $420 to give away to one lucky StopPresser, so add your favourite slogan of all time to the comment wall and the best effort gets the goods. 

News
Grovel, beg and plead, win weekly $100 Flossie voucher and booze
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Know someone in your office with Hobbit feet, someone who’s a bit pasty after the cloudiest summer on record, or some hot babe and/or hunk who simply deserves a little extra pampering? Well, nominate your Flossie of the Week by emailing [email protected] or putting a comment on the comment wall telling us why they (or, if you’re greedy, you) deserve it and we’ll give a lucky someone a $100 Flossie voucher and a bottle of French Champagne every week. Entries close Friday morning. 

News
Saatchi & Saatchi win love with paper roses
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This month’s stand-out newspaper ad was Tui Brewery’s ‘Valentine’s Day’ ad from Saatchi & Saatchi.  The judges agreed that it showed “great use of the medium and was interactive” and that it “spoke nicely to the immediacy of newspapers”.

News
Build it and they will come: PlaceMakers and JWT keep it real with new brand campaign—UPDATED
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It’s been a tough old time in the building biz of late. Homes have been leaking, consents have been dropping and the Christchurch rebuild is taking longer than expected to kick into action. But there is some optimism afoot this year and PlaceMakers is aiming to assert its position as the go-to trade supplier in New Zealand with its first brand campaign for a few years and a major sponsorship of the Super Rugby competition.

News
Mar/Apr NZ Marketing deemed good enough to eat by experts
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Looking for some words to read and pictures to look at? We’ve got just the thing: a freshly minted copy of NZ Marketing magazine. It’s out now, and there’s plenty to sink your eyes into. Our cover star Dave Walden feeds our own Vincent Heeringa some humble pie, during a very long, very expensive and very overdue lunch; James Hurman shares a few parting shots; we look at whether it’s the best or worst time to be in the TV biz, head outdoors to see if 2011 was just a fluke, and talk to some recruitment high-rollers to find out where job hunters should be looking; Nielsen’s AIS figures show 2011’s big spenders–and where they spent it; and there’s a rundown of all the winners of the RSVP and Nexus awards. 

News
Saatchi & Saatchi’s long and winding Camry ad—UPDATED
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Toyota New Zealand has teamed up with Saatchi & Saatchi for its latest Camry campaign, which is aimed at the ‘executives of life’. And, in terms of being so chock-a-block full of Kiwi patriotism it makes your teeth hurt, it’s right up there with Air New Zealand, Telecom, the BNZ, and, more recently, Mercury Energy. Of course, it was always going to be tough ask following up the Hilux’s ‘tougher than you can imagine’ campaign, but–hang on to your steak and cheese mate.

News
It’s business time… when accountants advertise
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With only two things certain in life, death and taxes, accountants can count themselves lucky (geddit?) they’re in one of the few sectors with almost no need to advertise. As the late great Albert Einstein himself pointed out: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.” So, you know there must be a GFC happening when you see previously cloistered bean counters putting down their calculators and promoting their maths skills in a fancy-pants digital marketing campaign. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) has teamed up with Clemenger BBDO and OMD to launch its first advertising campaign in five years.

News
Waffle on about whiskey, win whiskey
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Dwarves the world over are dusting off their greens as St Patrick’s Day fast approaches. March 17 sees many things turn a touch green, and most people find enough Irish in them to justify celebrating with 13 million pints or so of Guinness. This year Jameson Irish Whiskey is adding to the party atmosphere by releasing a limited edition bottle of its finest. Designed by Paul Daly, we have one to give away, which you could win by impressing us with your finest hyperbole about the whiskey’s bouquet, nose, body and fruity yet subtle notes.

News
All Blacks smashing coptercam ‘goes viral’
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This time last year we were oohing and ah-ing over the mad ball skills of the All Blacks. Which turned out to be the mad skills of the mighty ABs—and the special effects jiggery pokery of Brandspank. So when #aliwilliams tweeted “Haha yeah that copter thing was hilarious. Izzy took it out. BOOM!” along with a news announcement on the All Blacks and BackingBlack’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, followed shortly after by the release of a film showing the All Blacks smashing a “coptercam” out of the sky with a rugby ball, we should have guessed… we’d become victims of yet another ad campaign ‘going viral.’

News
NZ Book sales defy digital doomsayers
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NZ Book Month is back with the same plan it’s had for the last seven years: to promote books, reading and literacy amongst all Kiwis, young and old. To do this the organisers are repeating last year’s Books Change Lives campaign, and distributing more than four million $5 vouchers, aimed at putting a book in the hands of every single New Zealander. This simple idea got extraordinary results last year, when New Zealand was the only country in the developed world where book sales rose rather than fell.

News
ACP toasts to good health with new month-long events initiative
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As the magazine sector’s revenue from sales keeps shrinking, publishers are increasingly looking to make up the shortfall by moving their brands into meat-space (and greasing up the paymasters with creative advertising solutions). And, following on from ACP’s successful 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty last year, it has just launched the next iteration of the scheme with 30 Days of Health and Wellbeing, “a cross-platform editorial and advertising initiative designed to promote health awareness and physical and emotional wellbeing”.

News
Colenso BBDO opens up a big lead in AXIS finalists race
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The Marketing Association celebrated the use of insight-driven marketing and data last week. And CAANZ will soon be celebrating what could be seen as the opposite end of the marcomms spectrum with the creatively-focused Axis Awards. And after 50 judges—and presumably the wonderous Axis Metal Detector—spent three days scanning the very best work in New Zealand this year, regular creative award-hogger Colenso BBDO came out on top with a massive 57 finalist nominations, followed by Special Group with another excellent showing on 21 and DDB Group and Clemenger BBDO on 17. 

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