Monthly Archives: September, 2012

News
Campbell Live passes the hat around for hungry kids—UPDATED
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When mainstream media outlets put their minds to it, they can be a powerful force for good. Campbell Live, which was in the headlines today after the announcement about is main rival Close Up, has given it a good nudge this year with a series of fundraising initiatives and it’s been shining a light on child poverty in New Zealand and its social and economic impacts this week. To raise funds, it’s instituted Lunchbox day with KidsCan and there are a number of businesses and community organisations doing their bit around the country. So as you slip back to work from your Friday power lunch, either text lunch to 8595 to make a $3 donation or harass the boss to come up with some cash. Or both.

News
Close Up set to close up as TVNZ looks to give prime time a refresh
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The axe is hovering over Close Up after a release was sent out yesterday saying it was looking at a ‘proposal’ to switch it off in favour of what TVNZ’s news and current affairs head Ross Dagan calls a “new daily current affairs show with a distinctively different format”. Most believe it’s already a done deal, and if it goes ahead, the show will finish up by the end of the year, bringing an end to a format that’s been running for 23 years.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: 28 September
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A few big switcheroos in Wellington, with Assignment Group, Saatchi & Saatchi and Clemenger BBDO ringing the changes, Naked lures one of its own back home, Rachel Broadmore swaps banks for booze, Ben Rose swaps bureaucracy for banks, the Orange Group ups its events arsenal, and Random House announces a new publicist.

News
Samuel L Jackson! Face arcade! Throat worms! Fun for two! Follow the frog! Bond! iPhone 5! Fragrance! Wrong Direction! MySpace! Extra time! Linkage!
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Samuel L Jackson reprises his Go the Fuck to Sleep role for Wake the Fuck up; Welly digi-maniacs Resn use the face; the hottest new dieting craze; selling smart cars with skateboarding; a call to arms for the middle classes from the Rainforest Alliance; Gin Wigmore becomes New Zealand’s Bond Girl; one of the many iPhone 5 parodies; there’s almost nothing better than a fake fragrance ad; Mitt Romney + One Direction = the Wrong Direction parody; it’s impossible not to use the phrase bringing sexy back when describing the new Justin Timberlakey MySpace; kids explain what they’d do with another five years; best word ever finals; ‘honestly doctor I fell on the eel while I was vacuuming’; and missing children on a 404.

News
Battle of the metaphors: Vodafone gives Telecom a wink
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There were a few raised eyebrows when Telecom chose a turtle to play the role of brand mascot in the new Tommy and Boris campaign. And Vodafone has taken the opportunity to subtly poke fun at its major competitor with a cheeky wee number starring its spokesboy James Rolleston and a greyhound called metaphor.

News
The disappearance of Mrs H.E Rald
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APN went to plenty of trouble to promote the recent changes to the New Zealand Herald and nzherald.co.nz, with a fancy TVC, a host of print and digital advertising and a microsite dedicated to keeping readers and advertisers informed. All up, the campaign had a ratecard value of $4 million (although it used its own media channels extensively). And, in what could either be seen as an example of how far newspaper marketing has progressed, or an example of how the newspaper industry didn’t need to do jack to maintain its readers and advertisers back in the day, it was slightly more advanced than the campaign the Herald ran to preview its last major format change in 1960.

News
In with the blue: ANZ and TBWA\ bank on the power of two—UPDATED
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The fusing of two financial entities that between them have nearly half of the population on their books is a massive—and massively complicated—task, both logistically in terms of back-end systems and emotionally in terms of assuaging customers’ fears through communications. It’s been in the planning for a while, of course, and in response to yesterday’s official announcement that ANZ would be phasing out the National Bank over the next two years, Whybin\TBWA is about to launch a big integrated campaign that “heralds the start of a new era for ANZ and reassures customers they will be getting the best of both worlds”.

Opinion
Personal data leads to personal choice
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In response to an article in yesterday’s Herald based around the fact that New Zealanders have little idea about how their personal information is collected and sold by ‘data brokers’, the Marketing Association’s chief executive Sue McCarty outlines the ways the local marketing community is balancing the protection of consumers’ rights with the right of marketers to add to their business’s success.

News
‘Australia, I want one of your big things’: Parker takes the lead as Christchurch appeals to the disappearing Aussies with quirky mockumentary
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After a tender process that ended up attracting over 50 submissions, Sydney agency Iris was chosen to lead Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism’s push to bring Aussies back to the region after a 43 percent decline in visitor numbers since the earthquake. And it has launched a campaign based around a series of long-form mockumentary episodes, with Mayor Bob Parker playing on Australia’s love of oversized novelty structures and real-time images used to show how far the city has moved on.

News
TSB plants first major flag in battle to grease up National Bank customers
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Smaller, independent agencies are often going on about their nimbleness and agility in comparison to the big, internationally-owned full-service shops. And smaller, independent financial institutions are always going on about the level of service and local ownership compared to the big, foreign-owned banks. And the two things have collided with TSB and Special Group’s new campaign, which aims to make hay after the black horse has bolted and offers its support to soon-to-be ex-National Bank customers.

News
National blank: inside the black stallion’s trip to the knacker’s yard
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The vultures have been circling for a while now, and the official announcement that the National Bank brand is finally heading for the knacker’s yard and will be folded into its Australian-owned parent bank ANZ over the next two years, with remaining branches rebranded at an estimated cost of $100 million, marks what will be one of the biggest changes to the financial marketing landscape in over a decade. NZ Marketing ran a cover story on the looming disappearance of the black horse and what kind of treasures were up for grabs back in May. Here’s an edited version of that story.

News
Transfusion confusion as NZDM Awards direct campaign spills blood
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A lot of effort has gone into rehashing the RSVP & Nexus Awards. New categories have been added, judging has been tweaked, the entry process has been simplified and the whole shebang has been renamed as the New Zealand Direct Marketing Awards. And, appropriately, those responsible for the changes have attempted to draw attention to them—and show that ‘blood has been spilt’ to reach a consensus—with a nice direct campaign that included packs of fake blood. But when we opened our package this morning we couldn’t help but chortle at the irony of a direct marketing campaign promoting the new Direct Marketing Awards that was addressed to someone else.

Opinion
The future: the Draper and the data
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PHDiQ’s Brendan Hewitt was one of two winners in Yahoo! New Zealand’s inaugural Digital Stars programme. And this opinion piece on the future of the digital realm earned him a trip to Ad:Tech in Sydney next year.

News
Insight: Dollop Puddings
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Based on the nugget that Kiwis wanted homemade desserts without having to make them at home, Dollop has found a sweet niche. And, on the smell of an oily rag and with a good sprinkling of intuition, it has quickly become a nationally recognised brand and doubled its sales in the past year.

Awards
Mobile in the morning
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54 percent of Kiwi online shoppers now own a smartphone, according to PwC. And thanks to the search engines in their pockets they are likely to know things about your market before you do. This should put the mobile customer experience near the top of the to-do list for many companies and the MA’s September Brainy Breakfast, which, for the first time in several years will also be held in Wellington, focuses on five key mobile experience trends that will help get you up with the play.

News
TVCs of the Week: 25 September
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Gravity Coffee’s week-long intern experiment, Sky’s awkward dead air, Orcon’s new feline ambassadors, Cool Charm’s street cred and Ogilvy’s Shopping Channel clasp the TVC of the Week trophy to their bosoms this week.

News
MediaWorks pins its colours to the masthead
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TVNZ and BrandWorld sent their new The Extra Mile masthead into the wild this week, and promptly apologised for hosting the advertorial segment on its news website. And MediaWorks is playing in the masthead sandpit as well after launching a new integrated advertising platform called Focus TV late last month. And, in what it sees as branded content—and what others might see as another example of commerce encroaching further on editorial integrity—the host and TV3’s ex weather presenter Toni Marsh is being called a ‘reporter’.

News
Self-promotion rewarded as Kiwi TV networks win plaudits at Promax
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The Promax BDA awards aim to celebrate the world’s best brand, creative and marketing initiatives within the television industry—and the agencies and network creative departments responsible for them. And TVNZ and Spicer & Martin, Sky and Brandspank, and MediaWorks all returned home from the Australia/New Zealand ceremony last week in Sydney with a few gongs between them.

News
British American Tobacco brings Aus Zealand back to life
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Given New Zealand’s feverish excitement during the Olympics when our gold medal tally was greater than that of the usually better performing Australian Olympic team, there’s still a fairly healthy dose of ‘friendly’ rivalry between the two nations. Over the years there’s been a bit of talk about New Zealand becoming the seventh state (and it happened briefly during the Games when, for the first time since 1912, the two nations came together as a rogue state known as Aus Zealand) and, from a marketing perspective, plenty of companies have decided to take care of business in New Zealand from Australia. But subtleties and local nuances are important when it comes to communications, as TVNZ-NZ Marketing Award winners Volkswagen and Z Energy can attest, and some things that work in other markets might not work here. And that’s the card British American Tobacco has played in the latest instalment of G2 Sydney’s animated Agree Disagree campaign, which taps into New Zealand’s patriotic, independent, Aussie-hating streak and questions the wisdom of following Australia’s lead on plain packaging legislation.

News
Adidas ups the All Blacks interaction with Game Day app
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Sponsorship is less about logos on hoardings and more about activation these days (although ANZ might disagree after its logo-fest at The Cloud for Valerie Adams’ gold medal ceremony last week). In fact, some believe the old ratio of three dollars for every one spent on the sponsorship should now be upped to five. So in an effort to offer some added value to All Blacks fans, Adidas and Carat have unveiled Game Day, a Facebook application that lets them follow live commentary, comment on the game, track up-to-the-minute stats, access player and team profiles, weigh in on referee calls, vote for man of the match, and buy Adidas gear.

News
Orcon and M&C Saatchi harness the immense power of the cat with launch of new brand platform
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There is perhaps no greater force in the online world than cat videos. Wired recently delved into what it called the online cat-industrial complex, ad agency John St spoofed the feline fascination brilliantly with the world’s first cat advertising agency, and a recent cat video film festival in the US drew 10,000 people (it was won by Henri 2: paw de deux). Now Orcon is embracing the zeitgeist with a new campaign starring animated cats Daisy and Gav.

News
Cadbury tells its Fairtrade tale in first instalment of TVNZ’s The Extra Mile
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As the old idiom goes, bad news travels fast. And, in a world where the ‘corporate fail’ is prime social media—and, increasingly, mainstream media—fodder, spreading the good news is becoming increasingly difficult. So, in an effort to balance the ledger somewhat, TVNZ and BrandWorld set up a new platform called The Extra Mile—almost like the commercial equivalent of One News’ Good Sorts segment—to bring more attention to some of those positive tales. And the inaugural episode was broadcast last night on TV One.

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