Monthly Archives: October, 2012

News
Esquires refuels with Y&R
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Esquires Coffee Houses is moving on to its third different agency in as many years, with Y&R picking up the business following a review of several local creative agencies. Media buying will be retained by Mediacom.

News
Kiwibank greases up to local SMEs with some useful largesse
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There were plenty of naysayers when Kiwibank was launched, but, after ten years, few would argue it has done a stellar job of facing up the big Australian-owned banks on the personal banking front (it announced a tripling of profits recently and now has around ten percent of the retail market). But now it’s aiming to bump up its business banking credentials with a campaign by Ogilvy and Ikon that aims to demonstrate how the bank can save SMEs time and money and let them get on with running their businesses.

News
As VodaClear gets the go ahead, Telecom takes its opportunity
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We’ve seen the banks gunning for new customers after a big merger. Now, after Vodafone’s $840 million takeover of TelstraClear was cleared by the Commerce Commission yesterday, it’s time for the telcos to have some fun, with Telecom running a full-page print ad today riffing on TelstraClear’s slogan.

News
AA Insurance fixes up, looks sharp
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Insurance is usually a very low involvement category; a grudge purchase if ever there was one (although it’s become a very high-involvement category for some in Christchurch, and not in a good way). As a result, the service it offers is often taken for granted until it’s needed. So, perhaps rather bravely given the current feelings towards the industry, AA Insurance has decided it’s time to promote the positives of its business with a big multi-media campaign by its new agency Special Group that spans TV, digital, DR, outdoor and radio.

News
Resene masters the art of test pottery
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Andy Warhol’s iconic image of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most influential pieces of modern art ever, can now be seen at Queen Elizabeth II Square in downtown Auckland. As part of Art Week, 3,944 Resene test pots in four specially chosen colours – Princess, Smitten, Shooting Star and All Black (actual Resene paint names)—were commandeered to create a 4x4m mosaic.

News
NZ Marketing goes on Assignment
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The table. Pretty much every office has one. And they’re generally not the most exciting of objects. But the table that sits in the offices of Assignment Group—and the table that features on the front cover of the November/December issue of NZ Marketing—is surprisingly interesting and has become a rather fitting symbol of how the agency began and how it still likes to work.

News
Happy Kiwi snappers show their stripes in New Zealand Geographic photographer of the year comp
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The winners of the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year competition were named in an awards ceremony at the Auckland Museum last week and Bruce Mercer, a Cambridge-based photographer, took out the coveted photographer of the year award, as well as the photo story category, for images taken after the MV Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty on 5 October last year.

News
Speight’s gets a crafty, modern makeover
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It’s pretty tough going for the mainstream beers at the moment, with all the growth coming from the craft category and the old stalwarts struggling to keep up as palates change and new tipples tickle fancies. Speight’s Gold Medal Ale is still the country’s most popular beer brand by volume, however, and the brand has recently tried to become more craft-like and even branched out into—block your ears Southern Men—cider. So, in an effort to create a more cohesive family unit and ensure the flagship variety continues its reign, the brand has been given an overhaul by Dow Design.

News
Amnesty and Colenso put the shoe on the other foot with Trial by Timeline
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There have been some impressive campaigns harnessing social data in recent years, with Intel’s Museum of Me and Me the Musical coming to mind. Now Colenso BBDO is putting that information to good use for Amnesty International with Trial by Timeline, a Facebook application that shows users what some comments or behaviours might have cost them if they lived in different, less tolerant countries.

News
Westpac’s Martine Jager on asking questions, getting answers and New Zealand’s dire financial literacy stats
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As the centrepiece of Westpac’s new ‘Start Asking’ campaign shows, New Zealanders can talk about almost everything these days, whether it be politics, religion, war, sex, existential issues and, of course, Rugby World Cup wins. But, as Westpac’s general manager of marketing and customer experience Martine Jager says, we’re still not comfortable talking about money. So can the bank actually change that?

News
About face: Trilogy’s print principles earn Glossie honours
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The final instalment of The Glossies for this year had one of the biggest responses yet, with over 800 votes. And it was Trilogy and Special Group’s all-natural campaign in Woman’s Day that came out on top, beating out Taste magazine’s Homebrand takeover by Progressive and Ogilvy and DB Export and Colenso BBDO’s The Wine List in Metro.

News
Papers chart dual declines, but a rare few buck the trend
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While the magazine sector recorded its third consecutive overall readership increase in the latest Nielsen CMI figures, the newspapers haven’t fared quite so well, with an overall decline in total readership for all dailies and metropolitan titles that has been deemed significant by Nielsen and almost universal declines in paid circulation. But there are a couple of diamonds in the rough—particularly The Herald on Sunday and The Waikato Times—and, for the optimists, the numbers are still holding up much better than they are in comparison to many other markets.

News
Love NZ uses mobile karma bank to show that rubbish that comes around, should go around
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Recycling really should be second nature by now, but it doesn’t take much more than a look around to see there’s still plenty of work to be done in terms of education. So in an effort to fill up those 1000-odd recycling bins all around the country, Love NZ has just pushed play on a six-week campaign by McCann Melbourne and its direct and digital arm MRM called It’s A Karma Thing, which exhorts Kiwis to ‘do the right thing’ and earn points they can then redeem for prizes.

News
Westpac to nation: ask and you shall receive
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Following the ANZ-National fusion decision, there has been a seemingly endless stream of bank ads vying for New Zealand’s affection. And while Westpac has dabbled with a cheeky green vs. blue = red number and a bit of sneaky teaser hijacking, it’s kept its biggest pile of gunpowder dry until now, launching a new brand campaign by DDB last night that’s headed by a 90 second TVC imploring New Zealanders to start asking questions about money.

News
Mo tips! Eggs! Bond! Yellow stalker! Space mixing! Plummeting! iPad mini! Corporate guy! Sharks! Kids! Ikea party! Thrusting! Etc!
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The man with the lustrous lip guard offers some Movember tips; beware the cannibalistic, zombiefied chocolate eggs; unlocking the inner Bond; a very real—perhaps too real—Twitter follower; drinkssss innnn spaaaace; LG shows its stripes by scaring the bejesus out of lift-riders; Apple’s musical iPad mini ad (and a spoof); mixing business with pleasure; a beautifully made plea to take shark fin soup off the menu; the power of children; some inspiration for the upcoming Xmas party season from Ikea; Jell-O presidents; a very NZF(most)W but very funny collection of thrusting men; and a stacking whoopsie.

News
MasterCard space invader takes people’s prize, Lumino’s pashfest takes booby prize and Fair Go increases eyeballs for Ad Awards—UPDATED
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There are some brilliant ads that bring joy to viewers and add to the pop-cultural landscape. And there are many more horrible ads that do the exact opposite. Either way, there’s no doubt humans have a love/hate relationship with advertising, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of Fair Go’s Ad Awards, which increased its audience from last year and crowned MasterCard’s All Blacks ‘Tight on Tour’ ad as the best and Lumino The Dentist’s ‘Love Your Smile’ ad as the worst.

News
Kleenex cleans up with Ad Impact Award
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Bum wiping and high fashion are fairly strange bedfellows. But Kleenex’s Paper Dresses campaign has been mixing the two surprisingly well since it launched in 2009. And the final cog in this year’s nine-month campaign, which upped the ante thanks to a collaborative effort between Ogilvy, Kimberly-Clark and TVNZ, has come out on top of the September round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.

Awards
Selling well: Ideaworks shares the retail love with Bird and Butler breakfast
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It’s pretty tough out there in retail at the moment, with the internet affecting bricks and mortar and economic malaise affecting everyone. But there are plenty of savvy retailers making it work and a couple of international retail gurus—Jon Bird, IdeaWorks’ chief executive based in Sydney, and UK retail expert Martin Butler—are visiting next week to share some of their secrets.

News
Power takes Fast 50 glory, as Mediacom flies marcomms flag
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For the second year in a row, an electricity company has topped the Deloitte Fast 50 list of New Zealand’s fastest-growing companies—though Pulse Utilities NZ’s 2637 percent revenue growth didn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of last year’s winner, Powershop, which clocked in with 5280 percent growth. And in the marcomms field, Mediacom came in ninth with 487 percent growth, Gopher was 17th with 304 percent growth, SnapComms was 30th with 222 percent growth, recently acquired SublimeNZ was 31st with 216 percent growth and Christchurch’s Plato Design Agency was 35th with 208 percent growth.

News
Alleged mag ad scammers fake it until they make it (to court)
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Back in the heady days of the early ’80s, invoice scams were thought to be one of the reasons for the creation of the Magazine Publisher’s Association—and the implementation of a more robust approach to measuring circulation of titles. But despite these measures, such scams are still occurring today, as evidenced by Operation Edit, a major joint enforcement agency operation led by the Serious Fraud Office that has led to six arrests.

News
ASB loses a dame, gains a new home loan campaign
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As one famous Brit hits our screens, another famous Brit departs, because Dame Judi Dench’s time is up as the voice of ASB. And while Saatchi & Saatchi has already presided over an online campaign, a cool Spotify app and some nice print work for Big Yellow, it’s just released its first TV push with a spring home loan campaign offering borrowers some cash, Samsung Galaxy tablets and a taste of ‘fully furnished’ domestic bliss.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: 25 October
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Wendy Rayner’s new reign, Michael Laws drops the mic, DDB makes a deposit, changes at Woman’s Weekly, no comment from Fairfax, Top Gear New Zealand heads across the ditch, Charlie’s finds a new chief, Ideas Shop adds a new general manager, Alt Group pleases ze Germans, Mi9 moves them up the chain, Simon Barnett heads back to TV, Dominic Bowden takes on X Factor, Datamine adds an ‘Owl’ and Bright Sparks beefs up in the south.

News
Ngage and Boxtcode harness consumers’ digits
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QR codes have slowly started to infiltrate the local scene, but it’d be a stretch at this stage to say they’ve rocked the marketing world. Enter Boxtcode, patent-pending smartphone technology that aims to resolve the limitations of QR codes, with location-based technology that connects consumers with brands via a four digit code rather than a barcode that requires scanning.

News
Flip jumps on the cheap broadbandwagon, talks up free* broadband offer
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Following a story in the Herald over the weekend about increased competition leading to a drop in broadband prices and increases in data allowances, new player Flip, a business in the CallPlus group of companies, and its agency Sugar&Partners decided to take the opportunity to link itself with the news and promote its offer of free* broadband with an ad in yesterday’s Herald.

News
It’s a party on your chest: Vodafone ups the mobile ante for Music Awards sponsorship
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The Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards are hitting stage and screen next week, and, just as it did last year, Vodafone has employed the services of augmented reality (AR) as part of its sponsorship push. But it’s gone a bit further in its seventh year as naming rights sponsor with a few innovative mobile additions, like tapping into the second screening phenomenon with Pluk functionality and claiming a New Zealand first with an interactive broadcast set to be screened via its app.

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