Those with a penchant for posteriors may have noticed the outdoor campaign for StepOut Nature’s new range of bamboo socks and tights. And one of our dear readers had his morning brightened today when he saw this perfectly timed lamp-post shadow on Ponsonby Rd. Perhaps a caption competition is in order.
They say you can’t buy experience, but you can buy experiential agencies and that’s what Professional Public Relations has done with the acquisition of specialist experiential marketing brand SublimeNZ, an offering it hopes to grow in Australia across PPR’s six state offices.
After three years at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, Mark Cochrane has accepted an intercompany transfer and promotion to become the chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi Thailand, with Colenso BBDO’s Marcelle Baker brought on board to take over as group account director on Toyota and DB Breweries.
Whittaker’s foreign correspondent, Bay Audiology’s moments of joy, Prince Nikolai Stroganov III, NZ Police and VW’s take on the importance of being young at heart earn TVC honours.
As more technologies emerge and are adopted with ever increasing rapidity by ‘connected consumers’, Roy Morgan has connected all the dots with The Digital Universe. Pip Elliott shares nine key trends from the study to show how the exponentially expanding range of touchpoints is affecting New Zealanders’ media consumption, shopping habits, socialisation and expectations.
With the decline in consumer sales for most printed news publications and most of the growth coming from digital communications, Rugby News has decided to move with the times and, from next month, will cease printing hard copies and offer all of its news online for free in the form of a digital magazine.
While some could probably think of nothing better than a bit of silence, having to do without your favourite sounds forever is a different kettle of fish. So, to show what role sound plays in people’s lives, Bay Audiology, Shine and Exposure’s Kevin Denholm have taken a charming—and very Kiwi—look at how customers can keep ‘hearing the things you love hearing’.
The Maggies judges have spoken and the covers they have deemed to be the country’s best will now fight it out for top honours in their respective categories, plus the coveted overall cover of the year award, as they go up for a public vote over the next five weeks at www.themaggies.co.nz.
While the joy of seeing clients succeed offers inspiration for creatives, ego points, a sweet prize, and free pizza and booze are also renowned as powerful incentives to get adfolk to strive for quality. And, in an effort to promote the wonders of the static poster, Adshel is doing just that with the second instalment of its Creative Challenge, which has just opened for registrations and this year hopes to attract 100 local creatives to develop a campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand in just 60 minutes.
Whittaker’s and Assignment Group have been successfully beating the patriotic, family-owned, challenger brand drum for many years. But, due to New Zealand’s International Inferiority Complex (IIS), everyone knows that anything with Kiwi provenance needs a ringing foreign endorsement before it can be considered a true success and Whittaker’s has got a good one in the form of UK celebrity chef and unashamed chocolate lover Nigella Lawson, who has signed on to promote the new five roll refined Creamy Milk Chocolate—and give the Swiss a bit of a hurry up.
While Google’s AdWords scheme has taken plenty of wind out of the sails of print media—and traditional directory services—here and around the world, one thing Google lacks is the sales force on the ground to sell to the small to medium enterprises that make up such a big chunk of the economy. So, to remedy that, it partners up with resellers and New Zealand-based tech company Gopher has become the third local company alongside Yellow and Localist to be named as a Google AdWords premier SME partner.
Keen to get your foot in the door at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney? As any young creative knows, one of the biggest challenges is cracking that door open. But aspiring creatives can now go inside the Sydney branch after it claimed to be the first agency in the world to team up with Google to create Saatchi Street View.
The time has cometh once again, when the upper-lips of men around the country—and the world—are given a temporary hairy embrace as part of Movember celebrations. And Carat has stepped up to the plate and challenged the rest of the marcomms industry to get growing and support the cause.
Auckland indie agency Shine doesn’t really play the show-offy PR game like many of its contemporaries and tends to focus on doing good work for some pretty big clients like Fonterra, Speight’s and Hyundai. And it’s thought it has added another two scalps to that list, taking House of Travel off Saatchi & Saatchi and GE Capital off Y&R.
Yesterday in the Image Centre Group’s boardroom, a company was reborn, with the country’s biggest home services franchise Green Acres launching a new, more contemporary brand.
There are a few things you can expect from a New Zealand summer: torrential rain, sunburnt tops of the feet and sausage and booze-related weight gain. You can also expect a campaign from Tip Top, but this year’s effort is a bit different—and more logistically challenging—than normal, because it’s launched a big new brand platform and is “on a mission to make New Zealand Feel Tip Top this summer, one ice cream at a time”.
Lindauer and DDB’s recent tear jerker created a bit of a stir when it was released, with some seeing it as low hanging fruit and others (particularly the female target market) seeing the hyperbole as spot-on. But the piece de resistance of the over the top campaign was a champagne tower that was filled with salty male tears* during the 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty Style Weekend at the Cloud.
The digital realm offers plenty of opportunities to monetise content. But, as AJ Park’s Matt Adams says, there are a few issues artists need to consider before signing up for services like Kim Dotcom’s new online venture.
Bodyform’s brilliant video response; at last, an honest corporate video; as if Red Bull Stratos wasn’t enough, the brand has to show off some more; inside Old Spice; Drambuie’s been sampling a little too much of its own product; some top class ‘what’s that smell?’ acting from Mr Pitt; Microsoft focuses on the clicks; human motorbikes; honestly, who wears an apricot shirt? New Zealand stars in the latest—and awesome—GoPro promo; who needs screens when you’ve got H²O; why the world is in debt; good GIF grief; Romney’s tax plan; and inside Google’s data centres (and its Easter eggs).
Given Genesis Energy is the biggest spender in the electricity sector, clocking in with a very specific $4,408,317 in the year to July according to Nielsen’s AIS data, the news it was up for pitch whipped up a bit of excitement in agency land. From what we’ve heard, pretty much every non-conflicted man and his dog was in the room at the RFP stage, which could either be seen as an indication Genesis was testing the whole market to find the best partner or it didn’t know what kind of agency it actually wanted. But reliable sources have informed us the shortlist has now been decided on, with .99, Y&R, M&C Saatchi and DraftFCB thought to be getting set to fight it out for creative duties and Spark and Naked thought to be in the running for media.
It’s the web app that keeps on winning, and after numerous awards for Colenso BBDO and Mars Pedigree’s ‘Doggelganger’, it’s added another prestigious trophy to the cabinet: The Diamond Award at the Direct Marketing Association’s International Echo Awards.
As far as unintentionally humorous advertising cult heroes go, you don’t get any bigger than the silver fox in the Colorsteel ‘Roof Shout’ ad who looks a little bit like one of the old guys from The Muppets. Well, heeee’s baaaack with his hedge clippers in a cameo for the ‘Roof Shout’ follow up, which celebrates “30 years of being the roof of New Zealand”. And this time there’s a bit of a nod and a wink about his appearance from Coxy.
After a tough few years for the automotive industry, most of the manufacturers are getting back up to speed, with some agressive marketing campaigns and more favourable economic conditions leading to a 14 percent increase in new car sales in September. Ford increased its share by nine percent, and it’s hoping to increase that even further for its Mondeo model with the help of a paid-for reality show called The Test Driver.
It’s been a pretty good year for bcg2 and Mediacom, with a few new accounts and plenty of plaudits at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards for the work done on Pfizer’s ‘Viagra = Avigra’ campaign. And it’s notched up another win after being awarded the Freedom New Zealand account from incumbents M&C Saatchi Sydney/Auckland and Carat without a pitch.
Along with the main ‘every time you swipe something a little bit good happens’ TVC featuring a bunch of playful animals, the idea of creating little moments of joy has been brought to life in the real world with some nice experiential executions, like swipe-activated bubble gum billboards, bubble blowing Adshels and even a seat and a magazine on the Wellington waterfront. But for its latest trick Fly Buys has got the Wellington City Council on-side and is trying to bring some joy to an eight-year-old boy named Elijah.
We’re fans of ad agencies that back up what they do for their clients by advertising and we think they should do it more often (*cough, StopPress media kit, cough*). DraftFCB leads the pack in that regard and has created a great brand that it can hang its hat on. There’s a pretty big gap back to second, but Special Group has been known to talk itself up from time to time. And to celebrate its packaging pin at the Best Awards for OOB ice cream and drum home its belief that design and advertising need to kiss and make-up, it placed this ad in last week’s Herald.
When the Australian Standards Bureau ruled that user generated content on Carlton United Breweries Facebook page could be classified as advertising and was therefore subject to the same criteria as any other ad, advertisers and advocates smacked their gobs and quivered in their boots because they felt on-the-fly moderation required to deal with comments was commercially impractical and would nullify the immediacy and openness that make social media so powerful. Now the Advertising Standards Authority in New Zealand has released its views on the matter, and while it doesn’t go quite as far as its neighbours, there are some interesting rulings that affect how brands interact with consumers online.
A triple whammy for Saatchi & Saatchi this week, with Big Ben and the Auckland Philharmonia getting in behind.
DDB, Barnes, Catmur & Friends, 2degrees, Clemenger and Colenso all walked away from the Langham last Thursday with varying degrees of Effie-inspired joy in their hearts. You can check out all the winners here. And, thanks to CAANZ and Richard Leonard, those more interested in the humans who attended can check out a few pics below.
New Zealand goes a bit funny when famous folk come for a visit. It’s that classic Kiwi combo of pride and self-doubt. And it was no different when Eva Longoria popped in recently to spruik some of her perfume, cut the ribbon on The Shopping Channel and answer a few questions at an event put on by Woman’s Day and L’Oreal. The security was almost Obama-level, with pre-event checks and phones handed in at the door, but with a bit of baksheesh we managed to get our hands on collection of glamour shots from the night. So fill your boots. And eyes.