Monthly Archives: November, 2012

News
Avanti backs up its beautiful bikes with a beautiful website
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Avanti Bikes, which celebrated its 25th birthday last year, is renowned as a design-led company, as evidenced by the gold it won at the Best Awards this year for its sexy Corsa DR. And that focus on design is helping it move into other overseas markets. Now it’s added another technology-driven advantage to its arsenal in the form of its multi-lingual, responsive website, which was built by Auckland digital agency Salt Interactive.

News
Zombies! Beer music! Lawyers! Holidizzles! Shot! Pile on! Balls! Milk! Soul! Chairs!
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XXL violently taps into the Zombie zeitgeist; choose beer, make music; the wine—and cocaine—is over; Happy holidizzles yo; after last week’s DSLR nerds, here are a few more passionate shutter bugs; Hot Chip feels the video game love; the NBA’s big colour; a meme that will please Fonterra; spray and walk away; the hot new fitness craze that’s sweeping the nation; street art meets cake decoration; The Onion strikes again as Kim Jong-Un’s sexiest man alive award gets taken seriously; Namesake Motors; and 20 creative marketing stunts.

News
Branded Bond mission ‘The Express’ nets Heineken Ad Impact Award
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There was plenty of discussion about James Bond adding Heineken to his list of favoured tipples in Skyfall. But product placement/branded content/integration/cap in handing is an accepted part of the film and TV business these days (as Daniel Craig told Moviefone: “The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn’t do it. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it is. This movie costs a lot of money to make, it costs as nearly as much again if not more to promote, so we go where we can”). And the tie-in appears to be working for the brand because Heineken’s ‘The Express’ ad, which features the raspy tones of own Gin Wigmore, has won Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award for October.

News
justONE heads the field at finalists stage of new NZ Direct Marketing Awards
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After an industry-wide review, The NZ Direct Marketing Awards had a big refresh this year, with a new name, a new judging process and a number of new categories and individual awards resulting in a 12 percent increase in the number of overall entries. And those entries have been whittled down to the finalist stage, with justONE leading on 16, DraftFCB on 12, Colenso BBDO on eight, Loyalty NZ on six, Affinity ID, Federation Rapp Tribal on five, and Twenty and ANZ/National on four.

News
Another click on the wall
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What some call the Original Sin of publishers giving their content away for free online has meant media companies around the world have found it difficult to change that expectation among readers and monetise the online realm. But it does appear to be changing—slowly. As The Listener’s new push for paid content goes live, we thought we’d share this interesting infographic from bestcollegesonline.org and Mashable that showed what’s happening in the world of paywalls and how it’s affecting readership.

News
‘Be comfortable being uncomfortable’: Claudia Batten’s entrepreneurial advice
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When Claudia Batten speaks about business, it pays to listen. Her career began in corporate law with Russell McVeagh in Wellington, where she specialised in contract, IP and technology law. But as the tech boom boomed, she moved to New York and set up gaming ad network Massive, which was sold to Microsoft in 2006 for a princely sum, with some reports at the time claiming it fetched US$400 million. This year, she left her second start-up Victors & Spoils, the Boulder-based, crowdsourced creative agency she co-founded in 2009 with ex Crispin, Porter & Bogusky directors Evan Fry and Jon Windsor, after French holding company Havas bought a majority stake in the business and positioned it for international expansion. And, as is often the way with serial entrepreneurs, she’s already started work on her next, still rather mysterious project. But she took time out to have a chat with NZTE as part of its advice from entrepreneurs series.

News
Slebs go digging for Black Gold, empty Marmite jars become novel charity aid
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Marmageddon has been a harrowing time for lovers of yeast-based spreads. But it’s been a boon for the media. And, remarkably, there’s still a bit more blood to be squeezed out of this particular stone, because Saatchi & Saatchi, Spark PR & Activate, Sanitarium and photographer Chris Sisarich have come up with a novel way to raise funds for The Rebuild Christchurch Foundation this Christmas by auctioning 19 photographs of empty Marmite jars donated by New Zealand celebrities including Rachel Hunter, Sir Graham Henry, Jaquie Brown and Trelise Cooper.

News
Instant Kiwi takes the tomfoolery instore
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Here in the expansive and luxurious StopPress towers, Instant Kiwi’s ‘It Pays to Push Your Luck’ campaigns ranks as one of the funniest of the year, which isn’t entirely surprising given the comedy-loving combination of NZ Lotteries, DDB, Jesse Griffin and The Sweet Shop’s Stuart McDonald, he of Summer Height’s High fame, was involved in its creation. And after the first instalment, which saw the Alibi spot make it into the good bit of the Fair Go Ad Awards, it’s followed up with some entertaining/violating instore luck pushing that could almost be likened to the advertising equivalent of Trigger Happy TV.

News
Coke’s name fest continues with launch of festive cans
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Just as humans will always react strangely when they see themselves on the big screen at the cricket, it seems they will also react strangely when they have the chance to see their name on a can of Coke, something the Share a Coke campaign has tapped into, first in Australia and now in New Zealand with the help of Ogilvy. And, continuing its long association with the festive season and adding to the more than 200 popular Kiwi first names (as this chap found out, Osama wasn’t one of them) and colloquial terms like Mate, Sis, Bro, Mum and Dad that have taken the place of the brand’s cherished logo, Coca-Cola has released another limited edition set of cans featuring the names of Santa and his nine reindeer.

News
Cars and clothes collide in Audi/Huffer collaboration
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Huffer, which turned 15 this year, joined forces with Absolut last year to design its own bottle and now it’s putting its special touch on premium cars, because 15 unique Audi A1s—the result of a collaboration with local fashion man and Audi ambassador Steve Dunstan—will hit Kiwi shores in January.

Opinion
Adapt and prosper: how to harness the four big digital trends of 2013
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There are a number of factors that have come together to help shape the key digital trends for the year ahead, says Theresa Clifford. The move to the Cloud over the past three years has revolutionised technology, mobile has become the new platform of choice and the introduction of social media channels has brought with it the need for multi-channel engagement strategies. And, to paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not the smartest or cleverest that will survive in this digital age, it will be those organisations that are most open to change.

Opinion
Your s*!t Facebook strategy just started costing
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Recently many people have been whingeing that Facebook has changed its algorithms, forcing brands to pay more for the same reach they were getting previously. But, as Justin Flitter writes, perhaps Facebook’s changes simply highlight a weak Facebook strategy built on buying likes with big competitions instead of actual engagement and relationship building.

News
It’s a wrap: New Zealand stricken with severe case of Hobbit fever
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Amid the controversy that seems to have attached itself to the release of the first Hobbit film, Wellingtonians in particular will be hard-pressed to forget the premiere is taking place in their city, not least thanks to the two-storey Middle Earth wrap that’s been attached to the side of Clemenger BBDO’s Wellington office. That’s one more Hobbit-themed gesture to add to a growing list that also includes DraftFCB’s baggage carousel at Wellington airport, Air New Zealand’s Hobbit aircraft and, of course, Tourism New Zealand’s 100% Middle-earth.

News
Actor, lion tamer, moustache magician
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The top hat and moustache combo is an enduring style. And, rocking the Daniel Day Lewis/lion tamer/creepy magician look to absolute perfection, the addition to the face of APN’s Rowan Spinks has been deemed good enough to take home the agency Mo of the Week title and a $150 voucher from The Grill thanks to TVNZ.

News
Supplying Ondemand: TVNZ’s Tom Cotter on the free-to-screen evolution
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There are a few major trends in TV consumption at the moment and they seem almost diametrically opposed, with second screening leading to an increase in the popularity of programmed ‘event TV’ that can be discussed with the community, and technology that allows viewers to watch content on their own terms. TVNZ is tapping into the former with its range of existing shows and its new branded content initiative, and, as TVNZ’s general manager of digital media Tom Cotter says, the latter is being taken care of with some big changes to its Ondemand platform, including a Samsung Smart TV solution and the region’s first ever iOS and Samsung apps.

News
It’s a numbers game as Twenty adds Energy Online to its 2012 haul
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Genesis Energy seems to have a penchant for agencies with numbers in their titles. Hot on the heels of .99 and justONE being appointed the power company’s advertising agency comes news direct marketing and digital agency Twenty has been awarded the Energy Online account – the challenger brand energy business of Genesis Energy.

News
Camera nerds! Mayans! Turkey! Water balloons! Eggs! Summer! Mini-Vinnie! Norway! Death! Bum Party!
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Sony takes aim at DSLR nerds; we hope the Mayans aren’t right, but if they are, at least we have former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo; William Shatner’s deep fried turkey PSA, now in song form; a good (but fake) ad for Durex; protect ‘ya eggs; after ‘Dads in Briefs’, here’s ‘Summer Psycho’; mini-Vinnie follows in maxi-Vinnie’s footsteps to help promote CPR; the tables are turned in this fictional charity song aimed at showing a different side of Africa; certainly not laughing material, but a moving ad for the UN that demonstrates how we lose one child every three seconds; a very different take on death, this time from the viral sensation that is Dumb Ways to Die; quite possibly the funniest hashtag fail ever for Susan Boyle; 20 of the best magazine covers of 2012′ and ‘I love to do spanky with my big wooden cane’.

News
Pump down the volume: TVNZ first off the block with new TVC audio standards
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No one likes to be shouted at, not least by the likes of the Big Save Furniture lady and Harvey Norman, who for the past goodness knows how many years have had sales on every other day apparently worthy of an aural assault. But that’s all set to change this coming Sunday, when Television New Zealand decreases the decibel limit of its television advertising as part of a sound compression agreement signed by all the major networks.

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