Haven’t had your daily dose of The Hobbit? Then head on over to newzealand.com and take a look at New Zealand redrawn in the spirit of Tolkien thanks to WHYBIN\TBWA and Weta Workshops.
The last TVC of the Week accolade for 2012 and it’s the global phenomenon that is driving dogs, mobile innuendo and kids mixed with science that taste victory.
Fresh from winning more Caples metal than any other agency in the world over the weekend, Colenso BBDO followed that up by winning Campaign Asia Pacific’s New Zealand creative agency of the year award ahead of DDB Group and DraftFCB, with creative chairman Nick Worthington named as the Australasian region’s best creative director. DDB Group also backed up a good year on the awards front, with Rapp/Tribal winning digital agency of the year ahead of Colenso BBDO and TBWA\DAN, while Spark PHD was rewarded for an impressive year with the media agency of the year title, ahead of Naked and OMD.
If knowledge is power, Lillian Grace wants to put a sword in every New Zealander’s hand using collaborative data and infographics through Wiki New Zealand.
There was plenty of excitement when music streaming service Spotify finally launched in New Zealand in May. And it has announced its latest numbers and a few big changes to make the service more social, more personalised and hopefully more attractive to advertisers. Plus: Nielsen’s Spotify’s numbers.
A few of our esteemed contributors have placed ‘anonymous commenters’ in the villains section of our Year in Review questionnaire, as they did the year before. And it’s fair to say most would agree with those choices. But not all, it seems. We received an interesting ‘Anonymous Message’ from a generic email address with a link to a video featuring a shadowy figure in a Guy Fawkes mask outlining the surprisingly worthy, if rather threatening, intentions of anonymous commenters: to completely eliminate all bad ads from this world.
We’ve seen Facebook data used effectively to tap in the modern narcissistic streak, especially with Intel’s Museum of Me, but Clemenger BBDO and Resn have flipped that upside down—quite literally—with a brilliant anti-speeding campaign in the form on an online game for the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA).
Marcomms folk are a competitive bunch. Always fighting over clients/awards/staff. And, in many cases, that competition is often a good thing for the quality of ideas, which is why PHD and its local outpost Spark Group are set to launch a new global operating system that taps into elements of gamification and crowd-sourcing to “encourage participation and collaboration” among the 2,500 staff across the Omnicom-owned group.
MetService is launching a redesigned website this afternoon to bring more of its labyrinth of meteorological data up to the user level.
The new site also gives advertisers an interesting proposition: bid for ads next to different weather types.
Mass market weeklies have had a rough time of it in recent years. But ACP has opened an early Christmas present in the form of the recent double issue of Woman’s Day, which clocked in at over 200 pages and took the title as biggest ever issue.
It’s official; Instagram and Twitter are no longer BFFs.
After several weeks of thrusts and parries, Instagram no longer allows images from its 100 million users to be displayed on Twitter, according to a statement made by Instagram to AllThingsD.
With a new chief executive, a new joint venture with Sky, the highest rating show of the past ten years for New Zealand’s Got Talent, plenty of interest in branded content, and the march of mobile seeing new Ondemand apps on the horizon, it’s been a big year for TVNZ—and, after knocking newspapers off the top ASA spot and charting ten year highs for viewership, TV in general. Head of sales Jeremy O’Brien talks.
2011 wasn’t a particularly memorable year for Saatchi & Saatchi, with the pink fist debacle casting a major pall. But the new executive and creative team has shaken things up and, after winning ASB without a pitch earlier this year and releasing some of the best work of 2012, the confidence—and the quality—appears to have returned. Creative directors Corey Chalmers and Gus Roberts speak up.
While Volkswagen dominates overseas, research showed that Kiwis thought the brand was too cold, too bland and too European. So to change that, it invested heavily in indigenous research and advertising, launched some very successful new products and quickly went from ‘niche street to main street’. National marketing manager Denise Goodwin opines on the year that was.
With some quality work, a fresh management team, an amazing new office in the Cityworks Depot in central Auckland and an almost but not quite moment in the recent Genesis pitch, a few agencies might be looking over their shoulder at Y&R next year. James Hurman and Josh Moore go for a hoon on 2012.
Unitec has pushed the educational marketing envelope over the past couple of years with some novel and risky campaigns and helped change the perception of the institute among potential students—and their parents. And Jeanette Paine, the executive director of marketing and communications, was rewarded for her efforts after being named as a finalist in the TVNZ-NZ Marketing marketer of the year award.
It’s been a rough ride, and with the whiff of restructure in the air, there will undoubtedly be a bit more roughness to come. But Telecom has steadied the ship in 2012 and, with Jason Paris at the helm and a resurgent Saatchi & Saatchi helping to create one of the best campaigns of the year, it is starting to get back on the goodfoot from a brand and storytelling point of view. Head of brand and insights Charlotte Findlay takes the stage.
Steve Bayliss had the Midas marketing touch at Air New Zealand and he seems to have transferred it to his role as group general manager of marketing at Foodstuffs, with the Pak ‘n Save brand continuing its top form and New World getting a long overdue—and almost universally applauded—refresh.
After the blessing/curse that was losing Vodafone, 2011 wasn’t the best of years for Colenso BBDO. But it’s been a strong 2012 for the “awesome bunch of bastards” at the agency, which has achieved more creatively than ever before in its 43 year history. It’s currently the #5 agency in the world according to the Big Won Report, the #5 ranked agency globally in the international Effie rankings and it brought home a big load of metal at Cannes, Axis and, most recently, Caples. Here’s what the Nicks—Worthington and Garrett—had to say about it.
After kicking off its ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign with a few friendly dictators, Powershop and DoubleFish then moved into fictional territory with ads featuring Jaws, Daleks, Darth Vader and Frankenstein. A cease and desist letter from LucasFilm moved the campaign back in the direction of well-known humans, such as a free-lovin’ Margaret Thatcher. And now the brand has either bravely or foolishly taken things in a much more controversial direction with a new ad that wouldn’t be out of place on a St Matthew in the City billboard and features Pope Benedict XVI presiding over a same sex marriage. We predict fire and brimstone Powershop’s way cometh. And, if we’re lucky, maybe even @pontifex’s first Tweet.
Rob McGregor accentuates the positive, Jane Guthrie and Gregor Whyte chosen as the University of Otago/NZ Marketing Magazine Outstanding Marketing Students for 2011 and 2012, Tamati Coffey departs Breakfast, and Goldie joins LIVESport.
Auckland agency Contagion has taken out the latest Yahoo! Digital Strategy Award for its ‘Not Quite As Kiwi As’ campaign for New Zealand snack brand Tasti.
Taschen and Mad Men. ‘Tis a match made in advertising heaven. And we’ve got three Ads of the Mad Men era notebook diaries to give away to those hoping to relive the glory days in 2013. So delve into the recesses of your mind (or the recesses of the internet) and post your favourite line or scene from the show (or just a funny old ad) in the comments and you could be the envy of all your friends next year.
We’re fans of Charlie’s ‘Mission from Good’, Unitec’s ‘We make the people who make it’ and Fly Buys ‘Every time you swipe something a little bit good happens’. And they just keep on giving.
A match made in parody heaven; slide effects; two of the UK’s most-watched ads on YouTube this year; Diesel’s pre-internet shoes; behold the wonder of Google’s search app; compare and contrast; Slipknot vs. Cliff Richard; bread gloves, sneezing sucks and pizza perfume, famous photos reframed as selfies.
Auckland Fringe 2013 officially launched today with a snazzy new look devised by design partner Special Group and the promise of three weeks of the bizarre, the beautiful and the baffling in February as “joystick orchestras, boy bands, Antarctic song cycles, cross dressing history celebrities and stories about dogs, Nazis and curry” vie for attention. And for all the creative types out there, festival sponsor Taxi Impact is offering you the chance to plaster one of its taxis with whatever wrap you want* as part of its Taxi Art Project.
‘Tis the season for awards, and Kiwi agencies have put in a more than respectable showing at the recent Australian Graphic Design Association Design Biennale Awards in Melbourne.
Auckland-based digital display and customer engagement company Ngage Media has struck up a deal with the Efficiency Group that will see it launch Ngage Australia. PLUS: a run-down on last week’s Cutting Through the Digital Landscape event.
As expected, there was a fair bit of discussion on StopPress after Localist’s decision to shift away from print and focus on mobile. And, with the help of Projector Media, 8com’s Paul Jones and Will Hall, it’s created an entertaining, innuendo-heavy ad featuring B&D, full bodied bears/beers and artistic bollocks to show that the app learns to love the same things you do and can also help you avoid things you don’t like, such as Huntly or drinking tea with mimes.
As the Auckland Zoo gets set to mark its 90th birthday this month, it’s received an early birthday present in the form of a rebrand that was launched this week.