After establishing the New Zealand arm of Whybin\TBWA around 15 years ago, David Walden resigned from his post last year and made way for Todd McLeay. And now he has officially announced his first new role: chairman of The Family, the agency set up by ex-Ikon leaders Tom Davidson and Lee Parkinson.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
ZM, part of The Radio Network (TRN), has teamed up with ice cream franchise Pride & Joy to give a $30,000 franchise opportunity to a lucky New Zealander, who shows the drive and determination necessary to run a successful business. Pride and Joy co-founders James Coddington and Tony Balfour say that they are focused on providing opportunities for remarkable people among today’s unemployed and underemployed.
Mistubishi has just launched New Zealand’s first plug-in hybrid SUV. But, rather than trying to explain the complex technology in the new Outlander, Clemenger BBDO and Curious have kept it simple. Plus: lots more brmm-brmms and a new automotive sponsorship.
There’s no doubt that the Americans secretly feel relieved that their neighbours to the north also have an embarrassing politician, but the Canadians are aiming to wipe out the Rob Ford-shaped smudge on their otherwise respectable political track record. A new faux mayoral campaign, which has been launched by an online organisation dubbed No Ford Nation, presents a series of dishevelled men as viable alternatives to the current Toronto mayor.
To promote the release of Nymphomaniac, Lars von Trier’s two-part, four-hour journey into the psychology of sex, Flicks.co.nz has launched a campaign via Trigger Marketing that stays true to the film’s provocative, and sometimes humorous, narrative. Given that the promotional art for the film portrays the stars seemingly posing in moments of climactic ecstasy, Flicks.co.nz is now inviting its readers to send in snapshots of their own O-faces.
Just a few weeks after being named agency of the year at Axis, Colenso BBDO has picked up another agency of the year accolade, this time at the inaugural Asia Pacific Effie Awards.
APN is extending its network of digital billboards with four new sites around inner city Auckland to launch in August. It’s also got big plans for new options at Auckland International Airport when it takes over those sites in November.
Fairfax, like many ‘traditional’ news businesses around the world, has had a fairly rough time of it lately, with declining circulation and ad revenue, ongoing cost cutting and the ensuing job losses. But a new management team is in place in the New Zealand market, there appears to be a bit of renewed optimism in the media (check out Pew Research Centre’s State of the Media 2014 for a great rundown of what’s happening), its digital numbers are strong and some believe the negative sentiment towards print is overcooked, in Australia at least. Despite the issues of recent years, Fairfax is still a big business and a big employer in this country, and it’s looking for a few new recruits, so its inhouse team has created a self-promotional video (how good is that voice?) aimed at selling those in the UK on the New Zealand lifestyle and the chance to work in the “innovative, integrated multi-media business”.
While some critics saw the Wolf of Wall Street as an indictment on the exorbitant habits of stockbrokers, this isn’t necessarily the only interpretation that could be used to understand Scorsese’s directorial decisions. There’s also a growing school of thought suggesting that the financial theme was actually a metaphor for the modern trend of websites becoming insanely popular despite offering nothing in terms of completely original content.
Sky and DDB have some good news for haters of King Joffrey, the most despised character from the SoHo-screened series Game of Thrones. As the fourth season looms, fans won’t actually be pushing down a seven-metre-tall replica of Joffrey, but they can use their social media voice to the same effect.
Turn up on Friday afternoon at Gladeye’s Parnell office and you’re likely to get a sausage as part of its weekly all-staff barbecue. Turn up at any other time during the week and you’re likely to get some of the best web design and digital thinking in the country. Founder and director Tarver Graham and account director Ben Glazewski talk turkey.
Val Morgan has announced the four ad hotshots that will be sent to the French Riviera to compete in the Young Lions competition at the 61st Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity being held between 15 and 21 June. This announcement comes after Val Morgan arranged a local competition, which gave young creative teams around the country the opportunity to enter in either the film or media categories.
Vodafone is bringing its own version of a global app to Warriors matches, letting fans zoom in on a 36-billion-pixel image to spot themselves in the crowd. It captured 1400 of the 22,000-strong crowd at an Auckland stadium last week and plans to offer the engagement tool at more upcoming matches.
A group led by Localist CEO Christina Domecq is taking the reins of the New Zealand Post subsidiary, buying the directories business for an undisclosed sum. New Zealand Post says Localist isn’t part of its future now its focusing on core sevices.
Although often applauded for featuring superior narratives based on the erudite observations of talented writers, indie film plot tropes don’t necessarily provide suitable content for bedtime stories. This fact, obvious to most, is used as the premise for a new spot for the Newport Beach Film Festival in which an indie-film-obsessed father tells his daughter a terrifying, albeit creative, bedtime story rather than just reading a storybook.
APN has replaced the Foodhub online brand with Bite, bringing the print liftout into alignment with the online presence. It’s also been working behind the scenes to make its recipe collections more searchable.
This morning, Susie Ferguson and Guyon Espiner hit the airwaves as the new co-presenters of Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report, and the start of their tenure coincided with the release of new theme music for the long-running show. Since 1970, each decade of the show’s history has been given its own theme tune, and the new version, which comes a day after Geoff Robinson’s last show, serves to usher in a new era for the radio show.
CAANZ chief executive Paul Head this morning announced that Simon Lendrum, managing director of JWT New Zealand, has been elected to the position of CAANZ president, which was vacated by DDB’s Sandy Moore after his recent resignation.
New research shows if all our businesses made more use of the internet, it could add $34 billion in productivity boosts to our economy. It’s hard to know where to start on this journey, but Google public policy manager Ross Young is urging companies to take the next steps.
Kiwi households with more than five, and even as many as 10, screens are becoming the norm, according to MediaWorks’ Lifestyle Survey for 2013. Mobile device ownership is growing exponentially in parallel with increasing social media use and online purchasing.
Massey University’s College of Creative Arts specialist studio Open Lab has finished what it says was an epic project: Land, Air, Water Aotearoa. The 18-month project brought together 16 councils nationwide, along with the Ministry for the Environment and the Cawthron Institute.
Since the 1980s, BMW has been using the April Fools tradition as a canvas to showcase a series of imaginative, and somewhat insane, faux products in the hope of catching out gullible or unsuspecting consumers. And this year, DDB NZ decided to continue the frivolity by launching the BMW ZZZ Series cot, an egg-capsule contraption that simulates the noises and G-force of a road journey to encourage the little one lying inside to fall asleep.
Nike isn’t an official Football World Cup sponsor. But when has that ever mattered? Back in 2010, it certainly didn’t stop it from riding on the coattails of the tournament and creating one of the best sporting ads ever made with Write the Future. Now it’s aiming to do the same for the upcoming tournament in Brazil with its Risk Everything campaign.
Oculus Rift fans have been wondering about the future of their beloved virtual reality gaming experience since it fell into the hands of new owners Facebook. This new mashup is a disturbing vision of where the platform could end up as the social giant dictates the roadmap.
Adobe came up with a creative way to deconstruct its logo and you wouldn’t expect anything less from a company that makes products all about creativity. Adobe Lights was a project which brought the pixels made by 100 artists globally to life in coloured blocks.
If you’re going to follow Playstation’s advice, don’t tell your mum or dad. The company recently asked European fans to stick their fingers in an electrical socket to endure a sustained shock, but it was all in the name of scoring a copy of the new game InFamous: Second Son.
Yealands is on a mission to toast six Kiwis on sustainable journeys with its online campaign Raise a Glass. The campaign website, developed by Satellite Media, showcases each finalist’s story, including musician Iva Lamkum, Frank Stationery owner Jason Holdaway and Sea2Summit7 adventurer Dave Williams, who raises awareness and funds for male mental health.
NZ Tax Refunds has complemented its desktop and mobile offerings with iOS and Android apps that let users apply for a refund and get updates on the status of their cash boost. And the 60 seconds it takes via browser to find out whether a windfall is in the offing will be a similar speed on the app.
FCB Media, OMD, SparkPHD and Mediacom have taken a large number of finalist placings in the CAANZ Beacon awards, for which winners will be awarded on 1 May. Mediaworks, TVNZ and iSite Media are in the running for the Media Brand of the Year.