Smart , the brand known for bringing us the smallest car in the world recently pranked a bunch of people by telling them they were bringing out the world’s largest car.
Monthly Archives: July, 2014
Vodafone has dug into the annals of recent pop culture and emerged with what is often referred to as the worst song ever made, Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’. And rather than keeping the nauseatingly catchy tune restricted to a private boardroom listen between the marketing managers, the telco has decided to unleash a cover of it through a new TVC by FCB.
Fairfax is continuing its diversification by creating a special national events division to span Fairfax media properties that have until now run their own events.
Constipation can be stressful but what about from the turd’s point of view, tucked up inside you? McCann Health in Shanghai had this very thought when they created this ad for laxatives, which ran in Singapore newspapers and bus shelters. “Instead of approaching the dramatization from the patient’s [point of view], we approached it from the excrement’s,” McCann Health says.
Industry happenings at Gladeye, The Marketing Association, Fairfax, Dynamo, Sunday Punch and ANZ.
After 14 years, the New Zealand Sponsorship Agency recently rebranded as Spur. And, as more brands see the benefits of creating experiences for customers that can then be amplified online, it seems the planets are coming into alignment for this small but growing agency.
Everyone loves a good scratch. And everyone loves winning money. So Lotto NZ by DDB are hoping to show that Instant Kiwi can give you a bit of both, with four spots showing depressing situations being transformed with a wiggle of the finger.
BMW Canada created a bit of online conjecture recently over a recent spot showing its new M4 skidding around a racetrack located on top of an aircraft carrier. Not surprisingly, given the distinct lack of racetrack-enabled aircraft carriers in the world, it was accused of being fake. But no-one seems to care whether it is or not, because it’s been viewed nearly five million times online. And now New Zealanders are getting a taste of it for the local launch.
This week, data specialists Nielsen and Roy Morgan both unveiled new data segmentation approaches that will see the insights they provide take on a more granular form. And in a rather uncharacteristically quirky move, both organisations have given their respective strategies somewhat interesting monikers.
First up in our new section, Ben Rose, head of brand at Sovereign, professes his admiration for Z Energy.
The discussion underneath the stories on StopPress can be extremely entertaining and quite revealing, but things often veer towards the negative. So we’re trying to balance the ledger a bit and, in conjunction with The One Percent Collective, we’re launching a new section for agencies, clients and anyone else in the wider marcomms industry to claim the moral high ground and celebrate the good work of their competitors.
The brands that New Zealanders trust the most were announced by Readers Digest recently, with Whittaker’s winning first place for the third year in a row, and also taking out the New Zealand icon and confectionery sections. So do these little badges make a difference to consumers’ decision-making processes? And are most trusted lists like this pointless?
Canada-based Milk West, a dairy partnership consisting of Alberta Milk, BC Dairy Association, Dairy Farmers of Manitoba and SaskMilk, has launched a somewhat bizarre YouTube-based campaign via DDB. Called Snack Time and featuring a trio traditional snacks in awkward scenes, the campaign takes the form of a web series that is intermittently updated with new videos.
People will recognise the work of Coats Design from the aisles of their local supermarket and logos of their local retailers. It’s responsible for wrapping design around the products of big Kiwi names such as Michael Hill, Rodd & Gunn, Barker’s of Geraldine, and last year’s redesign of Hubbards cereal. And the man who kicked it all off was founder Rob Coats, who passed away on the weekend and is remembered fondly by his colleagues and contemporaries in the industry.
After a few seasons with MediaWorks, Sky managed to grab the rights to one of the best shows on television, Modern Family. And to promote the launch of the politically incorrect show on its free-to-air station Prime, FCB has created a Facebook app that claims to detect favourite children.
One fact that has stuck with me over the years—and flashes up in front of me occasionally when I’m deep in a time-sucking online/social media rabbit hole—is that the same part of the brain that responds so favourably to pokie machines is the same part of the brain that responds so favourably to the constant arrival of notifications on your phone, in your inbox or on social networks. So, like digital meerkats, many of us are constantly popping our heads up and looking for the next information fix. And, as a recent Victoria University study has shown, the online realm is having an impact on our reading behaviour.
Whittaker’s and Griffin’s have colluded in sugary goodness to produce a limited edition product mashup called the ‘100s and 1000s Bar’ that combines Cookie Bears, chocolate and a significant sprinkling of hundreds and thousands. And to promote their product fusion, which was released on 21 July and will be available for only three months, the co-conspirators have launched a competition via a Facebook-hosted microsite that encourages Kiwis to cover random items in hundreds and thousands and then send in images of the results.
While online shopping is certainly on the rise, digital technology does not have to disrupt and destroy physical retail, says Theresa Clifford. Rather, it can be used to optimise inefficiencies and increase service and personalisation.
As a study by Trademob in late 2012 showed, around 40 percent of mobile ad clicks are either fraudulent or accidental, with more than half of them a result of ‘fat-finger syndrome’. That’s obviously bad for conversions and one major reason why advertisers pay less for mobile impressions (Google added another click into the mix to ensure users really wanted to visit a site). But Y&R, MEC and mobile advertising sales agency Mobile Embrace are trying to fight unintentional clicks another way: by making slightly more interesting mobile ads.
Motorola has launched a tattoo that allows smartphone users to unlock their phones instantly. So is it a henna tattoo of a QR barcode? Is it a microchip inserted into the skin? Or is it an actual tattoo etched onto the body with electronic micro fibre ink?
Every brand and his dog seems to have been trying to get in on the selfie craze recently, and, as yourselfieideaisnotoriginal.tumblr.com shows, it often smacks of desperation. But if you’re going to get punters to take a photo of themselves, at least make it challenging. Samsung, one of the few brands to have had success when it comes to selfie-related campaigns, is doing just that, with what could be seen as a tech-related version of the ice challenge.
Adding to the avalanche of selfies, ‘dronies’ might soon be saturating the social media feeds of snow-goers, with a camera-equipped drone hitting the South Island ski slopes in Tourism New Zealand’s latest stunt.
While tagging is often seen as an activity worthy of punishment, brands often seem to get away with it. BNZ and Unitec have done it in recent years. And Comedy Central got in on the stencil action recently to promote the new series of Chris Lilley’s Jonah from Tonga, which plays on Mondays at 9.25pm. But as a Sideswipe reader asked, why the hypocrisy and is it appropriate to have a big brand-sanctioned schlong on the streets?
Back in 2010, tampon brand Kotex confronted the Netherlands and used the word vagina in an ad. Last year, Carefree followed suit and online tampon service Hello Flo went even further with a couple of hilarious spots. The same trend towards openness seems to be developing in the bum wiping sector, long a haven of rolly dogs, tacky euphemisms and smiling actors, and Kleenex Cottonelle has convinced comedian Madeleine Sami, someone who seems to revel in public displays of awkwardness, to get on board and spruik its moistened wipes to New Zealanders. PLUS: Why wastewater experts are waging war on ‘flushable’ wipes.
Green Cross Health, which owns the Unichem and Life Pharmacy brands and has a range of other medical interests, has announced the launch of Living Well, an owned media channel that is being produced and published in partnership with Tangible Media. The first issue of the quarterly publication will be released in September 2014 and distributed by name to 100,000 households in the defined target market, which will be drawn from Green Cross Health’s loyalty programme. An additional 50,000 units will then also be distributed via the pharmacy conglomerate’s network (phase two of the project will also see digital and social elements introduced). PLUS: What are the legal rules that govern content marketing of products that make therapeutic claims? Updated with answers from Brook Milbank, the head of marketing at Green Cross Health.
Over the course of the last week, the nation’s major supermarket chains have been embroiled in a discount battle that the Herald has dubbed ‘bread wars’. The first shots of this this retail skirmish were fired on 17 July, when Countdown dropped the price of its budget white bread from $1.48 to only $1, a discount that was immediately promoted via radio and television advertisements under the ‘Price Lockdown’ banner that has been giving Kiwis reduced prices since October last year. On the very day that Countdown dropped its bread prices, New World released a similar campaign and shortly thereafter Pak ‘n Save did the same. And this effectively served as the next phase of a back-and-forth discount battle that has seen both Foodstuffs and Countdown taking aim at each other in numerous campaigns.
A doffing of this week’s cap to Skinny, TVNZ, James Hardie and Red Bull.
Paul Catmur, the creative managing partner of Barnes, Catmur & Friends, shares his views on life, advertising and other annoyances, such as the unbundling of media.
Red Bull is a brand renowned for its pioneering approach to content marketing, but companies cannot live on content marketing alone and even Red Bull needs to pay to put its ads on telly occasionally. And it’s done just that with its latest global ad, which is running in New Zealand and features three Kiwi athletes—motocross champ Levi Sherwood, kayaker Ben Brown and mountain biker Brook Macdonald. PLUS: Red Bull’s new music programme Sound Select and the launch of redbulletin.com.
Channel idents have come a long way in recent years, with a lot more time, effort and investment being put into them in an effort to create signposts for the channel’s personality. And Brandspank, which has earned a reputation for its stellar work on channel brands, has just done its thing for Comedy Central New Zealand, with six very Kiwi, openly immature stop-motion idents that feature sliced kiwi, mangled sausages, turds in bags, flaming cow bums, brick-shitting possums and over-excited tomato sauce bottles.