Monthly Archives: August, 2014

News
Hauraki breakfast team follow in successful stations’ footsteps, APN gets in on the cross-promotion action
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Radio Hauraki has fully embraced its 13th most-listened to breakfast show tag in recent months, with Jeremy Wells’ brilliant ‘Like Mike’ section being born out of a desire to replicate Mike Hosking’s morning success and a new online video series showing the team heeding memos from on high and doing a few things guaranteed to move them up the rankings, such as using t-shirt cannons and adding some sexual tension to the mix. And, as per usual, they’ve done it in slightly unusual, self-deprecating and moderately NSFW fashion.

Features
Spirit in the Sky
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Drive south down Auckland’s southern motorway, away from all the architecturally designed corporate HQs and swish media hangouts, and nestled inbetween the industrial estates and nondescript…

News
Slingshot continues its incumbent nudging, aims to increase pricing transparency with Front Up
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Slingshot has shaken a few trees in recent months with its legally dubious Global Mode, which makes use of a workaround and lets Kiwi viewers access sites like Netflix and Hulu, and it’s fully embraced the Streisand Effect to get some more attention after a few major broadcasters decided not to show the ad. Now it’s continuing on that quest in a slightly different way by backing a new website called frontup.co.nz that shows how much Kiwis pay for goods and services in comparison to other markets.

News
Beervana puts some media thinking into craft beer drinking
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Media folk have long been renowned for their love of a tipple. And, if the StopPress Towers are any gauge, many of them seem to have a penchant for the tasty, interesting and expensive beers emanating from some of the country’s numerous craft breweries. Every year, those two things are combined at Beervana’s Media Brew competition, which sees adventurous beer-loving journalists from around the country paired up with a craft brewer to develop a special, one-off brew. And Dish’s recently departed editor Victoria Wells and Hallertau Brewery took out the title with a NZ Wild Ale with Horopito. Plus: ANZ report suggests potential growth of 300 percent in the next decade for Kiwi craft beer companies as demand ramps up overseas.

News
When venn diagrams attack
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There’s nothing better than a good venn diagram. Nothing. But it’s fair to assume the designer who made this ad for Thomson Reuters probably wasn’t going for it to be perceived that way.

News
Monobrow and sideburns: One Weather gets a new look, plus other quirky meteorological clips
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One Weather’s introductory ident has been given a makeover—and it comes with an impressive combination of sideburns and a monobrow so seamless that omnichannel marketing campaigns would applaud it. Rather than simply running into the weather report with the usual “proudly brought to you” phrase, Saatchi & Saatchi have instead opted for a quirkier activation of its sponsorship deal with TVNZ by having the pie-loving protagonist from the elaborate 2011 Hilux ad introduce the daily weather report. PLUS: we also look at some other funny weather-related clips.

News
From watching to making: how viewers’ social interactions with shows are influencing entertainment
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Around the world, advertisers are trying to involve their audiences in the marketing, whether it’s Wendy’s love songs, Airbnb’s Hollywood & Vines, Newcastle’s crappy crowdsourcing or, locally, Give it a V and Feel Tip Top. TV shows have long talked about doing the same, and many of them have taken fandom into the realm of social media. But increasingly it seems broadcasters are not content with audiences passively absorbing content and are trying to convince them to get involved. So how’s that working out for them?

News
APN’s half year results show profit increase of 77 percent, but there isn’t good news across the board
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APN’s first half figures for 2014 for the six months ended 30 June show that the company’s overall revenue across its Kiwi and Australian offerings climbed three percent, rising from AU$394.6 million last year to A$405.9 million this year. Statutory net profit after tax followed the revenue trend rising 77 percent from A$12.8 million from the previous year to A$22.6 this year. But it wasn’t all good news, with several of the Kiwi categories suffering year-on-year dips. PLUS: we look at Fairfax’s figures and the News Corp debacle.

News
Row, row, row your boat …
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Just as spring follows winter, so too do parodies follow election ads. There’s been plenty of billboard ‘art’ (some of it quite funny). There’s been a song about John Key (that’s been banned from being broadcast by the Electoral Commission). And there’s been a satirical Colin Craig website (that can’t be shut down because it’s outside New Zealand jurisdiction). And now YouTube user Gabriel Page has tweaked National’s first campaign TVC to show a slightly different type of rowing.

News
Don’t invite the Jetsons over for dinner just yet
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At a time when Spark’s Digital Ventures unit is currently trialling a SmartHome system with a view to launch it in the market in early 2015, we are stepping ever closer to a time when our homes become automated entities that respond to what we are doing and where we are. So, in an effort to see what all the hype is about, Vanilla Brief director Ben Slater recently underwent a smarthome trial.

News
Newcastle Brown Ale’s crappy crowdsourcing
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There are a few brands that are excellent at taking the piss. Newcastle Brown Ale is most definitely one of them. In their latest campaign for the US market, the beer brand is asking fans to send in their mediocre photos because they blew their marketing budget on “paying celebrities to pretend to drink our beer”.

News
Kiwi ad man Ben Slater trials implantable tech
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As part of an experiment to gauge the utility and efficacy of the technology, Vanilla Brief Director Ben Slater has had an NFC-enabled RFID chip inserted into his left hand. PLUS: see what other tech-related project he is currently involved with.

News
The perils of automation
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We rely on technology for so many things, but from time to time that reliance goes comically awry. That happened when Spark used find and replace to get rid of the mentions of Telecom on its website and, in a classic case of the law of unintended consequences, ended up creating a new word: Sparkmunications. But there are plenty more entertaining find and replace oopsies.

News
Labour beams out its positive vibes in first TV spot
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National released its first campaign TVC this morning and there was plenty of discussion about it—and its soundtrack—on social media afterwards (as Tim Denee wrote on Twitter: “National STRONG like SPORTS TEAM. Other party weak like baby in lifejacket”). Now Labour’s followed suit and launched the TV execution of its Vote Positive campaign.

News
National embraces a more positive sporting analogy for first campaign TVC
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The National Party has been forced to make a few rugby analogies in recent days as it deals with the fallout from Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics. But it’s used a rowing analogy in its new TVC to try and show Kiwis it’s a smooth, well-oiled, economic machine that’s taking the country in the right direction and that its opponents are bumbling idiots.

News
Warriors players discuss the intricacies of pronouncing foreign words
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Information released by Statistics New Zealand recently revealed that the extent of the nation’s multiculturalism. And given that we could very well be in the proximity of one of the 4,593 people who identify as French in the nation, it pays to ensure we’re pronouncing words borrowed from their language correctly. So, with the launch of its latest French-inspired burger, Wendy’s has assembled a troop (or is it troupe?) of Vodafone Warriors players to discuss exactly how the word ‘brioche’ is pronounced.

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