Monthly Archives: October, 2014

News
‘Forget time-shifting, start ad spend shifting’: Fairfax releases research on online video viewing, trumpets effectiveness of pre-roll advertising
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Online video is booming here and around the world. And Fairfax is looking to get a bigger slice of the audience—and the ad revenue—that’s heading that way. So it’s released a campaign based on recent research from Colmar Brunton that promotes its popularity as a video platform and the effectiveness of pre-roll advertising in an era of rampant time-shifting.

News
How little we have changed
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There are plenty of critics who, as this brilliant story in The Atlantic shows, believe that there has been a dumbing-down of news, a rise in entertainment and a focus on celebrity. Because we now have the technology to see what’s being read and watched, some feel it has become a vicious cycle of banality. But the research of George Gallup from almost 90 years ago on what people read in their newspapers shows that this isn’t a new phenomenon, that native advertising was always effective and that “readers are liars”.

News
Your garden variety start-up
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As Mashable wrote last year, all start-up videos seem to look the same (including Xero’s, which appeared on its list of cliched techniques twice). So they’re ripe for taking the mickey out of. And Canada’s Invoke Media has done that with a pitch video for an amazing new start-up called Carrot.

News
The show must go online: Genesis and Kiwibank keep viewers’ eyes on the prize with sponsorship extensions
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TV shows are increasingly trying to keep the audience’s attention after broadcast—and, with much of the population seemingly unable to keep their eyes off their mobile devices for more than ten seconds, often during it. Sponsors associated with shows also want their share of the eyeballs. So, following on from Kiwibank’s attempt to increase audience engagement with its Block Out Live Bingo-style game for The Block NZ, Genesis Energy has added another string to MKR NZ’s bow with an online quiz called Guess the Ingredients.

News
Fishing where the fish are: Tangible Media gives Idealog and NZ Fishing World a digital spruce up
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As many proponents of the magazine industry say, it’s not about paper, it’s about communities of interest. In many areas, those communities of interest—and many advertisers—are heading online to get their information and inspiration, so, with pressure on paid-for circulation, it’s becoming more important for these titles to have a quality online presence. And two of Tangible Media’s titles—Idealog and NZ Fishing World—have responded to those changes with redesigned, responsive websites.

News
McDonald’s makes online push to raise awareness of McHappy Day, continues efforts to be seen as a ‘good neighbour’
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In the lead up to this year’s edition of McHappy Day—the signature fundraising event for the Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC)—McDonald’s has launched a YouTube video that draws attention to the charitable work the organisation does to assist families who have children suffering from illnesses. The video features compilation of clips heart-wrenching clips of families living in on the Kiwi-based Ronald McDonald Houses.

News
The brand that can do no wrong
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Remember when Cadbury sneakily added palm-oil to its chocolate and decreased the size of its packs? The company got an absolute slamming and its trust levels went through the floor. So it was interesting to see the exact opposite of that response when Whittaker’s put a post on Facebook saying that it would soon have to raise its prices.

News
The wait ends: TSM rebrands as Semble, unveils its mobile wallet
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At a launch event held last night at Auckland’s Snapdragon Bar, TSM NZ chief executive Rob Ellis unveiled a new mobile wallet brand, bringing fruition to a plan that was first announced over a year ago. As part of the launch, Ellis also said that the collaboration between the shareholders 2degrees, Spark, Vodafone, Paymark and banking partners ASB and BNZ would no longer be known as the TSM but rather as Semble. The main principle underpinning the Semble system is that it aims to remove the need for cards by facilitating a contactless payment system through the user’s mobile phone.

News
Converse’s online guerilla perks
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The founder of Ello started up the ad-free social network because he felt like the internet had turned into a giant billboard. There are ways to get around that, of course, and the rise of adblocking software is one of the most popular (nearly five percent of all internet users now use such software, up 69 percent on last year, and 18-29 year olds in the US clocked in at 41 percent). Converse is a brand aimed at the younger end of the market, so, in keeping with the trend towards utility in advertising, it created its own solution to annoying banner ads: a downloadable browser extension called The Ticket.

News
Holden’s Monaro restoration video series nears its conclusion—UPDATED
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In an effort to encourage Holden fans to engage with its 60th anniversary microsite and share their stories, Holden has created an online competition that gives entrants a chance to win a restored 1969 Monaro. But rather than simply give away the car, Holden has used it as a content opportunity by documenting the restoration process through a video series fronted by Greg Murphy. When StopPress first covered this story, Holden had only uploaded the first video in the series, but since then an additional five have been uploaded (the most recent of which was published on 2 October).

News
Did this 1995 Holden ad inspire Scientology’s creative direction?
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In 1995, Holden released a bizarre commercial that features a young child playing with light representative of the cosmos while the hypnotic voice of an omniscient narrator elaborates on the safety features of the Commodore Acclaim. By the end of this 30-second trippy journey, viewers are left with the uneasy feeling that their minds may have been incepted by some form of subliminal advertising. And while the car company didn’t further the campaign with any follow-on iterations, this unconventional creative approach seems to live on in the modern advertising efforts of the Church of Scientology, which for last year’s Super Bowl released a spot that also rates quite high on the bat defecation scale.

Opinion
The rise of the pocket riders: how technology is changing the transportation industry
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There’s been an explosion of transport apps in the New Zealand market in the last 18 months, and many in the industry are saying the time for traditional taxi companies to get on board is now, before they find themselves on a long journey into oblivion with the meter running. So how has the taxi market changed? And will technology bring the industry kicking and screaming into the modern world?

News
Looking at the positives: how MediaWorks and NZME are promoting the radio survey results
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Immediately after the results were published, both sides of the network divide sent out media releases that seemed to use hyperbolic phrasing in lieu of punctuation and cherry-picked at the positive results served up by the survey. But it didn’t end there. Once the radio survey was covered by the media, the networks turned their attention to promoting the results not only to the public, but also to the media agencies and clients that are likely to advertise on radio. We take a look at how MediaWorks and NZME are celebrating their wins through advertising.

News
The Kiwi equivalent of the Cronut? Lewis Road Creamery and Whittaker’s get New Zealanders slobbering with new chocolate milk
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Lewis Road Creamery, which was founded by Assignment Group’s Peter Cullinane, kicked off with a range of premium and ‘mass premium’ butters before launching its milk range. Both have found plenty of success, with the brand now stocked in a number of Countdown and New World stores around the country. Its ambition is to continue down the dairy aisle, and as part of that process, it’s hooked up with Whittaker’s to launch “New Zealand’s only chocolate milk made with real milk chocolate”. And it seems to have sent New Zealanders into a dairy-related frenzy.

News
Fonterra rebrands RD1 to Farm Source, unveils new farmer-centric strategy
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Fonterra has taken a page out of the mainstream retailer’s playbook by establishing a rewards initiative that gives its members access to a range of perks to those in the co-operative. The introduction of the loyalty programme is part of a series of changes, which also includes plans to rebrand all 67 of Fonterra’s RD1 stores to NZ Farm Source hubs (there are also plans to introduce four new stores), launch new digital technology, introduce on-site support and initiate a range of financial options exclusive to members.

News
Touch the future
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The more things change, the more telcos will be talking about their role in the future. The recently rebranded Spark has been trying to convince Kiwis to never stop starting. But back in 1991, a quintessentially post-modern poster series by Mark Adams for Telecom was all about how fax machines and cell phones helped keep people in touch, ‘from yesterday until tomorrow’.

News
Convicted adman’s name suppression riles up Sensible Sentencing Trust
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The Sensible Sentencing Trust is on a mission to bring an end to permanent name suppression for prominent perpetrators unless the complainant or victim requests and/or agrees to it. And that fight spilled over into the ad world recently after a High Court decision to grant a 42-year-old Auckland advertising executive and father of two who was convicted and sentenced for possessing and exporting child rape imagery in June this year permanent name suppression. So should his name be released so that potential clients know? And what would that mean for the agency that employed him?

News
Pricks, lardos, Vladimir Putin butt plugs and climate change denial: a handy tutorial on what the media can and can’t get away with
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The Broadcasting Standards Authority’s rulings on complaints can be a good litmus test for what the New Zealand public can stomach these days—and an entertaining insight into the beliefs of the nation’s easily offended wowsers. We’ve looked at some of the decisions of the last six months and compiled a handy tutorial for those in New Zealand media.

News
Commercial Approvals Bureau gives Breast Cancer Foundation okay to show nipples in new ad
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The New Zealand Breast Cancer foundation has launched a new campaign via Colenso BBDO that features actress Geraldine Brophy displaying pictures of a series of women’s breasts to illustrate what changes are likely to take place in the event of breast cancer. The ad, which is based on a successful Scottish campaign featuring Elaine C Smith, was initially meant to run last year, but the Commercial Approvals Bureau blocked this move on account of the rule that female nipples are not allowed in television advertising. However, the Bureau has now backtracked on this decision.

News
Cruelty to (past) animals
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World vegetarian week kicked off last week and ends tomorrow. And while many meat-dodgers are seen as peaceful types who don’t eat creatures because of concerns around animal cruelty, Hell has twisted that stereotype to promote its vege pizza deal.

News
Beaurepaires chooses DDB and Dynamo for life after Vince
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DDB and Dynamo will lead the new creative strategy for Beaurepaires after winning the automotive repair company’s advertising and media planning account, following a competitive pitch thought to have involved several unnamed agencies. And this announcement also coincided with news that Vince Martin, the face of Beaurepaires for the last 30 years, would no longer be the brand ambassador.

News
John Oliver tells corporations to stay off Twitter
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In a recent segment, John Oliver aimed his verbal barbs at corporations who attach their commercial Tweets to serious issues. He leads the discussion by referring to US-based DiGiorno Pizza, which used the #WhyIStayed (created to raise awareness of domestic violence) without reading what it was about. The consequential ‘#WhyIStayed You had pizza’ Tweet was met with instant outrage from the online community, and resulted in various reports on mainstream media. But Oliver doesn’t restrict his criticism to corporations that make online faux pas. He also condemns those that make seemingly innocuous and thoughtful Tweets, such as those published on the 13th anniversary of the 11 September attacks. In his typically scathing style, Oliver makes the point that corporations should really just “remain respectfully silent”.

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