As part of our series with the One Percent Collective that’s dedicated to celebrating good work and inspiring a bit more generosity, David Thomason, FCB’s head of planning, lavishes praise on NZTA and Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Mistakes’.
The radio survey is generally a competitive affair, which pits the two commercial radio networks against each other and invariably results in the liberal use of superlatives. The latest edition was no different. The releases from the respective networks read like pages torn out of a motivational speaker’s speech, drawing attention to all the positives that the result served up. MediaWorks used its release to draw attention to the fact that it overtook NZME in terms of overall station share in Auckland for the first time. And on the other side of the divide, NZME highlighted the continued dominance of Newstalk ZB, and singled out Mike Hosking for again having the number one breakfast show in New Zealand. PLUS: Matt Heath and Jeremy Wells celebrate Hauraki moving from 13th to 12th.
Small businesses are all about the people, right? The owners, the manufacturers, the clientele. There’s a story at every turn, so why aren’t they being told? Well, at an event organised by Good magazine, London-based designer and technologist Jessi Baker, the founder of social enterprise Project Provenance, will be sharing her experience around storytelling in small business marketing and creating user-centred experiences in the e-commerce sphere. So grab yourself a ticket.
Our weekly collection of good things, funny things, weird things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Contact and Genesis have been trying their best to up the love with recent campaigns involving cute kids trying to explain family life and My Kitchen Rules sponsorships respectively. And now Nova Energy has added to the melee with the launch of a new rhyming campaign via Clemenger BBDO and Taika Waititi.
Typically, Toyota focuses on the toughness of its Hilux ute, something clearly demonstrated by Top Gear’s unsuccessful attempt to kill one. Australia has also embraced that strategy with its Unbreakable positioning, but now it’s decided to focus on the toughness of the men who choose to drive one. PLUS: Toyota’s tie-up with Modern Family.
As mentioned in recent stories about Special Group’s collaboration with Anna Funder for Papsaley, Microsoft’s work with BMD and Icebreaker’s Simon Beck Collection, art and commerce are regularly intertwined in the world of marketing. Creative agency Fly has a long history of doing just that and creating objects that “act as a trojan horse for the delivery of meaning and emotional connection”. And recently it collaborated with artists to help launch Spark’s subscription video on-demand service Lightbox and a new range of charitable drinks for Phoenix.
The ninth edition of the annual awards show was hosted at AUT and again organised by the industry body News Works. And this year, the attendees from DDB left with the biggest smiles as the agency picked up the most coveted award: the Newspaper Ad of the Year. Illustrating that the greatest ideas don’t always have to be complicated, the judges awarded the gong to DDB for its simple VW print ad that drew attention to a Beetle sale.
Danny MacAskill is a phenomenon on two wheels and, along with his sponsor Red Bull, he has created some amazing films like Imaginate, Industrial Revolutions, Epecuen and Way Back Home in recent years. And his latest one, The Ridge, which sees him and filmmaker Stu Thomson return to their homeland on the Isle of Skye and face up to the 1000 metre drop of The Cuillin Ridge, is one of the craziest and most beautiful yet.
UK artist Simon Beck does some remarkable things with his feet. And Icebreaker has hooked up with him to launch its new season collection and, at the same time, raise money to fight climate change.
New Zealand lags behind a number of other developed counties on the recycling front, but it’s slowly getting its act together, with the Love NZ campaign’s big mission starting to bear fruit and the vast majority of New Zealanders now having access to kerbside recycling. But there’s still a long way to go when it comes to reducing waste and, judging by the angry all staff email sent out to the StopPress yesterday about banana skins being left in the recycling bin, some are still in need of education. This is a problem the Auckland Council also faces, so it’s employed the services of two animated characters rather prosaically named Tin Can and Plastic to teach Aucklanders what goes where.
The internet is very good at bringing different groups together. Google, Trade Me, Ebay and Amazon have brought buyers and sellers together. Uber has brought drivers and passengers together. Airbnb has brought owners and renters together. And now a New Zealand website called madam.co.nz hopes to bring ladies of the night and those willing to pay for them together.
What works on Netflix also works for TVNZ. Or at least that’s what the recent on-demand statistics for Orange is the New Black suggest. Over the month of September the first and second seasons of the hit dramedy, a Netflix original, were streamed by Kiwis via TVNZ Ondemand over a million times.
Movies like Titanic, Lion King and Top Gun get an interesting makeover … or is it a makeunder?
As well as expanding around the world, Burger Fuel is expanding into online ordering in New Zealand. And to celebrate, it’s come up with a beautiful poem and some naff pick up lines.
Paul Mant took over the role of general manager at New Zealand’s biggest digital sales house/ad network Adhub almost two years ago. And as ad spend continues to head online, the business has grown at around 20 percent per year. So is the banner dying? What’s so great about native? And are brands that use ad networks destined to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time?
Several weeks ago, Spark released the latest iteration of its ‘Never Stop Starting’ positioning via a 30-second spot that depicted a protagonist using Spark’s mobile payment technology across a varied range of jobs in different locations. And the telecommunications giant isn’t the only one dabbling in this space. We take a look at some of the recent moves made the major players.
On election night, MediaWorks collaborated with SparkPHD and digital media agency Ngage to feed live election results onto APN Outdoor’s digital billboard network around Auckland, making TV3 the latest brand to adopt a digital approach to outdoor advertising. So given all the hype centred on the versatility and effectiveness of digital OOH advertising, where does this leave traditional outdoor advertising? And is the growth of digital also starting to affect other industries?
There’s so much talk about innovation today and at Spikes Asia held in Singapore last week, innovation and technology were overwhelming seminar themes, says FCB’s James Mok. But what is the relationship between innovation and creativity? And is innovation always creative? What should come first?
As Whittaker’s proved, having a famous endorser can be good for business. Sealord has also gone down that path in its latest campaign to flog premium frozen hoki fillets, but its collaboration is a little more surprising: MTV reality TV star Heidi Montag.
After a few years running The Radio Network, Jane Hastings took over as chief executive at APN in May and she’s shaken things up since her arrival, hiring a new exec team, embracing cross-selling and cross-promotion across its channels and launching a new brand for the multimedia beast called NZME. Here’s her take on what’s been a whirlwind few months.
GoPro’s promotional videos have largely focused how users can film themselves surfing, jumping off mountains or generally laughing in the face of death. But it’s increasingly showcasing how it can be used in many other areas of film-making, whether it’s clips of kittens that have been rescued from fires, golden eagles in flight or ridiculous lion encounters. And its latest clip to launch the new Hero 4, ‘The Adventure of Life in 4K’, is a thing of audio-visual beauty.
Ad creep—where commercial messages are placed in previously uncommercialised zones—has been on the rise for years as consumers increasingly turn away from traditional media. There have been ads on Japanese schoolgirls’ thighs, on foreheads, on lakes and practically anywhere else a pair of human eyes might be forced into seeing an ad. Product placement is one of the biggest areas of focus and big bucks are spent to get brands into movies, TV shows and, increasingly, games. So, given the music industry’s relatively parlous state, it’s not entirely surprising to see that Universal Music is doing everything it can to get some extra cash, including letting brands pay to be retroactively included in its previously released music videos.