Monthly Archives: November, 2014

News
Driving dog: post-Vince Martin, Beaurepaires unleashes a new, more hirsute mascot
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DDB and Dynamo were recently appointed as the lead agencies for Beaurepaires after a pitch, relieving Clemenger BBDO of its duties. The company’s new owners, Beau Ideal, promised the brand would move in a different creative direction, meaning the long-serving Vince Martin would be put out to pasture. And that’s exactly what it’s done, with a canine mascot talking up—literally—its offer and categorising different types of New Zealanders based on their vehicle choices.

News
Double trouble for Powershop Darth Vader campaign
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Powershop Australia has been forced to pull a billboard campaign, featuring a power socket as Darth Vader, due to a complaint from LucasFilm. This is the second time Powershop has used the Dark Lord’s image in vain – in 2011 they also pulled an ad referencing Darth Vader after copyright scares.

News
TV3 celebrates 25 years of broadcasting, continues journey with new brand expression
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On 25 November 1989, only 25 years ago, TV3 had no viewers. The station was only set to launch the next day following a four-year period of legal wrangling to get government approval to introduce a commercial television station. Now, as the channel celebrates its quarter century, its parent company MediaWorks has a reach of 3,759,247 and has established itself as a respected competitor against the state-owned broadcasting stalwart TVNZ. And to coincide with the celebrations, MediaWorks is already looking to the future with the launch of a new brand expression called ‘For me it’s 3’ that places empahsis on the modern trend of social viewing.

News
TV3’s 25th birthday brings out the blooper reels
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Back when TV3 turned 20, Sarah Lang wrote a great piece in the Herald about the trials, tribulations and successes of the channel. Or, as the first paragraph says, how it grew “from an insecure infant into an assured adult”. The intervening five years have seen plenty more action at MediaWorks, which went through its second receivership, brought popular shows like The Block NZ, X Factor NZ, 7 Days and Jono & Ben at 10 to New Zealand screens and continued to focus on the reach its varied suite of media assets can offer advertisers (occasionally through the medium of music). But everyone knows the best thing about media anniversaries are the blooper reels. So here are some gems from the evening and morning news shows.

News
Fatherly pride vs. motherly pain
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Kiwi Steve Ayson won plenty of awards for his role directing Old Spice’s completely mad Momsong ad, including gold at Cannes and Clio and, most recently, TV commercial of the year at Shots. Now another Kiwi, Bret McKenzie, has got involved in the follow-up by writing the music for Dad Song.

News
Brought to you by cigarettes
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TV3 celebrated its 25th birthday a little bit early last Friday night with a one hour special from the Jono and Ben at 10 (or, in this special case Jono and Ben at 7.30) crew. And, as per usual, there were a few gems in there, with its throwback to 1989-style media, pies in faces and entertaining questions for some of the channel’s media personalities from Guy Williams.

Opinion
Taming the ‘first screen’: Tom Eslinger on making mobile magic
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Tom Eslinger, Saatchi & Saatchi’s global head of digital and social returned to the New Zealand stage last week (albeit virtually) at Ad:Tech’s inaugural Auckland conference. And, beaming in over Skype from his hotel room in Singapore, he shared a concentrated dose of the secrets to mobile marketing contained in his book Mobile Magic, which was released earlier this year.

News
Darby cuts some shapes for 2degrees’ Google Play promotion
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After worming its way into the pockets of well over one million New Zealanders, 2degrees has been focusing on adding the more lucrative business and post-pay customers to its ledger in recent months, with its latest campaign featuring endorsements from Geoff Ross, Dion Nash, Al Brown and Kate Sylvester. But in keeping with the other major telcos and their various marketing partnerships, 2degrees has struck up a deal with Google Play and its long-serving mascot Rhys Darby is promoting it through the wonder of dad dancing.

News
Owner/marketer: Bruce ‘Pic’ Picot, Pic’s Really Good Peanut Butter
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Earlier this year, Bruce ‘Pic’ Picot’s one-millionth jar of peanut butter came off the production line in Nelson, serving as statistical proof of the love the Kiwis have for his product. And since good news travels, it comes as little surprise that the Aussie supermarkets have signed a deal with Picot to stock his product on their shelves. We chat to the purveyor of nutty goodness about expanding his empire, combining poems with peanut butter and being a Kiwi success story.

News
Clicking for Hobbits
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​​Google’s Chrome experiments are generally cause for nerdish celebration as they push the browser to strange and creative places. And now, as The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies gets sets for launch, it’s updated the interactive map of Middle-Earth it launched around one year ago with a host of new tricks.

News
The Magazine Marketing Company placed into liquidation, creditors claim over $300,000
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On 15 October, The High Court at Auckland placed The Magazine Marketing Company (TMMC), which was founded in 2008 by Stuart Shepherd, into liquidation for failing to meet payment obligations, which included overdue GST, PAYE, KiwiSaver employee deductions, KiwiSaver employer contributions, student loan employee deductions and income tax. KPMG, which was appointed as the company’s liquidator, released its first report on 19 November, revealing additional details about the process thus far.

News
The curtain falls on Gigatown campaign
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After thirteen months and 5.95 million tweets, the Chorus Gigatown campaign is now playing its closing scenes, and there can only be one winner. Next Wednesday the long-awaited Gigatown victor will be announced.

News
Data dump: the kids are alright
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If you believe the headlines, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But if you believe some of the data (or Bill Gates), things have never been better, with fewer wars, more wealth and better health. Auckland University talked to New Zealand secondary school students about a range of things in 2001, 2007 and 2012 and here’s how their behaviour is changing.

News
Members only
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From Drawing Dicks on the Herald Sun to the Mars Rover to GPS Art, the comedy value of phallic art seems to know no bounds. So if you’re stumped for a Christmas gift for your more immature friends and family members, have we got the site for you.

News
Hubbards aims to set off a chain reaction of good deeds
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Since the first days of the internet, those online have experimented in creating behavioural chain reactions. Most often, these early attempts involved little more than sending out an email that contained a promise of all types of misfortune if the message wasn’t forwarded. And invariably, there would always be a few recipients who found the electronic promise of impending doom as sufficient impetus to send the message on. And while this achieved little more than cluttering the embryonic email accounts of early adopters, the principle underpinning these chain letters is still relevant in today’s social media age in the sense that if you give people a good enough reason to share something, then they will pass it on. StopPress looks at how muesli brand Hubbards has been trying to create a chain reaction of its own through a campaign called ‘Keep the good going’, which encourages Kiwis to participate in random acts of goodness.

News
Speight’s and DDB grin and bear it as Karl Burnett makes an uncomfortable return
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Speight’s comically masculine southern man campaign idea had a long and very successful run, and its previous agency Shine attempted to bring the idea into the modern era with the ‘Knowing What Matters’ campaign. DDB took over late last year and, in one of its first major campaigns, it’s moved it even further away from ‘Good on ya mate’, with its ad for Speight’s Alchoholic Ginger Beer featuring some major self-deprecation from ex-Shortland St star Karl Burnett and a massive pun.

News
Stuff invites Kiwis to create art in the dark
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Fairfax is starting to challenge the Herald’s dominance in Auckland with a series of campaigns that aim to draw the Super City’s denizens to its publication. The most recent effort involved an activation at Art in the Dark, which saw event attendees queue in long lines to enter the Stuff tent to get a shot at literally creating art out of light. Once inside the tent, Kiwis would be given LED glowsticks and were then told to draw or write in the air. These actions were then captured using long-exposure photography, resulting in a host of creative images that were tagged with the Stuff brand.

News
Vodafone changes tack with Christmas ad, aims for warm fuzzies rather than laughs
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Unlike the UK, where marketers still seem quite partial to launching a massive festive campaign, New Zealand brands tend to keep things slightly more understated. In the UK, Vodafone got the entire country to sing ‘Let it Go’ from the movie Frozen. But the New Zealand outpost has taken a more lovey dovey approach, with a classic telco ad that focuses on the emotional power of the Christmas connection.

News
The only technology to be a registered sex offender
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Following on from the social storm caused by Too Many Cooks, Adult Swim has now released another of its faux infomercials that introduces the Smart Pipe, a drainage pipe that analyses the stool and anuses of toilet users. Oh, and it’s also the only technology to be a registered sex offender.

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