Monthly Archives: November, 2014

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Playing the long game: Todd Wheatland on why content marketers need to start measuring the right things
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The inaugural Ad:Tech New Zealand conference took place yesterday at the AUT Business School, with around 400 people in attendance. And while measurement is one of the digital realm’s major strengths, Todd Wheatland, global head of strategy at content marketing agency King Content, used his time on stage to prove the famous quote (that wasn’t actually uttered by Einstein) of ‘not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts’.

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Vevo introduces Kiwi sales team, aims to collaborate with brands on original content projects
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A recent article published on Gigaom.com revealed that Wake Me Up by Avicii has been become the most streamed song on Spotify by amassing over 200 million views, but this still lags well behind YouTube’s mammoth 450 million views of the song. And that wasn’t even the most-streamed song on YouTube. That accolade goes to Psy’s Gangnam Style, which has over two billion streams. Driving much of this traffic from within the YouTube platform is Vevo, the video hosting service that often has its name attached to artists’ channels. StopPress recently sat down for chat with the company’s newly appointed country manager Brendan Muller and its executive vice president international Nic Jones for a chat about what they plan to bring to the local market.

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Vending machine for mutts: coming to a park near you
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The first dog vending machine has arrived in New Zealand, dispensing doggie treats and balls to fetch. But the vending machine-in-marketing category is not a new one. Heck, even vending machines for dogs aren’t new. We take a look at some more illustrious examples of zany vending-machine marketing stunts.

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The pull of digital
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A few months back, TVNZ went to great lengths to promote the latest season of The Amazing Race and the fact that Kiwis were competing against the Aussies, with comedian Millen Baird being put to good use as a motivational coach. As part of that, Rush Digital and Ambient Experiential got together to create “a world-first activation”: a live-streamed game of tug of war. And these videos show how it brought the real world and the digital world together.

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Stuff surpasses Yahoo in digital audience, sets sights on Trade Me
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Recently, StopPress ran a story in which Fairfax’s group executive editor Sinead Boucher said Stuff was working on a strategy to overtake Yahoo in terms of online visitor numbers. And this has now come to fruition with Nielsen’s statistics for October showing that the Fairfax-owned media property received more unique visitors over the course of the month than Yahoo.

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Knock me down with a feather
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There’s no shortage of anthropomorphised animals in advertising (Speight’s latest ad, for example), but Asus has taken it to the next level to promote its Transformer Book T100 by punning hard on the word ‘fly’ and enlisting a very digitally savvy, very productive avian mascot.

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Netflix to become the Netflix of NZ in March next year, plus: Neon unveils some of its lineup
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The last year has seen subscription video on demand (SVOD) become a major talking point, with various players vying to become the Netflix of New Zealand. However, claiming this title will now be difficult now following the recent announcement that the actual Netflix plans to launch in both Australia and New Zealand in March next year. PLUS: we look at Neon’s lineup.

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The rectangular glow: Auckland Airport and Westpac get new digital screens
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Digital outdoor advertising again made its way into the media this week with the announcement that a gigantic billboard—the length of a football field and eight storeys tall—was about to be installed at New York City’s Times Square. The story was picked up by various mainstream publications across the world and once again served as a reminder of how hot digital screens are right now. Here in New Zealand, the adoption of digital screens has been slower, but APN Outdoor and Westpac recently added a few more glowing rectangles to Auckland.

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A glowing juggernaut to arrive in Times Square
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Auckland has seen an influx of digital outdoor advertising over the course of the last year, and the nation’s brands are queuing in order to get their messaging on these glowing rectangles. And while APN Outdoor’s billboard on Queen Street certainly isn’t diminutive with a height of 3×9 metres, it is but a tinny when compared to the advertising battleship that is about to be steered into New York City’s Times Square.

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Creative up and comers set for annual show-off sessions
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As Whitney so rightly sang, the children are our future. And the ad children from two of the bigger schools are getting set show off the year’s work in the hope of securing gainful employment, with AUT holding a function tonight and Media Design School holding its portfolio event next Tuesday (and using the ‘reaction faces’ of local creative juggernauts to help promote it).

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The Block NZ builds on ratings success of previous seasons
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At Auckland Airport on Friday night, something slightly interesting—albeit not altogether unexpected—happened. The Kiwis enjoying a last-minute meal at the Bach Alehouse asked the waiting staff to turn up the volume of the television, not for a sporting or international news event, but for a reality TV show. Despite now being three seasons deep, Kiwis had clearly not tired of The Block NZ and they still wanted to see the action unfold during the finale, which saw Alex and Corban Walls walk away with $307,000. And the popularity of the show wasn’t limited to a holiday house-themed pub at the airport on Friday night.

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How to improve the world’s best ad
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DDB’s ads for Volkswagen back in the 1960s are regarded as some of the best ever made, as evidenced by Think Small’s first place on Ad Age’s top 100 campaigns of the last century. And, as this parody called ‘nine ways to improve an ad’ from 1963 shows, it pays to remember that simplicity is still the best approach.

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A fiery greeting
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Earlier this month, the team at Wellington Airport added a third giant, Tolkien-inspired character to its collection of statues that currently greet tourists. Joining Gollum and the Great Eagles is Smaug the Magnificent, considered to be the last of the great dragons in Middle Earth.

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Is Santa a mild-mannered New World employee named Noel?
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After two delightfully insane adverts that illustrated that retail advertising doesn’t always involve the same tropes, the New World marketing team has reeled it in bit for its Christmas campaign, which features a mild-mannered employee named Noel, who may or may not be Santa in an admittedly average disguise.

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‘Your guts isn’t a floatation device’: Nani Pupu brings sass to water safety in new Māori Television campaign
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Māori Television has introduced a bit of sassiness to water safety in a new campaign that features Nani Pupu, the opinionated, bolshie and often inappropriate character that Mai FM’s Brent Mio played in the YouTube clips for the ‘Te Kupu o te Wiki’ language programme initiated in conjunction with NZ Post for Māori Language Week this year.

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Leading by example: the chief executive-based publicity stunt
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Chief executives as the front-person in ad campaigns have been a long-held staple in the advertising space, but the majority are often boring and overused, with voiceovers set to a kitschy hipster montage or “walk-n-talk’s” directly addressing the consumer (shout to to Chanui). But here are a few that over-the-top/down right dangerous stunts that don’t fall into that trap.

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Horse’s Mouth: John Kelly, TVNZ
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Earlier this year, TVNZ centralised control of its programming across TV One, TV2 and Ondemand and appointed John Kelly to the newly created role of general manager of programming. Kelly, who first joined the broadcaster as an editor in 1995, shifted across to the programming 2006 and was shortly thereafter promoted to the position of head of programming for TV2. While Kelly is certainly a TVNZ veteran by most definitions, the launch of the new season came with first for him in the sense that he found himself holding the reins of not only TV2, but also of TVOne and TVNZ’s rapidly growing on-demand offering. StopPress popped around to TVNZ’s soon-to-be-previous offices on Auckland’s Hardinge Street to chat to him about his favourite picks of the new season, his thoughts on TVNZ Ondemand, his programming strategy, cancelling shows and what the future holds for the government-backed broadcaster.

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The lure of a captive audience: Val Morgan’s Suzie Lamborn on the state of cinema advertising
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At a time when consumers have more movie-viewing options than ever before, some may find the growth of various box offices from around the world slightly surprising. But heading to the cinema remains very appealling and where there’s an audience, there will be advertisers, especially if it’s of the captive variety. So with Val Morgan recently holding its new season launch and showing off some of the big movies heading our way next year, we asked cinema network sales director Suzie Lamborn a few questions about how the medium is faring from an advertising point of view. PLUS: Val Morgan’s move into digital out of home with Tower TV.

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