Monthly Archives: November, 2014

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Steinlager hits the beach as Trubridge prepares for world record attempt
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William Trubridge is probably not sipping on a Steinlager Pure at the moment, given he’s preparing to break his own freediving world record on Wednesday morning New Zealand time and descend 102m into the Caribbean. But there will undoubtedly be a few waiting for him on the boat if he returns to the surface victorious. And, in addition to a number of billboards, plenty of in-bar activation and a special elevator, Lion and DDB are aiming to get more Kiwis watching the record attempt live on TV One’s Breakfast with the help of another moody TVC.

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When advertising gets dirty
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When marketing a wine region to prospective travellers, you could show a few shots of beautiful vines, happy couples clinking glasses and the odd landscape. Or you could just show off a bunch of dirt. Yes, dirt.

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Lorde of the dance
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Lorde hasn’t had too much trouble selling records, but, given what’s been happening to the music industry in recent years, the labels could always use a bit more revenue. And Universal Music and BBDO Argentina devised a great way of drawing attention to/selling more copies of her album Pure Heroine by asking fans to imitate her unique dance style and giving them a discount based on how closely they matched.

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Horse’s Mouth: Jeremy O’Brien and Lyndsey Francis
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Good old fashioned interruptive display advertising is the golden goose that keeps laying for the local TV networks. But integration is so hot right now. And, whether it’s sponsorships, programme partnerships, production partnerships or one-off branded content projects, it’s a big part of TVNZ’s focus for the future. Following its new season launch this week, head of sales Jeremy O’Brien and general manager of media solutions and insights Lyndsey Francis talk turkey about its plans for next year and what the TV landscape might look like soon.

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African safaris to prison cells: Gull service station spruces up its restrooms with themes
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If horror films are anything to go by, then the restrooms of petrol stations aren’t necessarily the best place to visit—not so much because of the boogeymen lurking in the shadows, but more so because thought of bringing bare buttocks into contact with the toilet seat is genuinely terrifying. So, in an effort to make the pitstop experience slightly more enjoyable, independently owned fuel chain Gull has refurbished 14 of its petrol stations, giving them themes that would be more congruent with a quirky hotel than a petrol station.

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Canadian agencies indulge in some creative self-flagellation
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While most in this industry take their roles very seriously and firmly believe in the commercial value of creativity, there is also a self-awareness that allows them to poke fun at themselves from time to time, as evidenced by last year’s brilliant Axis campaign. And to celebrate Strategy magazine’s Agency of the Year Awards in Canada, it asked some of the finalists to show off their creativity—and, in doing so, many of them decided to take aim at the ridiculousness of their own realm.

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Data dump: no need for speed
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Over the course of the last two decades, the average speed travelled by New Zealand motorists has decreased year on year. And while the mean speed has dropped more gradually from 123 km/h in 1996 to 95.7 km/h, the speeds among the 85 percentile—the 15 percent of vehicles recorded travelling faster than the mean speed—dropped markedly from 115 km/h to 102 km/h.

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Incontinental drift: how two Kiwi entrepreneurs are aiming for a slice of a big but embarrassing market with fashionable, absorbent undies
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What do you get when you combine two guys with a passion for ski racing—one an urban planner with a PhD and the other an art photographer and fashion designer? The unlikely answer is a start-up company with a mission to develop sexy (and dry) underwear for the incontinence market—and a penchant for doing lots of research.

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International cover lovers give Kiwi efforts the nod
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One particular magazine cover has been generating plenty of discussion and plenty of entertaining responses (Homer Kimpson takes the win) in recent days. Not surprisingly, Kim Kardashian’s effort for Paper caught the eye of Coverjunkie, a website that celebrates “creative covers and their ace designers”. And a few local efforts from Next, Metro, North & South and Threaded, have also been featured recently.

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.99 and LBC turn doing nothing into doing good with search for a cure
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Earlier this year, Pedigree and Colenso BBDO tried to monetise slacktivism with Share for Dogs, a campaign that, as the name implies, asked people to watch videos of cute dogs and send them on so that a portion of the profit generated from the pre-roll advertising on each video could be shared with the charity. Now, extending a test campaign it ran last year, .99 and the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand have also created a way for Kiwis to help by doing, rather than paying.

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A rifle alongside a shotgun: Jeremy O’Brien outlines the role TVNZ Ondemand will play in 2015
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When StopPress recently asked players in the ondemand and subscription video on-demand (SVOD) market to share streaming stats on their top ten most popular shows, TVNZ was the only one that shared official numbers. And the reason for this is largely down to how successful the platform has been over the course of the last year. With an average of over five million streams per month, TVNZ has a great base to build on, and the broadcaster’s head of sales and marketing Jeremy O’Brien believes the service will offer more to both advertisers and viewers in 2015.

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Lightbox removes a barrier with Samsung Smart TV app
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With the trials and tribulations of Quickflix and Ezyflix, the arrival of Premier League Pass and Lightbox, the impending arrival of Sky’s Neon and murmurings that Netflix will launch in Australia next year, there’s plenty of action in the subscription video on-demand market at the moment. And that’s good news for content consumers. But one of the major impediments to uptake is the hassle—or perception of hassle—in getting that content on the main TV. So, following in the footsteps of Quickflix and the free-to-air broadcasters, Lightbox has launched an app that offers its service through Samsung Smart TVs.

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All Good bananas tells its fair trade story through stickers
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Compulsive hoarders are often reviled for allowing themselves to be buried under the assortment of junk that they’ve collected over the course of their lives. And while extreme examples of this problem make for fascinating trash TV, in reality the tendency of humans to collect isn’t unique to those who can’t see the floors of their homes. As evidenced by the continued popularity of collectibles—with Z Energy’s Blokhedz a recent example—even ordinary Kiwi families can at times indulge in the pleasure that comes with collecting things they simply don’t need. All Good Bananas is another brand that has recently launched its own version of collectibles campaign, which comes in the shape of stickers that are attached to bananas.

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TVNZ unveils its 2015 lineup
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At an elaborate event hosted at the Civic last night, TVNZ unveiled its programming lineup for the year to come. At the outset of the event, TVNZ’s head of sales and marketing Jeremy O’Brien referred to the broadcaster’s success over the course of the previous year, and promised the advertisers and media owners in attendance that this trend would continue in 2015. And to do this, TVNZ has combined a range of favourites from this year with a lineup of fresh shows that it hopes will maintain TVNZ’s dominant performance, which has seen the broadcaster hold the majority of the positions in the top 20 most-watched shows over the course of the last few years.

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Straight up and down: Steinlager catches a lift to promote Trubridge association
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Steinlager’s latest ambassador is freediver William Trubridge, whose upcoming world record attempt in the Bahamas is being screened on Breakfast on December 3. At the launch of the new campaign, senior brand manager Michael Taylor said there were plenty of creative suggestions about how to promote the event and he even mentioned the possibility of a 102m high billboard. We haven’t noticed any of those around as yet, and they probably don’t come cheap, but we did notice a clever media idea that has put a lift in the Auckland CBD to good use.

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Totally addicted to clicks
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Adobe has been beating the accountability drum recently, with some great spots for its ‘do you know what your marketing is doing?’ campaign that show the perils of not basing your decisions on good data. And its latest effort has perfectly sent up the insatiable demand for clicks by equating a marketer with a junkie on the hunt for their next fix.

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The sound of division
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To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, German-headquartered music service Soundcloud has created an acoustic representation of the divisive structure, ‘the Berlin Wall of Sound’.

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A serving of reality
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McDonald’s has been fighting back against some of the more pervasive myths and legends about its business in recent years. One of the first things the Canadians explained as part of the first Our Food, Your Questions campaign is why the food never looks as good in real life as it does in the ads—and they did a good job of it. But the local outfit appears to be favouring the advertising vérité approach, because some of the pics it’s been posting recently on its Facebook page are much closer to the real thing than they are to over-stylised glamour shots.

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Emirates adds some competition to Christmas charity with plane push campaign
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There have been a number of recent campaigns that employ digital tools to get the audience to do something, from ASB’s Like Loan to Sky’s ‘Bring down the King’ to Vodafone’s sailing game to Bonus Bonds’ longerconga.co.nz. Now Emirates is joining in the fun and asking Kiwis to use social media to propel three charities to Australia. PLUS: Potentia asks charities to submit films for the chance to get $10,000.

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Kiwi entrepreneurs team up with Banana Boat, introduce sun-safety technology in 100 NZ childcare centres
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In an effort to ensure that the next generation doesn’t add to melanoma statistics, Kiwi entrepreneurs Daniel Xu and Ming Cheuk, founders of innovation company Spark64, have developed the UVLens, a sensor that detects the UV risk in the atmosphere and then communicates this to a tablet. And the pair have now teamed up with Banana Boat to put the technology in 100 childcare centres around the nation.

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An exercise in trust: how Jono and Ben are cracking the branded content conundrum
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Brands are increasingly looking to put their messages inside the content, rather than inbetween it. Formats like The Block NZ and Masterchef allow for what the broadcasters like to call ‘seamless integration’, even though it can sometimes be slightly gratuitous. And a rare few other shows, chief among them Jono and Ben at 10, are using their skills to weave brands into the content without annoying the audience or even creating content outside of the show. Chris Lloyd, sales manager at MediaWorks’ integration team, discusses its process.

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