StopPress recently ran a story on how BuzzFeed is making moves in the Australasian market. And while most of the list-making juggernaut’s activities are focused on the other side of the ditch, Kiwi businesses are also starting to experiment with the company’s unique brand of native advertising, which holds such reverence for the power of the .gif. We look at what Sky and the NZTA are doing in this space.
There are plenty of rules around booze advertising, and one of them is that they aren’t allowed to show their products increasing the chances of sexual success. But that certainly wasn’t always the case, as this old Steinlager ad shows.
Following in the footsteps of Dove and Always, iNature Skincare has released a new video that makes a profound statement about beauty by asking a group of ordinary people a simple question. To produce the four-minute clip, which has already gone viral, iNature collaborated with the Jubilee Project and asked a series of 50 people across the age spectrum what the one thing is that they would change about their bodies. And although the clip navigates well-worn territory, it’s worth watching just to see the creative responses the kids come up with.
Attitude Pictures has been telling the stories of New Zealanders living with disabilities, recovering from injuries and dealing with health problems since 1992 and broadcasting on TVNZ since 2005. It brought those stories into the real world in 2008 with the creation of the Attitude Awards and, around one year ago, it moved online and into the world of live streaming when it launched its website Attitude Live. Producer Dan Buckingham and managing director Denis Harvey share their thoughts on running a successful niche media group, how it intends to make a profit and why corporates should get involved.
Given that it relies on bored workers to shop during the workday, hotel-booking website Last Minute has incorporated a defense mechanism into its homepage to ensure that workers are always only a single click away from the safety of a spreadsheet. A small link titled ‘the boss is coming – look busy’ navigates users away from the pink glow of the website to the safety of a jargon-filled spreadsheet.
On Friday, Twitter announced the Kiwi launch of Twitter Ads, a self-serve ad platform that aims to provide advertising options for small and medium-sized businesses. Twitter Ads has already been launched in 21 international markets, and it will almost certainly come as a welcome marketing tool to smaller businesses that have thus far been precluded from using Twitter’s advertising services due to the minimum spend threshold that the company previously set for its advertising services. We chat to Nick Bowditch, Twitter Australia’s small business evangelist, to find out what this means for the Kiwi market.
Punk-zine turned media-empire Vice re-launched its website this week with the promise of an “explosion of new content,” and New Zealand is not being left out of the blast. Vice head of communications for Australia and New Zealand Josh Gardiner says Kiwis can look forward to more local stories, including a New Zealand documentary.
To some, the term corporate social responsibility is an oxymoron; more keeping up appearances than a legitimate attempt to make the world a better place. Nigel Latta looked into what the booze companies are doing in terms of promoting their products and, to a lesser degree, responsible drinking, in his recent series. And South Park has shown the paradox of the alcohol-funded ‘drink responsibly’ message perfectly (NSFW)
Over the last decade the digital age has swept over the cornerstones of newspaper publishing and eroded them with unforgiving consistency. Now, each time the Nielsen’s print readership and the ABC’s circulation results are released, what remains of the major publications look a little smaller than what they were the quarter or year before.
The numbers using public transport in Auckland are increasing, but it’s still something of a running joke and the much-trumpeted rail link is facing problems as the bureaucrats question the costs. Auckland Transport and Work Communications have been trying to convince more people to take the bus, train or boat and they won a TVNZ-NZ Marketing Award for their trouble. They’ve also got Jerome Kaino onboard to help spread the message and, at the smaller, more Colin Craig-ish end of the mascot spectrum, comedian and Radio Hauraki DJ Tim Batt has gone on a crusade to get people’s views on what the new transport network for West Auckland should look like.
As media agencies strive to reinvent themselves, FCB Media’s Rufus Chuter says they need to remember the unspoken power of brand behaviour—and their role in brand building.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim aren’t big fans of bad marketing and advertising. But that hasn’t stopped them making heaps of good ads, with its recent spot with Jeff Goldblum for, of all companies, GE, their Old Spice ads with Terry Crews and some utter madness for Absolut with Zach Galafianakis all hitting the spot. And now they’ve cranked up the crazy for Totino’s Pizza Rolls.
The Better Drinks Company has just released its first batch of Charlie’s Straight Up Cola, and it was produced and canned in only 10 weeks. And while this might be impressive, the speed of the product development isn’t even the most interesting part of the project. As part of the launch, Charlie’s is asking customers to take to social media and say exactly how they feel about the new product. The company is giving Kiwis the chance to share their opinions, and only if the feedback is positive, will another batch be produced.
More than 80 percent of a worldwide research panel (including over 3,000 advertisers, marketers, service providers and technology developers across 17 countries, including New Zealand) said that data plays an important role in supporting their respective efforts. And 92 percent said they expect data to contribute even more substantially to their advertising and marketing efforts over the coming years.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Charlie’s has just launched its new straight up cola, which has “honest stuff like actual kola nuts, real malt, natural cane sugar and a cheeky squeeze of lemon”. But, in a nice touch, it’s also decided to tell drinkers what isn’t in the can just to see if they’re still paying attention.
We live in increasingly visual times. And no-one’s got time to read those pesky words anymore. So every week we’ll publish a few graphs that need very little explaining. This time, Sky’s impressive revenue and share figures over time.
New Zealand’s fastest growing companies were announced yesterday at the NZ Deloitte Fast 50 event. It’s a chance for some of our most successful businesses to show off their revenue (and, in some rare cases, maybe even their profit), with a number of these companies making it on to the top 50 index with eye-popping growth. We count down a list of companies associated/loosely associated to the marcomms sector.
Since the beginning of the week, Men’s Health has been causing people across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to do some serious double takes, thanks to a controversial set of posters that are designed to encourage men to talk about their health issues. But Men’s Health isn’t the only organisation making Kiwis gawk. Love Your Condom has continued its risque approach to raising awareness about condom usage among the nation’s gay men with a new campaign that features the chiseled body of poster boy James Luck.
As Santa is to kids, so is the John Lewis Christmas ad to the creative community. And once again it has slid down the collective chimney and landed with an emotional, animal-related thud.
As we wrote last week, the classic endorsement approach in New Zealand seems to be bunging a rugby player (or even a coach) on your ad. But Invivo’s strategy is at the other end of the spectrum, with international talk show host and self-proclaimed he-devil Graham Norton called on to help create—and now help promote—a very special wine.
Colenso BBDO and DDB continued their award-winning streaks by each picking up a pair of gongs at this year’s edition of Mashable’s annual awards show, the Mashies.
Internationally, McDonald’s recent financial results were well down on the same time last year, and it’s trying a range of things to counter the decline, including offering customised burgers. In New Zealand, sales figures weren’t available for this year, but the arrival of Georgie Pie helped lift performance in 2013. And it’s aiming to continue that growth by offering McCafe coffee via drive-thru.
Since starting out in Wellington in 2004, Resn has risen to being a world-leading digital agency with one office in the capital, one in Amsterdam, and the majority of its clients in the United States. The agency has been recognised time and time again by the Favorite Website Awards, and last week completely cracked it by becoming the distinguished 23rd member of the FWA Hall of Fame. So what does managing director Rik Campbell think of all the hype?
As recently as the 1990s it would’ve been difficult to imagine a catalogue of oddly numbered lists turning into one of new media’s biggest success stories. But now, as we find ourselves neck deep in the zeros and ones of the digital age, the question ‘Have you seen that BuzzFeed list on …?’ has become a phrase as familiar—and commonly used—as ‘Google it’ or ‘there’s an app for that’. Andy Wiedlin, BuzzFeed’s chief revenue officer, is someone who has first-hand experience of BuzzFeed’s journey from being a quirky idea to a pop culture phenomenon.
Pickling enthusiasts will be pleased to find that the new Google Calendar app for Android embraces this niche hobby.
Recruitment campaigns for the New Zealand Defence Force usually focus on patriotic duty or the diversity of experiences on offer. But for its latest push, it’s focusing on fitness and, with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi and Roam Creative, it has created an app called Force Fit that lets potential recruits ensure they’re fit enough to pull on a uniform.
Planned obsolescence and apparel manufacturers go together like chimichurri and steak, with small changes to jerseys requiring true fans to buy new ones regularly. But, at a launch event in London ahead of its northern tour, Adidas claims to have made some big changes to the fancy new hi-tech All Blacks jersey by getting rid of the white collar, adding gun-metal grey lettering and, after player feedback, making two versions: one for the forwards and one for the backs.
To spare online shoppers the chore of scouring through scores of deals featuring massages, fairy lights and costume jewellery in the lead up to Christmas, GrabOne has launched the Giftinator, an online tool that allows users to narrow their searches to find gifts that match their interests. As New Zealand’s biggest daily deal providers, GrabOne publishes over 1,700 deals a week, which means that there might be more than 1,600 offers available on the site at any given time. And while choice is a good thing, it can be frustrating for time-pressed gift-buyers to scour through everything available to find what they want. By launching the Giftinator, GrabOne now enables customers to streamline their search for gifts in terms who the gift is for, the amount they’re willing to spend, and the age group and interests of the recipient. PLUS: we look at some of the risks that come with brands recommending items.
After shifting its business from Saatchi & Saatchi to Ogilvy & Mather, Sealord has added another new name to its new agency group—and bolstered its presence in the growing Aussie market—by appointing The White Agency as its trans-Tasman digital agency.