OnScreen Advertising has announced the commission of two new outdoor LED screens at the main entrance to ASB Showgrounds. Installed in January, the large LED screens face in opposite directions providing long range views in both directions down Greenlane West.
Nielsen has released its list of the ten brands that spent the most on advertising in 2014, according to rate card data. And, as has been the case over the last few years, Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs once again slogged at out for the top two spots. Here’s a rundown of which other brands spent big over the course of last year.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Newcastle Brown Ale has already attempted to hijack Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl campaign, the crowd-sourced ad competition. And global advocacy group Sum of Us has followed suit by releasing a parody ad showing that a penchant for corn chips is impacting the rainforests of Asia.
McDonald’s Balmoral franchise along Auckland’s Dominion Road is currently piloting a new initiative that brings a slightly more gourmet twist to its menu in an attempt to tap into the lucrative market currently occupied by the likes of Burger Fuel and Burger Wisconsin. The introduction of ‘Create your taste’ allows customers to customise their burgers via an digital touchscreen kiosk that offers a list of 20 ingredients.
As the popularity of the these guys on YouTube attests, humans are partial to slow motion. And, with the help of Camistry, Burger Fuel decided to slow things down for its Christmas party.
When traditional advertising isn’t quite enough to get the attention brands so desperately crave, they sometimes take extreme measures and attempt to get themselves a Guinness World Record. So, as GSK’s oral health brand Sensodyne gets set to embark on the worthy mission to create the world’s largest model tooth, here are a few other strange record attempts from brands.
Industry happenings at Prime News, Colenso BBDO, Satellite Media, Finch and Font.
From relatively small-scale beginnings in Whangarei in 1979, Michael Hill has over the last 36 years grown into an international enterprise that today has 280 stores globally employing about 2400 staff in a variety of roles. And as a culmination of this ongoing growth, the company is set to feature alongside the world’s major brands in what is arguably advertising’s biggest showcase, the Super Bowl.
In many developed markets, digital ad spend has overtaken print. But, despite consistent drops over the past few years, the local publishing sector has held firm in second place behind television, according to ASA figures. The IAB has predicted the change will happen in New Zealand next year, but, according to year-on-year SMI data, which collects ad spend from the 15 top media agencies in the country, that’s already happened.
Nielsen has released its annual list of the top ten websites Kiwis visited over the course of December. And while the list was populated by the usual suspects, there were a few surprises in terms of the year-on-year changes for some of the websites.
Two weeks ago, Google announced it would stop selling its Google Glass Explorer, which went off the market on January 19. And this news coincided with an announcement from Microsoft on the release of a prototype of Hololens, a PC headset that runs on Windows 10.
Media Design School’s Global Game Jam attracted a record 102 registered participants, all taking part in this year’s gathering. Each “jammer” was tasked with creating a functioning video game in the space of two days.
Microsoft New Zealand is throwing down the gauntlet and challenging Google via a new campaign that will offer Kiwi small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using Google apps a $25-per-user rebate if they purchase Office 365 before 30 April 2015 and switch before 31 May.
Google has released a video showing off the numerous possibilities of Project Ara, a concept smartphone with a modular design that allows users to swap out different components in order to cater it to the individual.
With the relatively recent advent of streaming services, watching TV shows is becoming less about being home at 7.30pm on a Wednesday and more about watching episode after episode until your eyes start to bleed. But what to choose given the time constraints? As Lightbox gets set to screen Better Call Saul exclusively in February, as Sky gets set to launch its long-awaited SVOD service Neon after a series of delays, and as TVNZ gets set to launch its rejigged OnDemand platform, there are more options than ever for Kiwi viewers. So here’s a handy guide from Nielsen that shows you how long it will take you to watch some of the world’s most popular shows, end-to-end.
George FM has set up a live stream of a jar of lollies. And though this might sound slightly insane, humans have in the past shown the proclivity to tune in to the mundane.
I remember the first time I got creeped out by personalised advertising. It was also the moment I realised I wasn’t anonymous on the net. I’d moved…
Tom Uglow works on the periphery of the advertising industry, bringing ideas that exist only in the imagination into the real world. Based at the Google offices in Sydney, he has already lent his creative touch to innovative projects such as The Cube, and he says there’s much more to come.
Taking the beep test is something of a rite of passage for many young Kiwis. And Heart Kids and Method have put a modern, cricket-based spin on it in an effort to raise awareness of the charity.
MYOB’s chief technology officer Simon Raik-Allen has in his publication, Future of Business Report – New Zealand 2040, speculated on what the future will look like—and, apparently, there are quite a few surprise on the horizon.
This week it has been reported on the NBR and Stuff that Vodafone would be offering its broadband subscribers six months’ of free Neon as part of an extension of its deal with Sky, which sees the internet service provider offering reduced Sky subscription rates to its broadband customers. And while Sky’s director of corporate comms Kirsty Way has confirmed to StopPress that these initial reports are true, she would not provide information on new launch date of Neon.
Arran Birchenough, the country manager for Getty Images in New Zealand, shares some insights on how brands can find that stock image sweet spot that lies somewhere between the generic and the overly contrived.
Conventional knowledge will tell you that the Super Bowl involves an esoteric American game in which an egg-shaped ball is thrown around for a ridiculously long period of time. But everyone in the advertising industry knows that this isn’t what it’s about. It’s actually about the ads.
Chromesthesia describes situations in which hearing certain sounds automatically evokes—in the words of Wikipedia—an experience of a colour. This is one of the rare examples in which a person is able to see a sound, giving something that is intangible to the eye a corporeal representation. But the isolation of the senses also goes the other way, in that the concept of sounds—in particular music—is not necessarily easy to capture in the visual form. For companies in the music industry, this limitation has until now meant that their logos could not necessarily embody the sounds that they sell. Wireless audio company Sonos has however managed to bridge the gap with its new logo.
Karen Walker’s campaign for her new season range of eyewear features the obligatory stunning model. But it’s a lot hairier and toothless than usual and it marks the first time the brand has used a ‘celebrity’.
From March, Prime News, which airs on Sky-owned Prime, will be produced by the MediaWorks news division at their Auckland Flower Street Studios as part of a new deal between the two networks. And the deal comes with additional revenue potential for MediaWorks, because the network will also be selling advertising and sponsorship associated with the show. PLUS: Top Gear heads to TV3.
Did you know that theres a guy that specialises in capturing your gnarly C.O.D deaths? How else did you think they got that awesome footage?
New World has been in fine marketing fettle in recent months, with two delightfully insane adverts involving bread-based real estate and vegetable-based romance and one mad ad for its netball sponsorship. And while its Christmas campaign wasn’t quite so surreal, the ads featuring Santa Claus hiding in plain sight as a supermarket employee named Noel also caught viewers’ attention and managed to take out Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact award for November.
Milk consumption is declining in a number of developed markets, with the Washington Post stating that the average American drinks 37 percent less milk today than they did in 1970. Similar trends are evident in New Zealand, with the Herald estimating that it has decreased from 139 litres a head a year in 1974 to about 81 litres a head last year. There are a number of reasons for that, including rising prices, a proliferation of other beverage options and one recent study that appeared to turn the received wisdom of milk’s health benefits on its head. But, following on from Fonterra’s Milk in Schools Initiative, Anchor and Colenso BBDO are continuing their mission to get cow juice into the gullets of more New Zealanders by convincing parents that milk helps grow healthy kids.