The Blackcaps’ decimation of England on Friday was a joy for many Kiwis to behold. Rebel Sport took the opportunity to congratulate the lads on the win with a print ad that ran on Saturday. And no words were needed to convey the sense of smugness.
American comedy Parks and Recreation, set in the fictional town of Pawnee, has now released a fictional burger joint commercial for a fictional burger joint – Paunch Burger, which we’re sure die hard fans will recognise.
In celebration of Hawaiian Airline’s upcoming second anniversary on the New Zealand market, a secretive pair of New Zealand street artists, who work under the name BMD, were commissioned to paint one of the airline’s ground service trucks in their distinctive style.
Media agencies are increasingly using editorial tricks to spread their clients’ advertising messages. So is native advertising a con? Alex Lawson doesn’t think so.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Every time the quarterly figures are released and again show the downward trend of the magazine industry, it’s difficult to be optimistic, but looking at the journalism that pervades the pages of many of the publications in circulation in New Zealand today serves as reminder that the current generation of journalists still has the quality required to carry the canon of journalistic writing forward. That being said, the continued fragmentation of media has seen readers not relying solely magazines or newspapers to read the articles that interest them—and this has of course led to decline in the readership and circulation figures provided by Nielsen and ABC, respectively.
DDB launched an in-house production unit, appropriately called ‘Maker’, about six months ago and says its ability to quickly create digital content for its clients is resulting in increasing demand.
According to Yellow’s Business Confidence Survey of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in New Zealand, 34 percent of business owners regarded digital marketing as an essential area to upskill in, placing it only behind marketing and IT and technology (both on 41 percent).
From Paul the octopus, to Paulo the octopus, to Futnik the pig, to Citta the elephant to Nicholas the llama to our own Richie McCow, supposedly psychic animals predicting the outcome of sports games is like catnip to media. And the Herald has introduced a new soothsaying creature to the list, with Cricket the cricket so far nailing three out of four games in the Cricket World Cup.
Warehouse Stationery has released a new campaign with an emphasis on its ability to “connect” customers, focusing on the technological side of the business as opposed to the paper and pens.
New Zealand menswear brand Hallensteins captured a fair bit of attention with its last ad, which was shot on the Bonneville Salt flats in Utah and featured motocross star Carey Hart. And it’s headed overseas once again for another impressive spot to coincide with the launch of its winter collection, this time teaming up with The Script lead singer Danny O’Donoghue and heading to Cuba.
It’s no secret that the fans are integral to the success of any modern sports team. If bums don’t fill the seats, then profits dwindle. If sponsors don’t have an audience, then they won’t tag their names onto the shirts. And if there are no voices being screamed hoarse in the stadium, then a home advantage really makes no difference at all. So, in its first campaign for the Vodafone Warriors since taking over the account, Special Group has teamed up with production company 8com to produce a new spot that puts the fans at the centre of the team.
Storage company National Mini Storage has for quite some time now been borrowing the comedic talents of Leigh Hart to convince Kiwis that storage might be a viable solution to their clutter. And in a new, completely ridiculous spot, the bald funny man advises that house-selling Kiwis with weirder interests might benefit from storing a few of their more unsightly items away.
379 entries across 75 categories have made it through to the finals of the Axis Awards, with FCB leading the way on 54, followed by Colenso BBDO with 49 and DDB with 47. Special Group has 31 finalists and Saatchi & Saatchi rounded out the top five with 26 finalists.
Whenever Photoshop is in the news, it’s generally because of doctored images, whether it’s models or celebrities promoting unattainable body image, grievous errors or duplicitous signs. But doctoring images has also played a positive role in society, as evidenced by this great spot for Adobe by Goodby Silverstein to celebrate the omnipresent software’s 25th anniversary.
oOh! media has further embraced the digital age by expanding its network of retail digital assets across New Zealand after securing long-term contracts with key shopping centres. Updated with some thoughts from oOh! Media chief executive Brendon Cook.
Advertising agency netplus is sharing the love with its clients—past, present and future—by resurrecting the cultural phenomenon that was the mix tape. The agency embarked on a Valentine’s mission to cosy up to its clients by launching a website called ‘mixplus’, a digital interface where clients the agency loves, clients its lost and clients it wants can select different mix tapes after which the appropriate ’80s tunes (sourced via SoundCloud) sing out from the computer.
Since Legacy launched its first campaign in the United States in 2000, it has contributed to dropping down smoking rates from 23 percent to the historic low of eight percent. However, this isn’t quite enough. The organisation wants to “Finish It,” and is encouraging this generation of teens to be the one that ends teen smoking for good. To do this, the organisation has launched a quirky new campaign that plays on the fact that smoking is actually a major turn off to many teens that inhabit the world of Tinder.
In a visual, social and increasingly electronic age, GIFs have become an important cultural force. Last year, Crispin Porter + Bogusky started a new award called the .GIFYs that aimed to acknowledge some of the best examples of the art form. And it’s back for a second year with some entertaining finalists.
2014 was Android’s biggest ever year, with one billion handsets shipped around the world (Apple shipped 193 million and made more on app purchases). It has a big focus on growing that number and getting its phones into developing markets. So, it’s done the logical thing and embraced the power of animals in advertising as part of its ‘Be together. Not the same’ campaign.
Television and movie producers—and advertisers—are always looking for new and interesting ways to incorporate modern technology into their storytelling techniques. Here are a few interesting examples.
According to TubeMogul, New Zealand’s programmatic video advertising market grew nearly three-fold the fourth quarter of 2014, with video ads available for real-time buying jumping 210 percent to 260 million auctions, from 90 million in the third quarter.
We live in social times. And it’s easier than ever to share information with fellow humans. It’s also easier than ever to get stuck in a Google/Wikipedia/YouTube/hyperlink rabbit hole and end up with 42 tabs open on your browser. So Kiwi start-up Twingl is trying to make it easier to share knowledge—and to see the journey people take to get there—with a clever Chrome extension called Trailblazer.
The IAB has just released its latest quarterly update and it shows another sizeable rise in digital ad spend in New Zealand. Standard Media Index (SMI), which calculates ad spending trends based on the data from media agencies, also shows a steady rise. And its breakdown of the category shows the key growth areas in digital.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand (IABNZ) has released the Q4 figures for 2014 and, somewhat unsurprisingly, the results again showed growth in the channel. In Q4, advertising revenue in the digital channel reached $168 million, marking a 32 percent increase from the figure posted a year ago, bringing the full-year total to $589 million. And while there was good news across the board, this wasn’t the case for display advertising, which slipped from the figures posted in 2013.
Online users have long suffered from social media messaging overload. But Kiwis have wizened up to the power of the mute button at their disposal, says Katie Byrne.
Brands are constantly looking for innovative ways to reach their audiences, and one of the best ways appears to be through mobile-accessed websites and apps, seeing as many of us are linked to our phones almost constantly. Mobile advertising sales agency 4th Screen Advertising has released four new mobile ad formats, which aim to make the ad consumption experience a bit more enjoyable, requiring user-participation.
Kiwi-owned travel management company Orbit Corporate travel has launched a new mobile app, which aims to alleviate the stress of business travel, enabling travellers to save time and have secure access to all itinerary details with real-time notifications of any changes to booking.
New Zealand’s primary ambulance service, charity organisation St John has teamed up with Colenso BBDO and Thick as Thieves film company for its latest ‘Here for Life’ campaign, which celebrates the treasured moments a mother and daughter share, that they would not have otherwise, if St John wasn’t there to help.
Wendy’s has tapped into technology developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the promotion of the return of the Big Kahuna burger. In a new spot developed by Image Centre-owned ad agency &Some, several Warriors players are shown playing music by tapping the ingredients, which usually go into the product. This bizarre occurence is only possible because of the MaKey MaKey technology, which allows users to turn everyday objects into touchpads for playing music.