Monthly Archives: June, 2015

News
‘Like a Girl’ and ‘Ice bucket challenge’ pick up Facebook’s Blue Awards, Colenso shortlisted but misses out
By

The top honour at the Facebook Awards is the Blue Award and this year it went to Leo Burnett and Procter & Gamble for the thought-provoking ‘Like a Girl’ campaign produced for the Always brand (it also won a gold award). And the Blue for Good Award (which recognises campaigns created for charitable or not-for-profit organisations) went to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a campaign that Facebook says placed only second to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in terms of how many people it reached (it also raised $220 million dollars for the cause). PLUS: Spencer Bailey, the head of Facebook for New Zealand, identifies key creative trends that have taken shape over the last year.

News
New realities: the brands mixing digital, mobile and real life
By

Virtual reality systems Oculus Rift and Microsoft’s Hololens have been getting plenty of attention recently. And while it remains to be seen whether humans will be happy to strap something to their face (or whether they’ll plug technology straight into their DNA, as is being predicted), what’s clear is that they are willing to give augmented reality a whirl. And retailers from Walmart to Freedom Furniture to New World to Lego are all trialling it.

News
Ears and years
By

As Apple gets ready to take on the established streaming services with its new musical moves, Spotify has created a clever feature called Taste Rewind that acts as a musical time machine and shows users how the music of the past has influenced the music of today.

News
Life after editorial staff: Yahoo’s Ed Harrison on restructuring the business
By

In March, the story broke that Yahoo would be releasing all of its editorial staff as part of a restructuring process that would create five new roles, which these previous staff members could apply for. Until now, the regional executives in charge of this restructure have not commented to the media about what the changes have entailed or why the the website had decided to rethink its business operations. After several requests for interviews, Yahoo 7 chief executive for Australia and New Zealand Ed Harrison recently chatted to StopPress about the changes and what they mean for the company.

News
Online minds over matter
By

The Webby’s celebrate the best digital work done over the past year. And this year, along with Grey Goose, it created a site showing 50 of the best ideas. It also wanted to celebrate the creators, so, as part of that campaign it caught up with the founders of Refinery 29, Vine, Giphy, Cool Hunting and Harry’s. And they had plenty of advice for anyone working in the digital arts.

News
Visuals anywhere: the rise of projection mapping
By

First coming to prominence with guerrilla advertising campaigns and video jockeys for electronic musicians, projection mapping is now an oft-used method to promote products from major companies such as Porsche, Sony and Nike. Artistic collective, Skullmapping, however, are taking it to a whole new level.

News
Lake Wanaka Tourism uses hyperlapse videographer to show the region in all its glory
By

Wanaka is a place well renowned for its beauty, with its crystal blue lake, mountainous terrain and great slopes. And while stunning promotional imagery for the town is common to see, it’s not as often we get to see a hyper-fast compilation of the township through 4,000 images carefully stitched together by an experienced videographer, here’s Lake Wanaka Tourism’s latest marketing approach.

News
Global IAB mobile video survey finds we are watching longer videos and NZ prefers ‘comedy’
By

An Interactive Advertising Bureau survey of mobile video viewers in 24 countries shows we are now watching longer-form videos on our mobiles, we regularly stream video on our mobiles while watching TV and the majority surveyed in each country favour the tailoring of mobile advertising. The report also shows New Zealand and Australia prefer ‘comedy’ clips, which we think is in direct correlation with our great sense of humour.

News
Advertising ire: The top ten most complained about ads of 2014
By

People love to complain, particularly when it comes to ads. “Why does it always become louder during the ads?”, “I hate this ad”, “I swear they screen ads longer than they used to” – are all common complaints heard around the endangered television set. The Advertising Standards Authority has released a report on the top 10 most complained about ads from last year, here’s the rundown.

News
Liquid wisdom
By

Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to take advice from advertising. And especially not alcohol advertising. But you can make an exception for this ad for Finlandia Vodka.

News
Heineken’s insider trading
By

Having a local to show you around always makes a city more enjoyable. And, following on from various ads showing urbane men having urban adventures, Heineken’s latest campaign via Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam shows how crucial a knowledgeable insider can be.

News
Suckling on the teat of knowledge
By

Big data is a massively over-used term and, for many, too abstract to be useful. But “customer engagement provider” Thunderhead, which is set to launch in this part of the world soon, decided to create a very literal version of the term for its brand ad and, unlike any other research company ever, it’s embraced man-on-man breastfeeding to attract chief marketing officers.

News
The 15 biggest drops and lifts in the latest magazine readership and circ results
By

Nielsen and the ABC have recently released their respective breakdown of the readership and circulation figures. As has come to be expected, the downward decline has continued for the weekly publications, with each of the publications surveyed in this category suffering year-on-year dips in readership. However, there was also good news for some of the publications included within the survey.

News
We’ll show them: Socialites hits back at Snapchat’s ‘Auckland life’ releasing its own compilation
By

Social media marketing agency Socialites released its ‘SnapAuckland’ compilation today as part of its revolt against Snapchat’s ‘Auckland Life’, which it says failed to do the city justice. News of Socialite’s endeavor to remedy the situation and Aucklanders’ disgruntled reaction to Snapchat’s previous attempt blew up, with Snapchat Miami catching wind of the story and pushing word out through its own channels.

News
The kids aren’t alright: Child Labor Free and Saatchi & Saatchi bring conscious consumerism to the fore with new scheme
By

A few years ago, Michelle Pratt and Nikki Prendergast were sourcing toys for their New Shoots early childhood centres. And they realised they had no way of knowing where the products came from – or if children made them. So they created an accreditation system and charity foundation Child Labor Free (CLF) to help businesses show consumers that their supply chains are free from child labour and, after two years and with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi, it launched last week and it already has New Zealand Fashion Week on board as a partner, with fashion brands such as Hailwood, Kate Sylvester, Nom*D, Ruby and Stolen Girlfriends Club piloting the scheme.

News
Practising what they preach
By

When it came to developing its latest campaign, Biocoop decided to deliver a campaign that brought life to the core tenets on which the company is built. And the way it achieved this is a remarkable story.

News
How to run an agency
By

Running an ad agency is hard work. And it can get extremely complicated. But we’re here to help. So here are the economics of an agency drawn by a drunk man on a napkin.

News
Cop that: reality everywhere, ratings shifts and the Campbell Live effect
By

Television has had quite the facelift over the past few years. Reality television has taken over the episodic drama, with its cheap production cost and malleable format, which viewers can easily tune into without any kind of backstory. What else is changing is our current affairs shows, the days of the solo renegade hosting style of John Campbell and Paul Holmes seems to be over as a softer format with multiple hosts is nudging its way in. With all these changes we thought we’d do a bit of an overview of the top shows on telly to see how they’re performing amongst this difficult and ever-changing media climate.