Fans of the ’80s cult classic The Neverending Story know that you should never mess with a boy riding a white dragon that looks like a dog. And they also know that the main character Bastian had to use his dreams and imagination to save Fantasia. Swedish NGO Reach for Change is riffing on that idea by creating a website that showcases the dreams—and sleeping patterns—of people from around the world.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And while The Edge dropped listeners in the latest survey, just like most of the other stations, it still has the biggest audience in all the land and it’s betting big on the multiplatform approach. We had a yarn with Rodger Clamp about how it all comes together.
Footlocker has harnessed the power of social media and NBA player James Harden by getting fans to submit personal requests for Harden via Twitter in a campaign called ‘Play my Tweet’. The best ones will be printed on a basketball and Harden has to shoot hoops with the ‘requests’. If he makes the shot, he’s safe but if he misses he will need to carry it out.
Ahead of the upcoming CAANZ PresCom event on the commercialisation of content, The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive gives his $0.02 on the matter and says that while there are some prickly ethical issues to deal with, brand-funded content offers a glimmer of hope for the craft of journalism and can work in everyone’s favour when done well.
As home automation makes its way to the mainstream, a system that lets you answer your doorbell on your smartphone or tablet is now available in New Zealand. And the company bringing it in believes it will help stop burglaries and remove courier-based frustrations.
Opt-in ad serving platform Postr has teamed up Skinny Mobile to create a new android app called Skinny Collect, which allows Skinny customers to earn free data or minutes in return for allowing ads on their lock screen. It’s taken off pretty well and in the first fifteen minutes after launching it had a download per second. We spoke to Postr CEO Milan Reinartz to find out more on the new app and Postr’s partnership with Skinny.
Ad industry award nights are, by their very nature, self-congratulatory. But CAANZ has added a charitable element to tonight’s Effie celebrations, with two Vespas featuring designs from Dick Frizzell and Trelise Cooper going up for auction to raise funds for Breast Cancer Cure. So whether you want a more stylish commute, or you feel the need to increase the cool factor in your agency office with a piece of mechanical art, the bids will be for a good cause.
In addition to performing a cameo on TVNZ show Reno Rumble and taking over the Herald homepage with an interactive ad, Kevin and Donna also made an appearance in Sunday magazine as part of an execution that saw the Valspar brand integrated across numerous pages. UPDATE: see the Valspar chameleon interrupt Reno Rumble.
There has been a lot of talk and hype about virtual reality in recent times. And just in the past month we’ve had a few sets of cardboard virtual reality goggles sent to the office from PR companies, which shows it’s very much in the public consciousness. One brand, which jumped onto the VR trend early in a marketing capacity, is Contiki. We had a chat to Contiki’s global CEO Casper Urhammer to find out more about the travel brand’s use of it. PLUS: with the amount of research and development going into virtual reality, is it better to wait?
Brand Machine is ushering in a new era of local marketing with some slick new technology. Managing director Andrew Mitchell talks with NZ Marketing about the journey so far.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And, despite a dearth of good, new rock music and the encroaching mainstream appeal of hip hop and electronic music, The Rock is still luring plenty of listeners, says Brad King.
Airline JetBlue has encouraged a bit of petty theft in a recent campaign where its ad posters urged passers-by to take their ads ‘literally, literally’.
Following on from its last campaign ‘It’s a trap’ where Truth pointed out that social smoking is still smoking, it is again effectively pointing out the obvious that if people continue to buy cigarettes, tobacco companies continue to roll in the money.
Peer-to-peer lending site Harmoney launched last year in the Kiwi market with an ambigram as its logo and a quirky cartoon TVC by Barnes, Catmur & Friends that compared conventional loan agencies to sharks. However, this launch identity—and the creative approach that accompanied it—is history now, as Harmoney has changed both its creative direction and its logo in a new ad campaign, which makes the company look more like a conventional loan company than an industry-disrupting startup.
Bouquets for Hyundai, Tip Top, Paspaley, Bay Audiology and Valspar this week.
While the news has been filled with reactions to the flag, our newly designed bank notes seem to have taken a back seat. They aren’t cheap either, at a ‘mere’ $80 million, and if we are looking at shedding the shackles of the monarchy in the form of the Union Jack, should the Queen be departing our bank notes too? And what about core design principles. Do our notes stack up to the aesthetics of those from other nations? We talk to designer Brian Slade, creative director for Insight Creative for a commentary on another facet of New Zealand’s branding, our currency.
Every year, in the lead up to summer, the major ice cream brands operating across the nation, release new flavours in a bid to attract consumers that search for respite from the heat in the shape of frozen dairy products. And for this year’s edition of the frozen aisle battle, Fonterra-owned Tip Top has added a new contender into the mix by launching the Top Notch range of premium ice creams.
That shiny rectangle in your pocket is an amazing piece of technology. But there’s a growing sense that we’re becoming far too attached to our phones, to the point where we seem to be happy to sacrifice real human interaction for a poke, a scroll and a quick game of information pokies. And Hallertau Brewery in Riverhead has taken a stand against the use of these magical cubes of distraction at its establishment and is aiming to promote actual conversation.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And the rising tide of hip hop and RnB in popular culture is lifting the Mai FM boat along with it and attracting a big, young audience around the nation, says Philip Bell.
The decision to place an aged loved one into assisted care is never easy. On the one side you have the pride of the the grandmother or grandfather, who has been independent for longer than their children have been alive. And then on the other side, you have the children who don’t want their parents to feel as though they’re being imprisoned in a home. And in its new TV ad by Rainger & Rolfe and Film Construction, Oceania Healthcare addresses this awkward situation by showing that sometimes both the parents and their children are on the same page without realising it.
Hyundai has launched a new campaign for its latest Tuscon model with a TVC featuring a young girl who urges Kiwis to ‘Get lost’ in New Zealand. Hyundai is blowing the same horn it has for a while, pushing its family-sized vehicles by promoting family-fun time.
Manual. Inefficient. Iterative. The operational issues that plague the digital media industry are well known. These inefficiencies cost both time and money. Automated Guaranteed is changing that, bringing buyers and sellers together to trade premium digital media at scale.
Following the news that one of the ad industry’s most loveable rogues David Walden went to, as his good friend and rival Mike Hutcheson said, “the big restaurant in the sky” over the weekend after a short battle with cancer, we’re republishing a story that originally ran in the March/April 2012 edition of NZ Marketing. When Walden opened Whybin\TBWA in 1997, Vincent Heeringa wrote an article predicting its swift demise. At the time, the big man joked he’d sue unless he was taken out for lunch. So Heeringa finally did the honourable thing around 14 years later and chowed down on some (typically expensive) humble pie.
Though advertising legend Dave Walden passed away this weekend, he will live on forever in the stories of those who shared moments with him during his 66 years. In this series of tributes, we invite friends (and foes) to share their stories, anecdotes and thoughts on the life of ‘The Great Waldo’.
In the second instalment of a series that showcases how some of the winners from this year’s Magazine Media Awards are adapting to the modern era and helping advertisers grow their businesses, Damien Venuto talks to the team behind the owned media title of the year, Habitat.
The annual radio ratings are out, and naturally competitors NZME and MediaWorks are flagrantly (and funnily) gloating about their achievements, using their most popular radio and media personalities to spread the news.
When it comes to corporations, history shows that consumers tend to forgive accidents—and even stupidity. But willful deception is another kettle of fish. And Volkswagen inventing technology to cheat on its emissions tests is about as willful and deceptive as it gets (if it wasn’t so evil, you could almost applaud their inventiveness). So far, it has had a major impact on Volkswagen’s share price (and other car brands’ share prices), it is getting ready for a recall of 11 million cars, billions of dollars in fines are on the cards and the first of what could be many lawsuits have already been filed. Some believe it could bring Volkswagen to its knees. So can the company recover from this reputational car crash? And what can marketers learn from the saga?
The radio survey results period has over the year come to be typified by a markedly partisan response from NZME and MediaWorks, heavy drinking by the ratings winners and, quite often, even heavier drinking by those who weren’t as lucky in the results. And given that the NZME-funded T1 survey didn’t have the backing of MediaWorks, tonight’s results party is poised to be a big one. But this tradition of two massive annual blowouts (only one this year) is set to change, as results reports will be released more regularly from next year. We look at some of the biggest losses and gains in the latest survey.
Ads for universities have always been a bit cringey, but the Universtiy of Melbourne has helped break the cycle with a creative spot about ‘What happens when minds collide’.
In conjunction with News Works, the Up Country series talks with some of New Zealand’s top regional newspaper editors about the performance of their titles in print and online, the role local news plays in regional communities, where they see the industry going and why advertisers should stick with them. First up, Barry Stewart, the newly appointed editor of the Otago Daily Times.