Fairfax is putting most of its energy into growing its online audience, and the latest numbers show that’s working. But a new TVC advertising subscriptions to its stable of magazines suggests the media company still sees some dollar signs in print.
Shout Media managing director Paul Kenny says that his company’s recent acquisition of Profile Plus gives it the necessary scale to challenge what he describes as “a virtual monopoly” of the poster market in New Zealand.
Unassuming New World employee Noel has returned this year for New World’s annual Christmas push, and he is again shown rousing suspicion among shoppers about his true identity.
Jim Wilson isn’t your regular business entrepreneur. After a trailblazing youth hanging with bands and poets, supporting the arts through pasting up posters, and spending a decent amount of time lobbying councils for poster space, he never imagined his love for it would turn into the empire it is today. Now, the business is responsible for putting up street-level posters from Whangarei all the way down to Invercargill.
Breast cancer is the third most common cancer in New Zealand. And given the pain it causes to Kiwi families, Farmers decided to fight back.
Following the global financial crisis, mortgage lenders sought to introduce more stringent lending criteria. But rather than viewing this as a problem, Data Insight saw it as an opportunity to commoditise its market research.
If the top five ads of 2015 (so far) are anything to go by, then agencies might want to rethink the rule of working with animals.
the team at South Park has added a bit more hilarity to the discussion on advertising and news through a new skit that shows the character Stephen contrasting the clean reading experience of student newspaper to the advertising labyrinth encountered online. If anything, Stephen’s ramblings to his wife provide a pretty strong argument for the enduring appeal of print. As he explains: “This is just news. And I don’t get lost in all the bullshit.”
Humans love a good origin story. And, in the business world, the power of the overnight success narrative often means the extremely difficult period of starting and growing a business is conveniently overlooked in the mythology. The latest Kiwi business to join that club is Stolen Spirits, which was started around five years ago in a bedroom in Mt Eden and this week sold a controlling interest to US company Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for $21 million. And it’s another great example of a Kiwi business that has understood the power of marketing to create a huge amount of value in a short amount of time.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Bcg2 and Mediacom have won the competitive pitch for realestate.co.nz’s creative and media accounts, fewer than 18 months after Contagion won the real estate site’s business in July last year.
Last night, as the action unfolded at the 50th edition of the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, this new media opportunity was clearly at work as Kiwis across the nation contributed to over 200,500 story views of content uploaded to the Vodafone Snapchat handle during proceedings—an experience far removed from that of fans 50 years ago, whose could only have seen the talent of the day if they were actually in attendance at the event.
Alastair Thompson, editor and co-founder of Scoop Media says the online news organisation now has a “fighting chance” after reaching a crowd-funding target of $50,000 on Pledge Me to establish the Scoop foundation for public interest journalism. But the longevity of the project is far from guaranteed at this point.
In and around Auckland’s CBD, parking is becoming a business in itself. Since Parkable launched in August, some hosts have already started earning over $1000 per month, for spaces previously unused. And now retailers are also trying to cash in on the copious space they have available.
Industry happenings at Vodafone, Accenture, Tracta Advertising, Urban List and Z Card.
Postie+ is lending its business to a good cause in the lead up to christmas with the launch of a pop-up store that will see the retailer match every purchase made by donating the same item to Kids Can.
“If you’re looking at your comms and media plan and it looks suspiciously like the one you had ten years ago, then you’re probably building for where people were,” says Facebook’s chief creative officer Mark D’Arcy, who was recently in town to speak to the crowds at ad:tech and at AUT’s Project Connect. And he reckons the only way to change this is by breaking down the legacy structures and strategies that have until now determined how marketers and advertisers do their jobs.
Comedian Danny McBride and the creative team at Wieden + Kennedy have conspired to create an infectiously catchy tune for Southern Comfort that has every possibility to become the pre-gaming anthem of millennial across the US. As with all hit tracks, ‘ShoattaSoco’ comes with a music video—and it’s utterly outrageous. Featuring McBride flying through a retro video game universe, the music video should be terrible, but you simply can’t pull your eyes away from it.
‘Snackable content’ seems to be the buzzword of the moment and while some believe this trend may lead to ‘obesity of the mind’, Air New Zealand has joined the feast, releasing nine clips showcasing various Auckland activities in an effort to get Australians to come over and support their NRL team during next year’s NRL Auckland Nines event.
Earlier this week, NZME took an entertaining trip back into the mists of time as part of its ad:tech sponsorship. Now some more ‘found footage’ from ‘1987’ has emerged, and it shows ‘Matt Harrington’, editor of ‘Bits and Bytes’ magazine, “walking the streets of the future in an interactive 3D hologram”.
For years brands have been at ‘arms length’ and somewhat out of touch with the reality of the customer experience, says Jenene Crossan. But influencer marketing, which is driven by brands shifting away from push-style ads towards ‘an enhanced word of mouth strategy’, has the ability to change that.
The Victoria Taxi Federation’s #YourTaxis social media campaign backfired spectacularly recently when, instead of sharing good experiences, plenty decided to mention some of their bad experiences instead. So we couldn’t help but notice an ad on nzherald.co.nz for Alert Taxis labelled, intriguingly, ‘Confessions of a Taxi Driver’.
Earlier this week, Oxford dictionaries declared the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji its word of the year. While certainly an unusual decision, those behind the publication justified it by pointing to the proliferation of these animated caricatures across all forms of communication in recent years. And Durex is now calling for an expansion of the emoji catalogue currently available to users.
As Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball shows, the clever use of data and technology can mean the difference between winning and losing in sport and, with massive broadcasting rights being signed here and around the world and a range of brands hitching their wagons to professional athletes, there’s plenty at stake. And VX Sport, a Kiwi tech company, is quietly revolutionising the way sport is played—and, maybe, how it’s watched.
Snackable content doesn’t need to be trivial and can help tell the big news stories of the day according to rival media companies, TVNZ and Mediaworks.
Kiwi celebrities get minted for good in new Movember Mo-dollars campaign to raise funds toward prostate cancer research.
The outdoor industry is in the middle of a golden run in New Zealand, with 11 consecutive quarters of growth and a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ten percent since Jan 2013 making it second only to online as the fastest growing media channel. Digital screens are driving most of that growth. And things are changing rapidly as all the big players invest heavily to try and get a piece of the pie, so here’s a rundown on what they’re all up to.
Wellington Tourism is trying to catch the attention of Australians in Sydney and Melbourne through a new online campaign that features several well-known Aussie business people experiencing what the capital city has to offer. Developed in partnership by Tourism New Zealand, Positively Wellington Tourism (PWT) and Destination Marlborough, the three-part ‘Inspired by Wellington’ campaign, which was executed by Whybin\TBWA Sydney, is currently being rolled out via the Wellington Tourism website.
Auckland’s 95bFM is currently celebrating its 45th birthday. And, as part of “The 95bFM Bombathon” campaign, a throwback to a 1990 pledge-drive campaign that hopes to raise $45,000, the DJs are putting their feet up and auctioning off three hours of airtime in which the winners can take over the station from 9pm to 12am on Sunday night.
Because digital has become ubiquitous and a normalised part of everyday life, some are questioning whether we still need specialist digital agencies. Andrew Hawley defends his kind.