Monthly Archives: June, 2016

News
Bloodcurdling baseball
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Japanese Baseball fans got a fright as two of the country’s most well-known horror characters took to the field to promote the upcoming Sadako vs Kayako, a mash up of The Ring and The Grudge.

News
Twenty gets a slice of Tower’s business
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Tower Insurance has a new agency for data-driven marketing in Twenty, which, since the beginning of the month, has been working on the insurer’s data, data insights, customer strategy and direct-to-consumer acquisition marketing.

News
Sky and Vodafone executives answer questions on the proposed merger
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At the press conference, held on Thursday, Vodafone chief executive Russell Stanners sat alongside Sky chief executive John Fellet, Sky chief financial officer Jason Hollingworth and Sky chairman Peter Macourt, during a presentation that saw the executives outline their motivations and plans for forming the joint company. And, as is often the case with such events, the most interesting discussion happened when journalists started asking questions.

Features
Facebook looks to move from social to mass media
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Tom Hyde, Facebook’s creative agency partner across New Zealand and Australia, dislikes the word ‘content’, almost as much as he dislikes the fact Facebook is being used as a dumping ground for so much of it. We chat to him about how he’s working with local agencies to move the platform from being a social afterthought to the centre of advertising to a mass market.

News
Chucking out the old Stuff
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Big changes are afoot for Fairfax if the ComCom approves the application to merge with NZME. But small changes are also afoot, judging by the slightly modified Stuff logo.

News
Merger madness
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With all this news of mergers, there’s a new hashtag in town, ‘#nzmergerbot’, and the possibilities are endless. Here are a few of our favourites.

News
Coffee News: how is it still a thing?
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The Coffee News has been doing its weekly round in cities, towns and suburbs throughout New Zealand since 2001, and businesses are lining up to have their ads in the periodical. So, what is the secret to this unassuming publication and its longevity? We chat to Coffee News New Zealand director Helen Fisher about.. well, why it’s still a thing.

News
The Kiwi company with an $85 million price tag: the story behind Online Republic
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Long before Online Republic was the Kiwi success story sold to Australia-based Webjet for $85 million, former StopPress writer Sim Ahmed wrote a piece in 2013 telling the story of how the company’s founder Mike Ballantyne discovered success by moving away from ego-stroking digital campaigns and focusing on the unsexy—but increasingly important—realm of search engine marketing. Today, we revisit this tale.

News
The Boroughs: should people be annoyed about the delays?
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There are so many ads that just slip right by us, in fact, most of them do. But when a giant campaign is launched featuring NBA star Steven Adams and promising the build of five basketball courts in your city, it’s hard not to notice. And to notice is to anticipate and when there are hold ups, people get annoyed. We talk to Spark’s Clive Ormerod about the latest on The Boroughs’ roll-out and what the telco might do differently when launching the next courts.

News
Virtual waiting room
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​For those who hate waiting rooms, the elevator type music and year old magazines, ZocDoc, an online medical care scheduling service, has found a solution in virtual reality.

Opinion
‘Big ideas can be taken from small examples’: FCB’s David Thomason on the importance of keeping it real
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In a world of clogged up newsfeeds, sometimes the best content is bogged down by the biggest content. David Thomason uses Philip Simon, a down-to-earth, anti-smoking advocate and infectious personality as a gleaming but under-exposed example of social media gold, and wonders how marketers can use more holistic examples like this in their approach to social change, all while keeping it real.