TVNZ has made its first foray into using the dating app Tinder as a marketing tool, but it was with a dark twist befitting a promo for zombie horror show The Walking Dead. Unsuspecting love lorn guys were served up hotties who eventually turned out to be walkers.
You know you’ve made it when you’ve featured on the likes of Mashable, TechCrunch, The Verge, The Next Web and Daily Mail, without spending anything on marketing except your own time. That’s what three Kiwis and a Londoner have achieved with their 3D photo app Seene.
Imagistory, an app that encourages kids to use their imaginations to create stories from picture books, is among to first to use Kickstarter as the site gets set to launch downunder today. Founder Nick Barrett won the top award in AUT’s Venture Fund for the app concept in 2011, which provided a $7300 boost. He’s now seeking $15,000 on Kickstarter.
The Warehouse Group has brought its own version of the 24-hour online buy-up Cyber Monday to New Zealand, ahead of another Kiwi event based on the concept. The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, Red Alert, Torpedo7, 1-Day, ilovebeauty, pet.co.nz, No.1 Fitness and shotgunsupplements.co.nz were among the participants in the group’s 12 November event.
APN has made a swag of changes to nzherald.co.nz, including a Parallax-based microsite for special editions and topics. Another key addition is the content timeline, or story arc, which includes related articles, videos and images that let users track a developing issue.
Telecom has demo-ed a slew of ways customers can make the most of its 4G network in the real world of work and home. The showcase of what’s designed to be faster or easier using 4G, 3G, fibre and wifi comes on the eve of the telco’s 4G launch in parts of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch tonight.
ANZ, Countdown, Briscoes and Yellow have gone public about withdrawing advertising from RadioLive after an interview by the station’s hosts Willie Jackson and John Tamihere with a caller ‘Amy’ who said she was friends with an alleged victim of the Roastbusters gang.
Vodafone has launched a new competition in its official app for the New Zealand Music Awards, an event its sponsored for 10 years. The ever-evolving app has become a central showpiece in the tech company’s sponsorship of the event.
Mi9 is locally launching the versaTiles ad format it rolled out across the Tasman about six months ago, which it says makes it more accessible for advertisers to spread their message via email. The local versaTiles release follows Hotmail’s relaunch as Outlook.com, which has 1.2 million account holders in New Zealand.
Former telco execs James Fisk and Neil Macdonald have hit the ignition switch on a new app for taxi booking called Zoomy, developed by Auckland company Roam. The app goes the extra mile for drivers and approved taxi organisations, showing them in real time how many calls they’ve received, response times and feedback from users.
It wasn’t just students learning lessons about digital marketing with a recent assignment to promote small businesses using AdWords. Businesses also got schooled about the value of cropping up early in searches and making themselves more accessible online.
ACC does a swag of things to prevent falls in the home, there’s even a national strategy for it. Now it’s added a game, Safe House, created by Auckland company InGame, to the kitbag it uses to educate people about the issue.
When Axis set out to stage a more collegial and celebratory awards show this year, it might not have imagined agencies cosied in warm embrace over each other’s work, nor its trophy moving in for a fleeting kiss with a doppelganger. But as this year’s awards open for business, Clemenger BBDO has paired off the big guns and asked them to love each other as only agencies can.
Taste magazine is following in the footsteps of its Bauer stablemates Cleo and Metro with a new web presence. The new site is set to tap into the growing global hunger for information about food and cooking.
Radio streaming service Pandora has brought the functionality it introduced in its 5.0 app for iOS devices earlier this year to a new version for Android tablets. The interface of Pandora 5.0 for Android tablets has also been optimised for the larger screen size of these devices.
Recruitment company Hourigan International wants to get creativity a seat at Kiwi boardroom tables and embed it into senior leadership roles. It’s targeting the ‘creative leadership tribe’ of agile, commercially-literate people who can help firms become more consumer-centric.
Kiwis are can’t switch off when they’re away getting R&R, with a TripAdvisor survey showing we use our mobiles to shamelessly brag about our holidays on social media, look for places to stay and things to do. But a significant number of our hospitality companies aren’t meeting traveller demand.
The burgeoning games industry is making money for Kiwi exporters – and an increasingly diverse gamer audience with more devices than ever is force to be reckoned with. Two pieces of new research highlight strong growth in gaming, with a local survey showing mobile games made in New Zealand have been downloaded more than 130 million times in the last year.
Chameleon Partners has released the first of several new TVCs, along with a new website, spreading the word about Chorus’ Gigatown contest that gives a Kiwi town the chance to win speedy internet.
The team behind Stqry, an app that lets people find local attractions and immerse themselves in the story around it, has launched a competition to showcase some of our best art, culture, history, heritage and wildlife spots.
Auckland web development company bkaBoom, part of bka Interactive, has created Go Team, a sports picking app which on a deeper level is all about targeting specific audiences with brand messages. As you’d expect for a product being trialled in New Zealand, rugby was the first cab off the rank, but the app can be used in any team sport that has a competition.
Big Fish has steered away from cautionary tales in its Save Kiwi Week campaign for the Kiwis for kiwi trust, preferring fun and frivolity with quintessentially Kiwi former All Blacks head coach Sir Graham Henry. The agency’s worked with the charity since shortly after it formed about eight years ago, and created a TVC and reskinned website for the fundraising week.
Ogilvy and Mather has won what it says is a significant piece of work to create a hazardous substances public awareness campaign for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). The multi-channel campaign, set to launch at the end of the month, will target a broad audience with a message that has an element of challenge to deliver.
Auckland City-based Animation College has turned its brand into an action hero with its first agency partnership. The 25 year-old organisation worked with Origami to overhaul its logo and introduce a new tagline, ‘the art of emotion’.
Kiwibank has added business functionality to its consumer mobile banking app in an offering that lets users switch between accounts when they’re using mobile banking.
Canterbury development shop Mogeo – run by a trio that came together shortly after the February 2011 quake – has followed in Ikea’s footsteps with an app similar to one recently released by the European giant to help furniture buyers.
Kathmandu is responding to growing use of its site on mobile devices with its first website optimised for those devices. Online sales make up four percent of sales across the retail group and in its 2013 financial year presentation it said online sales had grown 55 percent year on year.
Kiwis are using internet plans with bigger data caps and better connection quality, with a high fibre diet and the mobile web driving growth in online. That’s according to Statistics New Zealand, which says more than three quarters of broadband connections now have data caps of 20GB or more.
Kiwi businesswomen are outpacing other business owners in their use of tech marketing tools like social media, cloud computing, online payments and SEO, says MYOB – and it’s these tools that are enabling women to start up small and medium enterprises and balance work and life as they grow.
A family member affected by illness or injury, or dying, are among the worst scenarios imaginable. That makes insurance for families a hard sell, but AMP, partnering with DNA, Running with Scissors and Bloodhound Media, want to remind Kiwis to protect what matters most.