Author Ben Fahy
From typically humble New Zealand beginnings, Stolen Rum has grown rapidly in recent years, with some experienced campaigners joining the team and some big distribution deals that have put its products on shelves outside the homeland. And, in keeping with some of its past marketing efforts, it recently ran a unique giveaway in Miami, Sydney and Dunedin.
According to Telecom’s annual report, an average smartphone user reaches for their phone 150 times per day. For some, including Banksy, whose latest piece is a commentary on the scourge of mobile addiction, that’s a bit sad. But that level of interest makes it an appealing place to be for advertisers, so local start-up Postr is hoping to get brands into consumers’ pockets by serving ads on their smartphone homescreens.
In an industry renowned for its chopping and changing, there aren’t too many agency/client relationships that can claim to have lasted 20 years. But Sky and DDB have found their happy place and they’re breaking out the china to celebrate one of the country’s longest-running—and most successful—unions.
One of the benefits of social media is that, when used well, it can get punters to do something, unlike the vast majority of typically one-way commercial messages. And, as Simon Veksner wrote recently, “it’s well known that getting people to do something makes them more likely to buy”. To launch season four of Game of Thrones, Sky and DDB asked fans to tweet #bringdowntheking and help topple a seven-metre statue of the despised King Joffrey that was constructed in Aotea Square by Finch. And, judging by the big numbers, it would have to rank as one of the country’s most engaging social campaigns in recent memory.
If, as suggested in the media recently, New Zealand is set to be one of the world’s ‘rock star economies’, then Xero would have to be the rightful lead singer. General manager of marketing Jonathan Allan talks about ‘doing beautiful business’.
We’ve seen see-through billboards, exploding billboards and bleeding billboards. And now we’ve got an animal-skin billboard, with Hell and Barnes, Catmur & Friends celebrating today’s launch of the new smoked rabbit pizza with an outdoor execution (perhaps quite literally) made entirely out of leftover rabbit skins.
For many years, Vero has taken a bovine-heavy approach to its advertising. And while Sensation, the company’s 1200kg Black Angus bull mascot who burst onto the scene in 2003 when Big launched the brand in New Zealand, features at the end of its new 60 second spot, the company has taken a different, more serious tack in an effort to show that insurance ‘is not about things going wrong, it’s about an insurer putting them right’.
Last week, the Labour Party said the $15 million campaign that aimed to prompt consumers to check out different electricity suppliers and decrease their bills was a failure after a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment report found it had not led to lower retail prices overall and didn’t increase competition. The Electricity Authority’s agency FCB won plenty of awards for the campaign, with 350,000 people visiting the sites and 70,000 people saving $16 million as a result of switching. But that relationship is now over, with Y&R thought to have won the business after FCB declined to pitch.
After establishing the New Zealand arm of Whybin\TBWA around 15 years ago, David Walden resigned from his post last year and made way for Todd McLeay. And now he has officially announced his first new role: chairman of The Family, the agency set up by ex-Ikon leaders Tom Davidson and Lee Parkinson.
Mistubishi has just launched New Zealand’s first plug-in hybrid SUV. But, rather than trying to explain the complex technology in the new Outlander, Clemenger BBDO and Curious have kept it simple. Plus: lots more brmm-brmms and a new automotive sponsorship.
Turn up on Friday afternoon at Gladeye’s Parnell office and you’re likely to get a sausage as part of its weekly all-staff barbecue. Turn up at any other time during the week and you’re likely to get some of the best web design and digital thinking in the country. Founder and director Tarver Graham and account director Ben Glazewski talk turkey.
Break out the sultana pasties*, because Bryan Crawford, chairman and group chief executive of FCB New Zealand and Australia, has been named as the vice chair of FCB’s global network.
Steve Kane, currently creative director at Whybin\TBWA, will take a seat in the managing director’s chair at Y&R NZ, replacing the outgoing James Hurman.
Charity auctions, health programmes and beer-funded documentaries get a 21 gun salute this week.
You can tell by the particularly un-Kiwi job title on Ross Howard’s business card (Senior Vice President of Product & Design) that BuzzDial, the fledgling tech start-up he co-founded with similarly accomplished digital media bods Tom Cotter and Geoff Devereux, is looking much further afield than the small local market. And with M-Com’s Adam Clark coming on board as chairman, Stephen Tindall’s K1W1 fund investing in the business and positive responses to the product from a number of global broadcasters, it seems to be off to a pretty good start.
Around the world, broadcasters are using their talents to make more than just promos for their own shows or idents for their own channels. And TVNZ’s Blacksand is no exception. So should agencies be concerned by the multi-skilled employees, the quick turnaround, the increasing interaction with clients and the improving output of this inhouse creative department? Or can everyone get along?
A high five this week, with Stihl, Tower, Treasury, 2degrees and Woodstock tickling our extremely ticklish fancies.
The sibling rivalry, cruelty and dastardly power (tool) games seen in Stihl and DDB’s advertising first kicked off in 2009 with ‘Bequeathed’ and returned a few years later with ‘Mercy Dash’. And now the brothers are back in another campaign that asks Kiwis a difficult question: in a raging barn fire, would you save your cherished chainsaw or a cute little lamb?
Like previous years, TVNZ shows made up the vast majority of the top 20 most-watched programmes list for last year, with a magician, a talent show and two current affairs offerings luring the most eyeballs in 2013.
When clients shack up with a new agency there’s a tendency to torch the previous work and start afresh. 2degrees and its new partner Special Group certainly took a different approach with their recent business push, but it’s kept Rhys Darby on as the frontman and maintained the quirky, colloquial and self-reflexive style of the previous work for the pair’s first big brand ad.
A couple of years ago, New Zealand men’s fashion brand Working Style launched a DIY print campaign that focused on New Zealand men who were making their mark overseas. Now it’s gone the other way, enlisting one of the world’s best male models, Aiden Shaw, to star in its latest campaign.
Technically, sex and alcohol aren’t meant to mix when it comes to advertising alcohol. That hasn’t stopped it from happening quite regularly over the years, with the Tui girls and an erection pun from Independent Liquor’s Woodstock brand treading a fine line. But Barnes, Catmur & Friends has continued the ‘Crack a Woody’ joke with a big new campaign featuring former Baywatch star and PETA crusader Pamela Anderson.
In an effort to consolidate its agency partners—and in a show of support for Kiwi-owned businesses—New Zealand Trade & Enterprise has appointed Special Group as its lead design and communications agency following a competitive pitch late last year.
The One Percent Collective is on a mission to inspire more generosity and convince Kiwis to give away a small chunk of their total income. And to raise awareness of its mission, it’s called on the generosity of many others to create an ad that co-founder Pat Shepherd believes is “a bit different to your average charity campaign”.
DraftFCB is no more, with Carter Murray, the 39-year-old global chief executive of the Interpublic-owned network, announcing this morning that it has changed its name to FCB.
In an effort to fill a demand for digital, UX and motion content in the Wellington market, STW-owned Designworks has acquired 100 percent of 15-strong design and digital communications agency The Church, making it the region’s largest strategic brand and multi-disciplinary design practice, with around 130 staff across its five offices. Plus: Designworks’ big regional accolades and Sven Baker’s new STW role.
After independent media and PR agency Lassoo took the Emirates account off Starcom last month, it looked fairly certain that it had some kind of connection to French holding company Havas, which won Emirates’ global media account last year. At the time, Lassoo’s directors weren’t able to comment, but now it has officially announced a strategic alliance and will act as the New Zealand arm of Havas Media Group.