Biggsy and Duster may sound like characters in a gangster flick. But they’re actually Assignment Group’s two newest hires, Philip Andrew and Peter Biggs.
Whether it’s the New York Times’ oft-mentioned Snowfall, Bloomberg Businessweek’s brilliant data visualisations, the story about the rise of Luis Surarez on ESPN, the custom features of Pitchfork, the clever comics of the two Tobys on The Wireless’ and many more besides, digital media offers a big toolbox for storytellers. And local shop Gladeye has played a part in another impressive effort, helping to develop a 15-part online expose—or, as it’s being called, “docuserial”—called ‘The Miracle Industry’ with Huffington Post Highline.
There’s been plenty of talk about the haka in recent days, as there always is when the All Blacks head to Europe. And there’s been plenty of brand activity involving virtual reality recently too, with everyone from Kellogg’s to Contiki getting in on the action. Now AIG, the major jersey-hogging sponsors of the All Blacks, have combined both of those things for the Haka 360˚ Experience.
iSite Media has invested heavily in its own measurement and planning tools over the past few years, with its efforts to provide better targeting and planning tools for buses in 2013 earning it a host of awards and some new customers. And now it’s applying a similar model to billboards.
Back in 2013, Tauranga-based Trustpower launched its ‘Better Together’ campaign, which positioned the company as a multi-utility service provider offering power, gas, phone and broadband. In April 2014, it ventured back into the Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton markets after an absence of ten years. And then in March this year it launched its ‘$49 Unlimited Data Broadband’ campaign, which shows two quirky characters—Captain Energy and Broadband Girl—connecting at a nerd convention. Now, following what marketing communications manager Carolyn Schofield says was public demand, the pair have returned and they’re taking their relationship to the next level through karaoke.
Back in May we sat down for a chat with Duncan Greive, founder, editor and publisher of The Spinoff, “a little TV website which has lately been nursing big dreams”. He mentioned his dastardly plans to expand its editorial coverage and its network of sponsors. And he was confident the model “could end up being a good vehicle for a plurality of native advertisers”. Now, as it celebrates its first birthday, he’s taken a big step in that direction, launching five new sections—sports, books, politics, media and society—and hiring eight new staff to help fill them up.
The corporate world has long looked to professional athletes and coaches for guidance on how to perform better, how to create a positive culture and, if they’re being honest, how to grind their opposition into the dust. And ASB has looked to the All Blacks—or, more specifically, the team behind the All Blacks—to provide some pearls of wisdom for Kiwi businesses.
A few months back, Radio New Zealand embarked on a bit of a public/private partnership and put its content on NZME’s iHeartRadio platform (before also snuggling up with MSN). Radio Rhema followed suit. And the National Business Review, which moved into online radio in February and added a personalised ondemand option in March, is the latest to add its name to the list.
As Auckland grows, so too does Auckland Transport (AT), the body in charge of the city’s public transport. Since it sprung from the loins of the Super City in 2009, it has, understandably, been focused more on operational improvements than commercialising its assets. But that’s set to change with AT consolidating its outdoor advertising and signing a nine year contract with Ambient Group, which was acquired by the soon-to-launch QMS Media back in May for an undisclosed sum.
Back in the early days of the internet, pop-up ads started, well, popping up. Originally, they were seen as a way for advertisers to fight against the early stages of banner blindness and get in front of users without being directly attached to the content of a website. But readers found them intrusive and annoying and, eventually, technology was developed to block them. And it’s happening again as Ad Blocking software grows in popularity. So are the supposed evils of online advertising worthy of drastic action? Or is it another unfair stake in the heart of publishers already dealing with a digitally-inspired existential crisis?
Co-branding is fairly common practice in marketing and it pretty much always involves complementary brands, rather than direct competitors. But the Burger King global and Y&R NZ are taking the idea of co-opetition much further and challenging McDonald’s to celebrate Peace Day by asking it to join forces and create the McWhopper.
Malcolm Phillipps joined 2degrees just a few months after it launched in late 2009 and he’s been a key figure in its evolution from a cheap and cheerful challenger brand to a grown-up, full-spectrum telco. Now he’s set to chuck it in and head to the Waikato.
Research by the US Wine Society has shown the single biggest thing you can do to help people enjoy wine is to tell them it’s expensive. And while we like to believe we’re rational creatures, a huge number of our decisions are made unconsciously. So, as our understanding of the way the brain works improves, Ben Fahy looks at whether marketers and agencies are effectively making use of this knowledge.
There was intellectual dissection, there were furrowed brows, there were plates of calamari (hopefully the kind from the sea), there were big jugs of beer, there were raised voices, there were occasional bouts of physical violence and, eventually, there was quorum as a panel of esteemed judges chose New World and Colenso BBDO’s rather fruity Fruit and Vege Pro as the victor in the StopPress/MediaWorks TVC of the Year, with Vodafone’s Piggy Sue and Sky’s Murmuration second and third. PLUS: other category winners for craft, degree of difficulty and clever use of TV.
In the cut-throat world of supermarket retailing, many factors come into play when consumers make their decisions about where to shop, whether it be price, location, range or the latest collectables. But while humans like to think we’re rational creatures, we’re not and a lot of our purchasing decisions are based on whether or not we actually like a brand. New World has its fair share of nuts and bolts, price-led retail ads promoting various deals, but its brand advertising has been streets ahead of the competition in recent years and it has challenged its agencies to take creative leaps and come up with engaging ideas to capture attention. And the mad Fruit and Vege pro ad, which our judges voted as the StopPress/MediaWorks TVC of the Year, is a great example of that thinking in action.
Online media is largely fuelled by advertising revenue. And many believe this inherently parasitic relationship is inspiring a race to the bottom as publishers seek clicks and scale above all else. But the NBR is going the other way and focusing on growing subscriber revenue. And, as part of that strategy, it is getting set to remove all but one of the ads from its homepage.
Steinlager’s ‘We believe’ campaign in 2011 is rightfully held up as a brilliant example of sponsorship activation (and, given the All Black sponsor cleverly found a way to reference a tournament it wasn’t officially allowed to mention, impressive loophole management). Because it captured the nation’s imagination, became a “talisman of belief” and helped reverse Steinlager’s declining share of the premium beer market, it was always going to be a hard act to follow, but as the All Blacks get set to defend the RWC trophy in England soon, the long-time sponsor has brought the white can back again and made a connection between this European tour and another one that took place 110 years ago.
As the world becomes increasingly digital and intuition steadily gets banished to the naughty corner, data has become a new currency—and a language that needs to be learned by marketers. And Krunch, a “data-centric agency” being run by ex-auto marketer Darren Kirkland is hoping it can teach clients how to speak it.
Agencies have many ways of wooing clients. They wine and dine them. They try to win awards. They send out press releases to trade media. They try to destabilise the incumbents. They invest in fancy offices to create the perception of success should they visit. And they also show off their work, their strategy and their talent to online visitors. The agency website is basically a digital shopfront and it’s often seen as an indication of the type of work it might be able to do for clients. Many agencies are guilty of creating boring and/or unfunctional sites and regularly slipping into cliche. But there are some good ones out there. So here are a few of our local favourites.
2degrees has managed to secure around 1.3 million mobile customers since it launched in 2009. But if it wanted to play with the grown-up telcos, it knew it needed to become full-service. That became a reality after purchasing Snap internet earlier this year. And after discovering that Kiwis find the various plans and jargon a bit confusing, it’s aiming to remove the complexity by offering just two plans, something it’s focusing on in its launch campaign.
Modern media is awash in restructures. NZME is currently grappling with a multi-headed beast. MediaWorks TV is haemorraging viewers at primetime and trying to integrate its various platforms. Fairfax is in the throes of its News Rewired programme. And TVNZ, despite benefitting from the troubles of its free-to-air broadcast rival and clocking in with record share for One News and Seven Sharp, obviously doesn’t want to miss out, so it has embarked on a proposed restructure that aims to make it a fully digital media business and those changes are set to affect approximately 30 roles.
When it comes to surprises, the most you’re likely to get from the established taxi industry is another arbitrary fee ($3 extra to pay using EFTPOS? Come on). But, in keeping with its desire to turn the transport industry upside down, Uber often looks to surprise its existing users—and add more new ones—by delivering more than just humans. So, as part of a global campaign that is set to deliver ice cream to 253 cities on Friday, inhabitants of Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown will be able to request a tub of Giapo’s hokey pokey gelato. And it’s working with Hyundai on the promotion as well.
The All Blacks brand has become a huge commercial force in recent years and the players are regularly wheeled out to participate in campaigns for New Zealand Rugby’s sponsors. While there a whole host of fairly strict rules around those appearances, those campaigns still have an agenda attached. And while we’ve seen work like Telecom/Spark’s Backing Black or, further back in time, Steinlager’s Stand by Me aiming to galvanise fan support around the team, New Zealand Rugby hasn’t done a campaign for themselves (aside from a few Super Rugby efforts). But as the All Blacks prepare to defend the Rugby World Cup, that’s changed with ‘Belong’, an initiative aimed at getting fans to show their love for the team and join the “online clubroom” Team All Blacks.
It’s no secret Fairfax is reorienting its business around digital—and, specifically, mobile—with Stuff as the central pillar of that strategy. And while managing director Simon Tong recently told us in a fairly candid interview that the magazine division had largely been left to its own devices, its main magazine brands have now been swallowed by that content-hungry beast stuff.co.nz.
Magazine brands have long embraced the wagon wheel approach and interact with their audiences through a range of different mediums, whether it’s print, online or events. And while there’s no doubt print is declining in popularity in some segments, it is still working well in others and Mindfood has followed up its launch of its Style brand extension last year with a new one called Decor that’s aimed at the big, growing but quite cluttered home and living market.
Mass media used to have all the power. But the rise of social media has meant that many individuals are now gaining huge audiences for themselves and stealing some of that power away. And brands around the world are increasingly leaning on them to help spread their messages. In this part of the world, they don’t get much more popular than Jamie Curry, who hit ten million Facebook fans last year and has 1.5 million followers on YouTube. So, after working with Coca-Cola and Netflix, she’s now signed up with Kiwibank to create The KB Series, a six-part series that will follow Curry on her journey from Napier to Auckland as she moves out of home and pursues her career in acting and producing entertaining content for her legion of fans.
Last week, after a few months of subscribing to the print version of The Herald, my wife decided to cancel it (despite my initial reservations given we have access to the internet, I actually quite enjoyed getting the paper version). With the circulation declines in recent years, this certainly wouldn’t have been an unusual conversation for those in the subscriptions department, but she said they sounded quite sad when she told them the news. And while there are a few areas of positivity in the latest readership numbers, putting a smiling man on the first page of the Nielsen readership report might have been overly optimistic.
It started with one desk, three partners and no clients in late 2007. Now, as Ben Fahy discovers, Special Group has 30 clients in New Zealand, an Australian office that’s running hot and a desire to take its mix of magic, logic and decency to the world.
In a prime example of how the world has gone fairly fucking insane, fast food companies and sugary drink providers have their finger lickin mitts all over high performance sport. McDonald’s is in bed with FIFA and the Olympics, KFC is into cricket and rugby (where’s the chicken cannon, Colonel?), Wendy’s is a long-time supporter of the Warriors, Coca-Cola is practically everywhere and now Burger King has shacked up with boxer Joseph Parker—and he’s already making some outrageous demands.
Spark, McDonald’s, Tower, Coca-Cola, Skinny Mobile and Sky are the first advertisers to get themselves onto Adshel’s new network of 35 digital roadside panels in Auckland and general manager Nick Vile says the response from the market to the new screens has been huge.