TBWA\ has been cranking out the work for ANZ since ‘The Announcement’ of the new—and, if you believe the ads, improved—bank. And, with plenty at stake, it’s no surprise that no expense has been spared and the doctor has been well and truly gone for. And now it has moved into the final phase of the campaign to show what products and services it can now offer its customers.
The air was thick with the smell of creativity at the Hopetoun Alpha on 8 November for Adshel’s Creative Challenge (turns out creativity smells a little bit like a combination of cigarette smoke, ironic t-shirts, Sal’s Pizza and desperation), and after 60 minutes of furious jotting and pressurised thinking to come up with a campaign that would raise awareness—and funds—for Surf Life Saving New Zealand next winter, it was Colenso BBDO’s team that took the top prize.
New Zealand’s largest national newspaper, The Sunday Star Times, has had a pretty rough time of it recently, with some fairly concerning readership and circulation results. But an editorial rejig is in process to, as Fairfax chief executive Allen Williams says, improve the newspaper and make it more appealing and authoritative, and it’s also launched a new campaign with its new agency .99 that aims to draw attention to the great content it provides.
Aside from the arrival of Jeremy Wells’ column in the Herald, 2012 hasn’t been a particularly memorable one for New Zealand Cricket. But things can only get better (right?) and, after a short competitive pitch process, it’s chosen indie agency True to help out.
More than half of Kiwi households with televisions fork out for Sky, which is thought to be one of the highest per capita rates in the world. And, according to a recent PwC study, 40 percent of these subscribers have taken up MySky, an increase of 45 percent since last year. It’s where most of the growth is coming from for Sky, much to the chagrin of poor old father time, who, as a great new, almost Wes Anderson-esque 90 second spot by DDB and The Sweet Shop shows, has been rendered obsolete by the wonderous technology.
DraftFCB took a couple of .99’s biggest accounts last year in the form of Vodafone and Air New Zealand, but it looks likes .99 has got some retribution as it’s won the Genesis Energy pitch along with justONE. And there’s also a change in media, with Starcom taking over from the incumbent Spark.
It aims to put on good shows all year, and, with a selection of its stars wheeled in (including a performance from the biggest of them all, Billy’s Big Brass Brand), a few branded ice sculptures (rumour has it new chief executive Kevin Kenrick fashioned them with his bare hands), lots of bass, some slick production and plenty of delicious things in spoons, TVNZ certainly put on a good one last night to launch its 2013 season.
As we wrote a few weeks back, Contact Energy put the feelers out for some new agency partners and JWT New Zealand has been chosen as the company’s sole creative agency across brand, digital and retail.
Interactive ad revenue figures have been steadily heading upwards over the past few years in New Zealand and in the latest round of figures, the sector hit its highest ever level, with total advertising spend in Q3, 2012 of $94 million, an increase of three percent from the last quarter and an increase of five percent year-on-year. But, as you’d expect in such a rapidly developing industry, there are still a few issues to contend with, including a fall in display advertising, the use of ad blocking software and discussions around the appropriate methodology for collecting revenue data.
The best moment of my life was undoubtedly winning the meat pack at a friend’s wedding, closely followed by the time when three loyalty cards came due on the same day. So it was pleasing to learn that an ad celebrating sexy meat for Pak ‘n’ Save’s Meat Week has won DraftFCB the October ORCA.
And we bow down and give TVC of the Week praise to Westpac’s bickering oldies, Good Books’ bodice ripper, Stickman’s chicken adulation, OPSM’s surf lifesaving tie-in and Big Little City’s visual love letter to Auckland.
Unitec’s brave ‘Change Starts Here’ campaign by Special Group and Naked helped change perceptions of the institution, and its latest ‘We make the people who make it’ push ramped up the brand’s cool factor by showcasing some of the impressive constructions its students have been involved in around Auckland. But it certainly didn’t stop at TV because that quest has continued through a range of smart campaign extensions and media partnerships organised by Beat PR, including one with George FM that’s given a group of Unitec students the challenge of constructing the ultimate DJ booth.
QR codes have long been talked about as a bridge between the digital and the physical. But the oft-used “let’s chuck a QR Code at the bottom of the ad and hope for the best” approach is rarely successful. So Phantom Billstickers has launched a new and hopefully more enticing approach to the technology that it’s calling the talking poster.
The tinsel is going up around the nation’s shops, the Cliff Richard carol CD is being dusted off and the festive retail shouting is already underway. But rather than add to the commercial cacophony, Running with Scissors and The Good Taste Company have tried to create something of a reprieve with a campaign for its new Double-Ups range.
Charlie’s has been fighting the good fight against its much larger, some would say much less principled competition since it kicked off in 1999. And, with its newish agency Assignment Group, it’s launched the first campaign for a couple of years in an effort to retell its story and show New Zealanders that the brand is “on a mission from good”.
The Briscoes lady—AKA Tammy Wells—has been invading New Zealand’s living rooms and mailboxes for almost a quarter of a century and, after thousands of ads about massive savings and red hot sales, the ‘You’ll never by better’ slogan has been well and truly etched into the nation’s consciousness. And this week the Kiwi retailer marked a significant milestone as it celebrated 150 years of business. PLUS: some classic old ads.
Moa has its fair share of detractors, from threat-making Pakistanis to protective Frenchies to lesbians to those who disagreed with the imagery used in its, shall we say, unique prospectus. So it came as a shock to many when the trickster god of the Kiwi beer family was announced as a sponsor of the New Zealand Olympic team, a sponsorship we felt it did a fantastic job of leveraging online and in person at Kiwi house in London. And as part of its ‘Beer for Olympians’ campaign, it has had one complaint upheld and one not upheld by the ASA.
Kiwi publishing company Healthy Life Media is aiming to tap into the increasing concern it says Kiwis have for the environment—and give them practical ideas for easy ways to live more sustainably and save money—by launching a new monthly magazine called Green Ideas.
String Theory’s last brilliant viral effort for the Good Books charity, Metamorphosis, recently took gold and bronze at the London International Awards, and it could have another winner on its hands, as Havana Heat, the next innuendo-heavy, bodice-ripping Mills and Boon-themed instalment has just been released. And, coincidentally, it’s been created by The Mill of London, which won production company of the year at the same awards.
Air New Zealand’s hairyplane, AA Insurance’s tribute to the wonders of its industry and Speight’s New York knocking get the goodness.
Metro claims to be “the most trusted guide to eating in Auckland”. And the title is playing to its strengths and moving to where its audience is increasingly looking with the launch of Metro Eats, a new mobile app that was developed by Satellite Media and combines content from the magazine’s Top 50 Restaurants, Top 100 Cheap Eats and Top 50 Bars.
Ze Germans have created an extremely valuable country brand based around reliability, precision and quality design and engineering, which has certainly helped the likes of VW, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz conquer the world’s roads. But Sweden is trying to find its niche, and in New Zealand it’s doing it with a ballsy new campaign for the new Volvo V40 hatchback that takes aim at the established German car brands and taps into the desire to be ‘Über Different’.
What do you get when you cross glitter canons, cheerleaders showing their bums, overly dramatic sound tracks, media types eating all the nibbles and Paul Henry? A new season TV launch, of course. And first cab off the rank for 2013 was MediaWorks, which announced some of the goodies it will be showing on TV3 and Four at Sky City, interviewed some of 2012’s stars on the couch and introduced the first X Factor NZ judge, Stan Walker.
Entries for this Thursday night’s Adshel Creative Challenge wind up on Tuesday night at 5pm. And there are still a couple of spots available for agency teams who enjoy eating pizza, drinking booze and developing a campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand in just 60 minutes.
The TV industry, here and around the world, is currently dealing with some major challenges, but all that serious business was mostly forgotten on Saturday night as the stars—from in front of and from behind the camera—of the local industry turned up to accentuate the positive at the 2012 New Zealand Television Awards. And in the annual (mostly) two horse race, it was MediaWorks that wrested the big news prizes off TVNZ, and TVNZ that took home most of the prizes in the drama and reality sections.
The Southern Man has been a feature of Speight’s advertising—and a prominent feature of Kiwi pop culture—for many years, so any major change to the much-loved advertising figure is obviously fraught with danger. But times have changed. And, while New Zealand might not have too many skyscrapers, the new Speight’s campaign aims to show that we’ve got our priorities right.
When Localist launched as an Auckland-only print directory, plenty of questions were raised about the rationale behind the creation of a new product that went head to head with a dominant player in what many saw as a dying industry. 18 months on and it’s still here and, confounding the sceptics, it’s still growing. But as of next week Localist will be very different and 100 percent digital.
As Genesis, the country’s biggest spending energy company, gets set to announce the results of its recent pitch, Contact, the country’s second biggest spending energy company, is also searching for some new agency partners, although, judging by the number of go-to industry gossips who didn’t know about it, it seems to have been a slightly more exclusive affair.
There were plenty of naysayers when Kiwibank was launched, but, after ten years, few would argue it has done a stellar job of facing up the big Australian-owned banks on the personal banking front (it announced a tripling of profits recently and now has around ten percent of the retail market). But now it’s aiming to bump up its business banking credentials with a campaign by Ogilvy and Ikon that aims to demonstrate how the bank can save SMEs time and money and let them get on with running their businesses.
Insurance is usually a very low involvement category; a grudge purchase if ever there was one (although it’s become a very high-involvement category for some in Christchurch, and not in a good way). As a result, the service it offers is often taken for granted until it’s needed. So, perhaps rather bravely given the current feelings towards the industry, AA Insurance has decided it’s time to promote the positives of its business with a big multi-media campaign by its new agency Special Group that spans TV, digital, DR, outdoor and radio.