The table. Pretty much every office has one. And they’re generally not the most exciting of objects. But the table that sits in the offices of Assignment Group—and the table that features on the front cover of the November/December issue of NZ Marketing—is surprisingly interesting and has become a rather fitting symbol of how the agency began and how it still likes to work.
Westpac’s ode to asking and Barkers’ slow motion All Blacks earn their keep this week.
It’s pretty tough going for the mainstream beers at the moment, with all the growth coming from the craft category and the old stalwarts struggling to keep up as palates change and new tipples tickle fancies. Speight’s Gold Medal Ale is still the country’s most popular beer brand by volume, however, and the brand has recently tried to become more craft-like and even branched out into—block your ears Southern Men—cider. So, in an effort to create a more cohesive family unit and ensure the flagship variety continues its reign, the brand has been given an overhaul by Dow Design.
There have been some impressive campaigns harnessing social data in recent years, with Intel’s Museum of Me and Me the Musical coming to mind. Now Colenso BBDO is putting that information to good use for Amnesty International with Trial by Timeline, a Facebook application that shows users what some comments or behaviours might have cost them if they lived in different, less tolerant countries.
As the centrepiece of Westpac’s new ‘Start Asking’ campaign shows, New Zealanders can talk about almost everything these days, whether it be politics, religion, war, sex, existential issues and, of course, Rugby World Cup wins. But, as Westpac’s general manager of marketing and customer experience Martine Jager says, we’re still not comfortable talking about money. So can the bank actually change that?
The final instalment of The Glossies for this year had one of the biggest responses yet, with over 800 votes. And it was Trilogy and Special Group’s all-natural campaign in Woman’s Day that came out on top, beating out Taste magazine’s Homebrand takeover by Progressive and Ogilvy and DB Export and Colenso BBDO’s The Wine List in Metro.
While the magazine sector recorded its third consecutive overall readership increase in the latest Nielsen CMI figures, the newspapers haven’t fared quite so well, with an overall decline in total readership for all dailies and metropolitan titles that has been deemed significant by Nielsen and almost universal declines in paid circulation. But there are a couple of diamonds in the rough—particularly The Herald on Sunday and The Waikato Times—and, for the optimists, the numbers are still holding up much better than they are in comparison to many other markets.
Following the ANZ-National fusion decision, there has been a seemingly endless stream of bank ads vying for New Zealand’s affection. And while Westpac has dabbled with a cheeky green vs. blue = red number and a bit of sneaky teaser hijacking, it’s kept its biggest pile of gunpowder dry until now, launching a new brand campaign by DDB last night that’s headed by a 90 second TVC imploring New Zealanders to start asking questions about money.
The quarterly number fest that is the Nielsen CMI Readership and Audit Bureau of Circulation data has been released, and while only a few magazine titles bucked the general downward trend in paid circulation, a majority of titles experienced readership increases, making it the third consecutive survey showing an improvement in total readership.
There are some brilliant ads that bring joy to viewers and add to the pop-cultural landscape. And there are many more horrible ads that do the exact opposite. Either way, there’s no doubt humans have a love/hate relationship with advertising, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of Fair Go’s Ad Awards, which increased its audience from last year and crowned MasterCard’s All Blacks ‘Tight on Tour’ ad as the best and Lumino The Dentist’s ‘Love Your Smile’ ad as the worst.
Bum wiping and high fashion are fairly strange bedfellows. But Kleenex’s Paper Dresses campaign has been mixing the two surprisingly well since it launched in 2009. And the final cog in this year’s nine-month campaign, which upped the ante thanks to a collaborative effort between Ogilvy, Kimberly-Clark and TVNZ, has come out on top of the September round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.
Back in the heady days of the early ’80s, invoice scams were thought to be one of the reasons for the creation of the Magazine Publisher’s Association—and the implementation of a more robust approach to measuring circulation of titles. But despite these measures, such scams are still occurring today, as evidenced by Operation Edit, a major joint enforcement agency operation led by the Serious Fraud Office that has led to six arrests.
The Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards are hitting stage and screen next week, and, just as it did last year, Vodafone has employed the services of augmented reality (AR) as part of its sponsorship push. But it’s gone a bit further in its seventh year as naming rights sponsor with a few innovative mobile additions, like tapping into the second screening phenomenon with Pluk functionality and claiming a New Zealand first with an interactive broadcast set to be screened via its app.
After three years at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, Mark Cochrane has accepted an intercompany transfer and promotion to become the chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi Thailand, with Colenso BBDO’s Marcelle Baker brought on board to take over as group account director on Toyota and DB Breweries.
Whittaker’s foreign correspondent, Bay Audiology’s moments of joy, Prince Nikolai Stroganov III, NZ Police and VW’s take on the importance of being young at heart earn TVC honours.
With the decline in consumer sales for most printed news publications and most of the growth coming from digital communications, Rugby News has decided to move with the times and, from next month, will cease printing hard copies and offer all of its news online for free in the form of a digital magazine.
While the joy of seeing clients succeed offers inspiration for creatives, ego points, a sweet prize, and free pizza and booze are also renowned as powerful incentives to get adfolk to strive for quality. And, in an effort to promote the wonders of the static poster, Adshel is doing just that with the second instalment of its Creative Challenge, which has just opened for registrations and this year hopes to attract 100 local creatives to develop a campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand in just 60 minutes.
Whittaker’s and Assignment Group have been successfully beating the patriotic, family-owned, challenger brand drum for many years. But, due to New Zealand’s International Inferiority Complex (IIS), everyone knows that anything with Kiwi provenance needs a ringing foreign endorsement before it can be considered a true success and Whittaker’s has got a good one in the form of UK celebrity chef and unashamed chocolate lover Nigella Lawson, who has signed on to promote the new five roll refined Creamy Milk Chocolate—and give the Swiss a bit of a hurry up.
Auckland indie agency Shine doesn’t really play the show-offy PR game like many of its contemporaries and tends to focus on doing good work for some pretty big clients like Fonterra, Speight’s and Hyundai. And it’s thought it has added another two scalps to that list, taking House of Travel off Saatchi & Saatchi and GE Capital off Y&R.
Yesterday in the Image Centre Group’s boardroom, a company was reborn, with the country’s biggest home services franchise Green Acres launching a new, more contemporary brand.
There are a few things you can expect from a New Zealand summer: torrential rain, sunburnt tops of the feet and sausage and booze-related weight gain. You can also expect a campaign from Tip Top, but this year’s effort is a bit different—and more logistically challenging—than normal, because it’s launched a big new brand platform and is “on a mission to make New Zealand Feel Tip Top this summer, one ice cream at a time”.
Given Genesis Energy is the biggest spender in the electricity sector, clocking in with a very specific $4,408,317 in the year to July according to Nielsen’s AIS data, the news it was up for pitch whipped up a bit of excitement in agency land. From what we’ve heard, pretty much every non-conflicted man and his dog was in the room at the RFP stage, which could either be seen as an indication Genesis was testing the whole market to find the best partner or it didn’t know what kind of agency it actually wanted. But reliable sources have informed us the shortlist has now been decided on, with .99, Y&R, M&C Saatchi and DraftFCB thought to be getting set to fight it out for creative duties and Spark and Naked thought to be in the running for media.
After a tough few years for the automotive industry, most of the manufacturers are getting back up to speed, with some agressive marketing campaigns and more favourable economic conditions leading to a 14 percent increase in new car sales in September. Ford increased its share by nine percent, and it’s hoping to increase that even further for its Mondeo model with the help of a paid-for reality show called The Test Driver.
When the Australian Standards Bureau ruled that user generated content on Carlton United Breweries Facebook page could be classified as advertising and was therefore subject to the same criteria as any other ad, advertisers and advocates smacked their gobs and quivered in their boots because they felt on-the-fly moderation required to deal with comments was commercially impractical and would nullify the immediacy and openness that make social media so powerful. Now the Advertising Standards Authority in New Zealand has released its views on the matter, and while it doesn’t go quite as far as its neighbours, there are some interesting rulings that affect how brands interact with consumers online.
A triple whammy for Saatchi & Saatchi this week, with Big Ben and the Auckland Philharmonia getting in behind.
In a world where The Ridges get their own TV show, celebrities get the headlines and fans froth at the mouth over One Direction or Justin Bieber, it’s not surprising there’s a belief that the lowest-common denominator is on the warpath. It certainly makes things tough for some of the more high-brow pursuits, but rather than simply take the government’s funding decision on the chin, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Colenso BBDO have released a charity single called ‘Soundtrack to Auckland’ to help rally support for its cause from Aucklanders.
They say regret is a pointless emotion, but what would ‘they’ know. So to inspire a few more Kiwis to get their ayes into gees and shake up the ‘ahhh, I’ll do it tomorrow’ attitude, AMP, Running With Scissors, DNA and Bloodhound Media have got together to launch the ‘act today, own tomorrow’ campaign.
The trusty Huntaway took the departure of the National Bank brand in his stride, and last night saw the launch of the first brand campaign for the new ANZ since the big announcement was made a few weeks back, with a Kiwi-specific cameo from Aussie actor Simon Baker back in character as The Mentalist’s Patrick Jane. And while we’re impressed with his use of two tea bags, a classic trick used by tea-nerds who like a stronger brew without the ‘nyertch’ factor of tannins, we fear our fictional friend may be stretching the truth a little.
When Orcon launched its new cat-centric campaign recently, we mentioned the fact that Wired had delved into what it called the online cat-industrial complex, ad agency John St had spoofed the feline fascination brilliantly with the world’s first cat advertising agency, and a recent cat video film festival in the US drew 10,000 people (it was won by Henri 2: paw de deux). So it’s fair to say the cat is a powerful force in these digital times. And Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi have enlisted the services of a self-harming feline called Alloroc (geddit?) who’ll stop at nothing to get into the new 2013 Corolla as part of the ‘Feels Good Inside’ campaign.
While New Zealand’s international awards hauls have earned it a reputation as a hotbed of advertising creativity, Google’s New Zealand country manager Tony Keusgen believes we’ve got a lot of work to do when it comes to digital marketing and he is on a mision to get Kiwi marketers using data to inform their decisions. So how important is search? How can YouTube being harnessed? And are Kiwi marketers prepared for the brewing mobile storm?