Author Ben Fahy
Some cultures celebrate the release of a new edition of NZ Marketing by throwing three virgins into a volcano and dancing for days on end. But in New Zealand we simply write something on StopPress and alert readers to the fact that by picking up a copy of a magazine that recently won all four of the big gongs in the trade/professional category at the 2012 Magazine Awards *awww shucks* you can fill your brain with stories about how the senior management team at Saatchi & Saatchi is trying to rediscover the agency’s lost mojo; the intriguing brand wars playing out in the local automotive sector; the state of New Zealand’s radio industry in an increasingly digital world; how to choose an agency without losing your shirt; the massive changes currently being dealt with by the retail sector; and David Bell’s take on why we might currently be going through this generation’s equivalent of the Mad Men era.
Since Steinlager Pure was launched in 2007, Lion has used big name American actors to endorse the brand, with the likes of Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe and Vincent Gallo gracing our screens and stroking our egos in the past campaigns made by Publicis Mojo. But after a hiatus from Kiwi TV screens as its big brother’s white cans took over during the RWC—and with DDB now as its lead agency—it’s ready to launch its next campaign on Sunday. And for the first time the new mascot is a Kiwi: successful director, actor and all-round funny man Taika Waititi.
The Block is going off in Australia at the moment as it reaches the final stages of the current season, and MediaWorks is doing its best to ensure the same thing happens for the first season of the New Zealand version, launching a full-scale marketing assault created by the inhouse team that’s been pretty difficult to miss.
It’s the night the magazine industry comes together to, as ACP head honcho Paul Dykzeul might say, indulge in a bit of gratuitous back patting. Or, as the MPA might say, reward the publications, publishers, editors, designers, sales folk and contributors who toil away on their various titles. And it was Good and Cuisine’s Sarah Nicholson that reigned supreme on the night, winning the top magazine and editor of the year prizes respectively.
She’s been behind some of the country’s most creative—and creatively awarded—marketing campaigns, but after four years with the embattled Yellow Pages Group, business transformation director and former marketing director Kellie Nathan has decided it’s time for a change.
Leopards, as the old chestnut goes, find it quite difficult to change their spots. But since its launch, Skinny, a sub-brand of Telecom that’s gunning for the youth-market, has gone about things much differently than its big brother. And its modern approach to marketing seems to be working quite well so far.
Old Navy by Crispin Porter+ Bogusky and Curious’ Miki Magisiva, the V Motion Project by Colenso and Thick as Thieves and the Sir Peter Blake Trust’s clip by Contagion take cakes this week.
Using your phone as a payment device is something that’s been talked about for years but rapidly increasing smartphone uptake means it is now starting to come to fruition in New Zealand. ASB and TSB have recently come out with updated mobile payment technology, and plenty of other companies like Swipe HQ, Google and MasterCard have their own iterations hoping to render the wallet an anachronism. Now ANZ has upped its activity in this space as well with a Facebook campaign by Tequila\ that aims to drive new registrations for its goMoney iPhone app.
News of three senior defections at Fairfax in Australia surfaced yesterday, following on from last week’s news that it planned to cut 1,900 jobs—or around 20 percent of its staff—as part of a restructure aimed at facing up to the challenges of digital publishing. News Ltd is also set to cull staff, although it has said the number is “significantly less” than Fairfax (its own press appears to be looking on the bright side of that decision). And while New Zealand’s newspaper biz is still doing it tough at the moment, Fairfax NZ chief executive Allen Williams told the NBR it was a “case of two different markets, in two different timeframes”, so going tabloid and putting up paywalls wasn’t on the agenda–yet. Add in the Leveson enquiry in the UK and it’s tough out there in media land, so it was interesting to see the results of the 5th annual Oriella Digital Journalism Study, which showed the world’s media were cautiously upbeat despite continued uncertainty in the global economy and “digital technologies have affected the practice of journalism less markedly in New Zealand” than elsewhere.
The creative gang have had their fun at AXIS and Cannes, so the focus now shifts to effectiveness awards. And, in addition to the local call for entries for the 2012 Effies going live, Effie Worldwide have announced the results of its second ever effectiveness index, with Colenso BBDO, DraftFCB and DDB ranked in the top 20 most effective agencies in the world.
When it comes to brand advocacy, it doesn’t get much more fervent than the love humans seem to have for Queenstown’s Fergburger. Pretty much every day, 21 hours a day, the line stretches up Shotover St and feasting upon one of its sizable delights is firmly etched onto most visitors’ to-do lists, to the point where, according to untrustworthy local Queenstown experts, it now has the second highest turnover of any business in Queenstown. International rugby players are certainly not immune from its culinary charms either, as evidenced by Irish captain Brian O’Driscoll, who, when asked in his post-match interview if he would be returning to visit said maybe, if the burger joint was calling.
When Ogilvy launched Kiwibank’s tenth birthday ad a few months back, we said: “Wait for the moaners to see the kid jumping off the rock”. And whaddya know, the haters hated, the moaners moaned, and, in its latest round of decisions, a complaint was partially upheld, with a majority of the ASA complaints board finding the ad had “not been prepared with the due sense of responsibility to consumers and to society”.
Of all the NZ Olympic sponsors, Moa is perhaps the most unlikely, given its oft-controversial approach to marketing and the fact that it’s, well, beer, a substance not particularly well-renowned for improving athletic performance. But even though the NZOC is an organisation renowned for taking things pretty seriously, Moa, which celebrated a solid medal haul of its own recently, has still been able to have a bit of fun with its sponsorship activity.
We were interested to read about Ian Smith’s apparently coincidental attack of the Pures during his commentary of the first All Blacks vs Ireland test, a three match series being sponsored by Steinlager, which is soon to launch its 2012 campaign featuring a new ambassador ($10 says it’s Ian Smith). Lion and Sky denied there was any attempt at nefarious aural product placement. But even if there was, it’s highly unlikely it would do anything: remember the old wives’ tale about subliminal messages being played in movie theatres that supposedly made people buy more Coke and popcorn?
Just as Braniff airways shook up the fairly dull US airline sector in the ’60s by painting its planes bright colours and putting its hostesses in bright uniforms, Air New Zealand changed the way everyone looked at inflight safety videos by making them entertaining and, with its previous agency .99, it basically created a whole new—and quite powerful—media channel. So far we’ve seen painted bodies, All Blacks, lycra-clad, OTT aerobics instructors and puerile puppets. And for the first time the airline has decided to take an animated approach, with a new ’hand-drawn’ safety video featuring the voice talent of Kiwi-born actress Melanie Lynskey and Modern Family’s Ed O’Neill, as well as a range of “cameo appearances”.
Who’s it for: RNZAF by Saatchi & Saatchi and 8com
Why we like it: Showing the range of exciting things recruits can get up to if they join the Air Force certainly isn’t a new approach. But this fast-paced, well-made TVC does its job and gets that message across very well. And almost 26,000 views on YouTube isn’t too shabby.
Many believe the US$108 billion valuation of Facebook, which started off at US$38 a share and has fallen back to around US$31 a share, was based on “option value”; on the future money-making potential of what Wired writer Steven Johnson feels is becoming a monopoly. The social networking behemoth has certainly been under the pump in the media since the IPO, but research released yesterday about the powerful effect both earned and paid messages have on purchase behaviour offered some welcome good news.
Designworks has just completed work to reposition the University of Canterbury and help attract prospective students, which has been a bit of struggle since the earthquakes. And it is urging Canterbury businesses to follow the university’s lead and take a fresh look at their positioning if they want to grow in the future.
Over the summer, Lipton took a four storey canvas slide to some of the country’s summer hotspots, like Homegrown Wellington, Otago Uni’s O-Week, and Sounds in the Sun. And the digital and social aspects of the sLIPTONslide campaign have earned PHDIQ Yahoo! New Zealand’s 2012 first quarter Digital Strategy Award.
Who’s it for: Lexus by Saatchi & Saatchi
Why we like it: While Toyota’s marketing is all about New Zealandness, this moody new campaign for its luxury subsidiary Lexus aims to drum home the brand’s proud Japanese heritage—and, more specifically, its focus on craftsmanship. And …
Facebook is a big believer in the hack mentality; in “putting a bunch of ridiculously talented people in ridiculously small quarters under ridiculous time pressure and building cool stuff”. From time to time it employs this approach to come up with big ideas for big clients or charities in some of its larger markets, but last week, the hack came to New Zealand, when around 40 digital and creative folk from the likes of Contagion, Colenso BBDO, Rapp Tribal, DMD, Gladeye, DraftFCB, Saatchi & Saatchi and Young & Shand put aside their rivalries and gathered in the Contagion offices in Auckland to come up with ideas that would help cement the legacy of Sir Peter Blake and spread the word about the work of the Sir Peter Blake Trust.
Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus has a tough battle on its hands in the prestige class, facing as it does the European goliaths of Audi, BMW and Mercedes. But it’s aiming to reinvigorate the Japanese brand’s challenger spirit with the launch of a classy new campaign out of Saatchi & Saatchi called ‘Kokoro Wo Komete’ or ‘Soul Meets Machine.’
After a competitive pitch, Running With Scissors has won some project work with Heinz Wattie’s, beating out JWT for the spoils and leading to a few questions about the role of DDB.
Photo: Paul Statham
Wendy Rayner, head of marketing at NZ Lotteries and reigning Marketer of the Year, has resigned after around nine years with the organisation and seven years in the top marketing role.
After NZ Lotteries’ big rehash of Instant Kiwi, DDB launched the much-loved, much-awarded and completely OTT ‘It Can All Change in an Instant’ musical number in 2010. And while the humour is still there in the follow-up ‘It Pays to Push your Luck’, they have taken a slightly more complicated approach this time round.
Who’s it for: Freeview by True and Flying Fish
Why we like it: In the final promotional push before the digital switchover begins in four months, the free-ness of Freeview is being hammered home once again, this time with some great animation and a nostalgic and patriotic …
It’s getting to the business end of the digital switchover and there’s just four months to go until the first two regions—the West Coast and Hawke’s Bay—pull the plug on New Zealand’s analogue TV signal. So Freeview has launched a campaign with its new agency True starring Pio Terei that aims to capture the 16 percent of homes still to make the leap to digital–and to convince them to choose the newly pimped out Freeview platform rather than its nearest competitor, the soon-to-launch Sky/TVNZ joint venture Igloo.
After seeing this classic ad for Hudson Toffee Pops as a young chap at some stage in the early ’90s, I, like many of the nation’s children, instantly developed a crippling fear of red couches and watching it now brings back extremely painful memories. That’s not true, but reliable informants have reliably informed us that the rather artistic male lead is an ad man of some repute. So the first person to tell us who it is will get a copy of Martin Lindstrom’s Brandwashed.
Not surprisingly, Fairfax’s proposal to outsource 66 Australian editorial jobs, including some sub-editing, to New Zealand didn’t go down too well with its staff or the national journalists’ union and led to a 36 hour unprotected strike among staff from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Sunday Age, The Sun Herald, the Canberra Times, the Newcastle Herald and Wollongong Illawarra Mercury that finished this morning. News Ltd also recently announced the possibility of up to 400 editorial jobs getting the chop and while the local industry reported some pretty solid numbers recently, some of the big Aussie mastheads are thought to have had their biggest ever drops in circulation in March, so it’s obviously a tough time to be in the newspaper game, both for journos and for publishers. But as if all this wasn’t enough, an article we read recently in Wired shows editorial staff might have another fight on their hands due to the rise of robot reporters, which the chief of pretty frickin’ amazing US company Narrative Science has predicted will be writing 90 percent of the news in 15 years. Let’s hope Gina Rinehart doesn’t get wind of this technology. We demand another strike. Hasn’t anyone seen I, Robot?