Author Ben Fahy

Creative types in adland who drink too much V will be overjoyed to learn that registrations are now open for the tenth V48HOURS Furious Filmmaking competition. And, in what could be seen as rather serendipitous timing, the event’s founder and self-confessed filmhead Ant Timpson was this week chosen as the Creative Entrepreneur of 2012 by the Arts Regional Trust.

As the focus continues to shift to online products like YellowToolbox, the print bell continues to toll at Yellow Pages, which has announced it will lay off around 20 percent—or 125—of its staff, primarily from the sales department. 

UK-based Aegis Media, “the world’s fastest growing marketing communications group”, bought Mitchell Communication Group in June last year for AU$363 million. And Carat and Mitchell have now officially been brought together in New Zealand, with around 70 staff from a variety of businesses now beavering away in a new Parnell office. 

One of the great ironies of the advertising industry is the fact that advertising agencies, despite dispensing plenty of advice to their clients about the need to continue spending up large (especially during a recession), rarely advertise themselves. But DraftFCB has been the exception to that rule in New Zealand in recent years and it caught our attention with a campaign that showed off some of its remarkable powers of persuasion in Air New Zealand’s Koru lounges.

It took a bloody long time, but DraftFCB has won the Vodafone account ahead of Ogilvy and .99, and AffinityID, which has done some project work for the company in the past, has won the CRM business, bringing a long-awaited end to the uncertainty—both for the agencies involved in the pitch and for the local Vodafone team thought to have been waiting on a decision from global HQ.

All around the world, things go a little bit green on St Patrick’s Day as token Irishfolk embrace the festivities and set about downing 13 million pints of Guinness. And, as part of a global effort to make March 17 officially the friendliest day of the year, Lion and Zephyr have put Guinness back on TV for the first time in 12 years with a campaign featuring very funny Irish comedian Jimeoin. 

Consumers generally aren’t too enamoured with large corporate entities, even less so in this climate of occupation. And Telecom, with its monopolistic heritage and less than enviable recent track record, is looking for all the love it can get. So, in an effort to show that it isn’t just a faceless corporation and really does care about its customers, its direct agency Rapp Tribal came up with a creative way for the employees of one of the country’s biggest companies to show their thanks.

Given the commercial slant of Valentine’s Day, and the willingness consumers have to shell out for objects for the objects of affection, there’s never any shortage of interesting creative ideas clamouring for attention at this time of the year. Some of them are pretty good, most of them aren’t. But here are a couple of local examples that caught our attention.