Author Ben Fahy

In a recent Idealog column, David MacGregor wrote: “User experience (UX) is a central thought for marketing today. Products are just stuff. There is no shortage of replacements for yours.” When you consider that more than a third of Air New Zealand’s revenue is generated by its global websites, and nearly half the people visiting go straight to the booking search tool, UX is an especially important aspect of the increasingly digital-centric travel industry. Those figures look likely to increase, so Air New Zealand has heeded the words of the digital soothsayers and made www.airnz.co.nz more customer friendly with the most significant changes to the site’s usability in six years. 

Snapr, a Kiwi-conceived free photo sharing and geo-tagging app has made a bit of name for itself after being given some cash by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, endorsed by Microsoft and used to show the glamour shots during New Zealand Fashion Week. Now it’s added a dose of the digital marketing term du jour—gamification—to the recipe with a photo sharing game called Capture the Flag that’s captured the attention of some major Kiwi brands. 

Curious Film’s co-founder Darryl Ward has obviously got a thing for musicians. First it was Iggy and Orcon. Now he’s ventured stateside once more to work on a big project with musician and producer Pharrell Williams for Smirnoff’s ‘Start Pure’ campaign, which was conceived by Leo Burnett Sydney. 

He switched from creative agency to media agency almost three years ago, and now Mitchell and Partners managing director Philip O’Neill is set to make another switch and will step down from the role in the next few months. 

The Fire Service and M&C Saatchi recently launched a fairly unique campaign that features revellers after a big night out discussing the perils of drinking and frying—and, by extension, celebrating the joy of takeaways. Now, in another unusual step, it’s joined forces with Hell Pizza, which is putting the ‘Don’t drink and fry’ message on over a million pizza boxes and 100,000 scratch and win tickets that will be distributed in hospitality areas at night over the next two months.

There are 21,000 weddings every year in New Zealand, and each one costs an average of $32,000. Some have margarine sculptures and chocolate fountains, some have jandals on the beach and a few burnt snarlers. But whatever the format, all of them need to be planned and Tangible Media’s New Zealand Weddings is aiming to make that process much smoother with a new annual publication.

The DDB NZ and NZ Lotteries combo is a pretty bloody good one, as evidenced by the wins in the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. And, following on from its much-loved Wilson epic, which is the most liked Lotto campaign to date, the duo are hoping to fill the coffers even further and sell the mid-week dream with a refresh of Big Wednesday.

The first three years of the Ministry of Health’s National Depression Initiative campaign led to significant increases in people’s willingness to seek help and help others with depression, with the John Kirwan ads encouraging patients, and particularly men, to speak more openly to their doctor about mental health issues. And the next phase of the campaign aimed to convert awareness into action and motivate people to help themselves. Enter The Journal, an interactive, pragmatic, self-management e-therapy programme accessed through www.depression.org.nz that was focused on mentoring people with mild to moderate depression. 

Fashion Quarterly is a bit of an institution in the world of Kiwi fashion. And now it’s about to add a bit of class to the worlds of food and interiors with the latest addition to its stable, Fashion Quarterly Entertaining.