Late last year, up-and-coming digital agency Young & Shand asked 150 New Zealand chief executives and marketing managers about their organisations’ spending intentions and planned commitments to digital marketing in 2011. And while the results showed there’s no doubt Kiwi businesses see digital as an integral aspect of the marketing mix, there still appears to be an unwillingness to splash too much e-cash.
Late last year we received an email from Rogers and Rutherford law firm. Lawyers letters are rarely, if ever, nice to receive (and they’re particularly stressful if you’re a smart arse working in the media). But, thankfully, the letter was only partially related to something we had done and instead related to an ad featured on StopPress for Mobile AdVert (MA), the outdoor media company run by Urgent Couriers.
Ahoyhoy StopPressers and happy year of the rabbit to all. Sadly, as you presumably well know, the annual period of glorious, unbridled festive leisure has once again come to an end for most and, as the long, seemingly never-ending year stretches out relentlessly in front of us, we trust you too are also emotional husks, staring blankly at your screens, dreaming of ham wrapped in teatowels, sausages for every meal, lustrous summer beards and not wearing any shoes. We at StopPress heartily endorse the presumably highly unproductive New Zealand way, where there seems to be a general acceptance among the populous that no-one shall work over the holidays (to the point where those who do are frowned upon) and little work shall be done in the first week. But now that your places of employ require you to get busy, you’ll probably be looking for ways to avoid doing real work. And recent studies have shown that there is no better form of procrastination than reading about industry gossip on StopPress (and filling in our survey, which will only be up for one more week, to help us gauge the mood of the marcomms fraternity).
This is the last official StopPress day of the year. Thank God, we—and probably you—say. We’re off to gorge ourselves to within an inch our lives over Christmas, tip over a few cars and throw bottles at the police as we celebrate a traditional Kiwi New Years and try valiantly to avoid getting sunburnt tops of the feet. Hearty thanks to all our readers, advertisers, sponsors, contributors, commentors and team members. It’s been a great first year for us and, as per usual, an interesting year for what really is a pretty damn exciting industry to work in (imagine being an accountant? Borrrring). It was a helluva lot of fun writing about it all and we look forward to more frivolity, tomfoolery and cheesy puntastic headlines next year, starting 17 January (well, as much as you can look forward to getting back to work just before you go on holiday). Have a good’un, StopPressers. And make sure you fill in our survey, which will be up over the break.
The recent Law Commission report Alcohol in Our Lives: Curbing the Harm, made 153 recommendations to the National government. Some of those suggestions have formed the basis of the Alcohol Reform bill. And, now that the government’s position on booze has been clarified somewhat, the Advertising Standards Authority has decided the time is right to establish an independent panel to review the Code for Advertising Liquor.
It’s been a big year for DDB New Zealand. And it’s finishing on a high note with the launch of a massive new McDonald’s retail campaign in Australia and New Zealand that features (well, kind of) Shane Warne.
This is the last round of TVC of the week for 2010. We’re planning on putting all the TVCs that featured in this section into one place and running a poll early next year to find out which ad was the best of the year. So keep your eyes …
Design-led, Christchurch-based advertising agency Strategy has bolstered its Auckland offering and added the similarly design-led talents of Seven to its roster.
M&C Saatchi has had a good run of it recently, picking up the NZTE account to add to the seven other pieces of new business it won during the year. And, after a competitive pitch, it has picked up some more goodies, winning the advertising and digital communication services account for NZ Post’s new start-up directory service Localist.
Just as the media love a good end of year list, trade mags love to rank performance with a good end of year awards ceremony. And so far it’s Colenso BBDO, Special Group, DDB, AIM Proximity, SparkPHD and The Sweet Shop that are leading the Kiwi charge.
Who’s it for: Hallensteins by Publicis Mojo and Thick as Thieves
Why we like it: For a mainstream clothing retailer, this spot, filmed in black and white, set to the massive indie tune from US band Sleigh Bells and the first piece of work from Publicis Mojo …
World-first alert! The next piece in the rather large ASB puzzle was released on Sunday, with 50 New Zealand consumers playing their part in what the campaign creators believe to be the world’s first-ever ‘mobile ad-venture’, an “immersive film” called Lost that was created to promote its new mobile banking services.
Greedy old DraftFCB has won another one, this time getting the nod for the Orcon business and taking over from Special Group.
Who’s it for: Mammoth Supply Co by Shine and Robber’s Dog
Why we like it: How could you not like an ad that’s got that old cowboy dude from the Big Lebowski doing the voice over (apparently he never does ads)? Or an …
It’s all well and good attracting eyeballs to your website. But do you know what will help the wallets of those visitors creak open while they’re there? Well, according to new research by Experian, nearly two thirds of Australian marketers have never heard of or don’t understand conversion optimisation, the process of refining a website to help increase the conversion rate of sales, leads or subscribers, with almost half of those surveyed spending 40 percent or more of their budget driving traffic to their website.
nzherald.co.nz has been given a bit of a spruce up, with a revamped homepage, an improved navigation menu and easier access to opinion pieces, forums, editor’s picks and other content. And, slightly ironically, the e-sprucing was announced just after the old version was awarded a silver medal for best newspaper website at the Asian Digital Media awards.
New Zealand’s printed news media seems to be increasingly heading in the tabloid direction. But long before today’s front page spreads of car crashes, boogers in burgers and bi-sexual television presenters that the people so crave, there was the The Truth, a paper that was—and, under its current guise of the Truth Weekender, still is—something of a guilty pleasure in New Zealand. A new book by former staffer Redmer Yska called Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People’s Paper charts its rather intriguing course (check out an extract here) and we’ve got three copies of this gripping media yarn to give away. So come up with your best tabloid style headline about the upcoming royal wedding and you might just be able to fob the book off as a Christmas present once you’ve finished reading it.
It was fun while it lasted, but it seems Orcon and Special Group have split up.
Once again, the digital folk are cackling with glee after online advertising expenditure figures for the third quarter of 2010 from the Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand (IABNZ) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) showed that a total of $67.93m went through the gates, up $4.83m on the last quarter and up nearly 18 percent year on year.
Who’s it for: NZTA/NZ Police by Clemenger BBDO and @radical.media
Why we like it: The human male is a very prideful creature and generally comes equipped with the misguided belief that it is remarkably skilled in all areas. With young men responsible for the vast …
The Ad Show’s main aim was to demystify the realm of marketing and advertising for the benefit of the New Zealand public and equip them with a few tools to fully understand the tactics they were regularly being exposed to. It was something of a fringe benefit that the show also seemed to find favour with the industry. But, with speculation about a possible merger of TVNZ’s two digital channels 6 and 7 and uncertainty about continued government funding, it’s still unclear whether there will be a second season of the show, despite what appeared to be a successful first run.
While it’s all well and good to marvel at the tactics employed for the latest product launch or to have a bit of laff at the latest big budget summer beer ad—of which there have been many recently—there is, of course, a much less glamorous, more harmful side to alcohol in New Zealand that, understandably, is often overlooked by those in the marcomms industry whose job it is to sell more of it. There are already a host of marketing restrictions imposed on the largely self-regulated alcohol industry and while the New Zealand Drug Foundation believes the government is heading in the right direction with the alcohol reform bill, it contests that a number of the most important recommendations from the Law Commission report (there were 153 in total) have been ignored—particularly pricing, as this blunt but effective anti-alcohol marketing video called the ‘Budget Guide to Drinking Yourself to Death’ shows.
This week on Ads@6, a cool car ad from Lexus; another mascot family hits the screens, this time for The Warehouse; Rhys Darby dangles worms for the 2degrees Xmas push; BP is back (with a robo-dog); Jetstar greys up; and who can resist the Magic of Mantovani?
It’s been almost 18 months in the making, and yesterday, just down the road from the giant salmon and New Zealand’s longest bridge, Dominion Breweries ferried a group of 150 publicans, internal stakeholders and a few filthy journalists to a farm near Rakaia to launch the newest brew in the Monteith’s range, an ultra-premium, hyper-local, “serious beer” called Single Source that aims to tell the story of what’s inside the bottle and recognise those responsible for creating it.
Three good’uns share the gold this week.
Who’s it for: Sky TV by DDB and Prodigy Films
Why we like it: Despite the fact that Rugby World Cup games will be shown on a number of free to air channels after last year’s broadcasting palaver …
The Social Network has been getting rave reviews all around the world (if you want to read a massive, intellectual but quite excellent summary, check out Generation Why? by Zadie Smith). Our crack team of movie experts can confirm that it is indeed a tour de force, a triumph, a gripping social media-related romp—and, after heading along to Val Morgan’s 3D ad showcase last week, we can also confirm that the 3D ads shown before the movie were pretty damn good too. We’ve got a couple of double passes to give away to this rather engrossing tale of mystery, intrigue, skullduggery, powerful nerds and the modern human condition, so put up your most banal Facebook status update on the comment wall and to the most banal will go the spoils.
With a collection of interesting characters and adversaries, some fairly intriguing back-stories and plenty of moolah at stake, the move of ASB from its agency of over ten years TBWA\ to Droga5 in June was one of the year’s most captivating stories. Not surprisingly, there’s been plenty of interest around the traps as to what Andrew Stone, Mike O’Sullivan, Jose Alomajan and the team would come up with—and whether the Droga5 mythology was all it was cracked up to be. Well, with a massive refresh of the bank’s brand and a new positioning statement around ‘creating futures’, you can now judge for yourself. But if the responses of the bank’s 5000 staff to the new brand and the confidence the main protagonists have in it are anything to go by, turns out it just might be.
It must be written into our neighbouring country’s constitution that all television commercials promoting the region must include some kind of extremely cheesy musical element. The all singing, all dancing ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ epic by DDB was touch and go, but it’s Queensland, the same province that brought the world the amazing, multi-award-winning ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign, that really deserves to be taken to task, because it is responsible for two of the biggest toe curlers in recent memory.
More than 700,000 New Zealanders tuned in to say their final farewell to Outrageous Fortune—and to the much loved West family—last night, with TV3 nabbing a 51.5 percent share in 18-49 demographic and a 24.8 rating for the last ever episode of what was New Zealand’s favourite drama.
The entire PlaceMakers advertising business has gone up for pitch and while no-one will confirm who’s in the running, Ogilvy’s managing director Greg Partington says it certainly won’t be his agency, which has had the account since 2008.