There was an impressive haka, there was cheese (literally and, with Pippa Wetzell and some guy in orange overalls to open proceedings, figuratively), there were 560 RSVPs and there was a solid dose of market leader mentality on display as the national broadcaster launched its New Season 2011 line up for ONE and TV2 last night.
Who’s it for: Interislander by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington and The Sweet Shop.
Why we like it: Take the romance of the ferry, some classic New Zealand summer imagery and a surprisingly uncringeworthy ukelele version of the classic Interislander jingle, and you’ve got yourself an ad that …
The November/December edition of NZ Marketing magazine is out. And, as you’d expect from a title with such a name, it’s filled to the brim with what experts refer to as ‘essential marketing intelligence’, including the cover feature/call-to-arms that was written by three academics from the University of Waikato who detail why they feel the discipline is currently suffering from a ‘worldwide identity crisis’.
The Auckland Chamber of Commerce has just released its 2010 salary survey and, given the economic events of the last few years, it’s not a huge surprise to find that Auckland business is still “running on lean” and—block your ears children—sales and marketing salaries have dropped. So check out the rates so you know whether you should cackle maniacally with Scrooge McDuck-esque glee as you roll about on your bed with wads of cash, or go crying to the boss about not getting paid enough.
The Gruen Transfer, an Aussie TV show that screens on ABC and delves into the mysterious, manipulative and wonderful world of advertising, has been a surprising ratings success across the ditch. But who really wants those pesky moving images and sounds when you could have a book instead? Cue The Gruen Transfer, now in handy non-moving, literary form. You can win one of three copies of this very funny, good lookin’, highly entertaining, educational and quote-filled tome about what one academic described as the ‘poetry of capitalism’ and all you need to do is either tell us an amazing fact/quote/lie/myth/statistic/story about advertising. Or, if you’re struggling for inspiration, just go for the lowest common denominator and tell us your best Australian joke.
Who’s it for: Tip Top by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop
Why we like it: Put this in the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ category. It may be filled with an array of summery Kiwi clichés, but clichés tend to become clichés …
Comedy Central canned two of its most popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in September because the licences had expired. Cue protests, outrage and steam coming out of viewers’ ears. But, not one to let an opportunity pass it by, Comedy Central has, in truly arse about face fashion, now decided to create its own “campaign” to make the network change their own stupid minds.
Special Group has continued its hot run of form in 2010 by nabbing a slice of the MediaWorks TV business. And the first task has been to rebrand and relaunch the youth-focused music channel C4 and turn it into a slightly less youth focused mainstream entertainment channel called FOUR.
TVNZ’s Ondemand is all about choice; about giving viewers the opportunity to watch content when (and increasingly where) they want to. And, with the help of TVNZ’s latest online advertising innovation, Ad Selector, they now have the ability to choose what ads they want to watch.
There’s always plenty of discussion in the ad industry as to where the line between plagiarism and creative inspiration is drawn. TV3 has felt the cool accusatory breeze a couple of times this year with some of its promotional work. And, after Colenso discovered two of its Vodafone commercials …
Who’s it for: Telecom by Saatchi & Saatchi and Prodigy Films
Why we like it: 2010 was a year Telecom would probably rather forget, but it’s obviously hoping to go out on a good note and has gone back to the advertising it knows best with this …
It started with a kiss, it led to an unexpected addition to the family and it’s ended with a massive new campaign for Countdown. So, meet the Colemans, the newest soap operatic addition to New Zealand’s advertising landscape.
There seems to be an underlying disdain for the persuasive arts among the masses, something that can presumably be put down to a combination of outright envy and the (slightly) misguided belief that you dastardly marcomms schemers are somehow able to trick them into parting with their cash through the wonder of advertising. But there’s certainly no shortage of interest from the aforementioned masses in the commercial messages that grace their screens and, much like Paul Henry, this strange love-hate formula creates TV gold, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of the Fair Go Ad Awards.
MediaWorks TV launched its new season line-up in Wellington this morning. And the Auckland launch is scheduled for tomorrow. But there’s sure to be slightly more interest in some the programming decisions than there usually is after it announced today that its two major channels are set for a rejig, with C4 being re-launched as a mainstream entertainment channel known as FOUR and TV3 moving directly into TV One’s demographic territory.
Dunedin’s well-received new campaign tapped into its local networks to try and discover some of the region’s quirks and secrets. And Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism has taken a similar approach for its new tourism push, although instead of crowd-sourcing ideas from the hoi polloi, it’s using “global TV star” and proud Cantabrian Phil Keoghan as its ambassador.
The winds of change have blown for two titles in the Tangible Media stable, with the rejigged weekly Groove Guide set to launch with a renewed pop cultural zest and a new but familiar editor at the helm, as well as a relaunch and an editorial reshuffle at sustainable living magazine Good.
Who’s it for: Sky TV by DDB NZ and Capital City films
Why we like it: The DDB/Sky relationship has been a particularly fruitful one recently. The Arts Channel campaign won every award in the world. The ‘Your Happy Place’ content campaign also got a few …
Regional branding efforts and their associated tourism pushes often have a whiff of desperation about them. But there seems to have been a coming of age in New Zealand recently, with some solid and distinctly uncringeworthy new marketing initiatives from Wellington, Christchurch and, most recently, Dunedin, which has just launched its new brand with an outdoor and online campaign.
Yet more proof, if any were needed, that the indie agencies are now too legit to quit after Special Group’s creative director Tony Bradbourne was appointed as the convenor of judges for the 2011 Axis awards, the first time the honour has gone to anyone from an independent agency.
DDB NZ is making a name for itself for breaking the international rules. In a good way, of course: first it was Freida the dancing bovine, the first Glass and a Half Full production that didn’t come out of London. And now it’s another piece of milk-related work for Volkswagen.
The internet is celebrating its coming of age in New Zealand this year and downtothewire.co.nz, a very cool website dedicated to telling the story of a “connection that revolutionised the nation and finally laid waste to our fear of geographical remoteness” went live this morning, Monday 11 October.
Recent research shows that gaming now takes up more of people’s time online than email, video and auctions combined. It’s certainly a fast growing and deeply engaging market, but it’s still often misunderstood. And Pursuit PR is aiming to change that and help organisations apply gaming’s engaging and persuasive powers to marketing, training and social change with InGame, which director Stephen Knightly is touting as New Zealand’s first video games consultancy.
This year’s Effies tagline was ‘the best ad for advertising’. And it was certainly a pretty good advertisement for Colenso BBDO, which won 12 awards and became the only agency to ever win Most Effective Agency of the Year two years in a row, as well as the only agency to win Most Effective Agency of the Year and Best in Show in the same year. It was a close run thing, however, with DraftFCB nipping effectively at its heels with nine.
NZ Fashion Week has finished for another year. And, away from all the preening, strutting and Blue Steeling on the catwalk, a new Kiwi-conceived social media tool was making a name for itself behind the scenes, with the free iPhone photo app Snapr being employed to stream and geo-tag live photos from the runway straight to the NZFW website.
It lasted 196 issues, 18 years, was close to folding on a number of occasions and has been holding on for dear life for a while now. But Real Groove, a publication that long time contributor Gary Steel calls “New Zealand’s only serious music magazine”, couldn’t hold on any longer, so the October issue featuring Leonard Cohen on the cover will be the magazine’s last in its current format. It’s not all doom and gloom, however, because the best of Real Groove is set to move sideways into a pimped out version of its free weekly street press publication The Groove Guide.
Mike Hutcheson, one of the founders of Colenso and executive director of the Image Centre Group, is a well-renowned raconteur, gadabout and occasional oratorical stuntman. But no matter how many times you may have heard his anecdotes, he tells them so well and so humorously that you don’t actually mind hearing them again. And, as his holistic, semi-philosophical presentation on the future—and the past—of television advertising showed, telling stories is what advertising is all about—and, in his opinion, television is still the best way to tell them.
The unofficial word was out a while back that Dean and Bridget Taylor were heading back to New Zealand with some big plans. And now the official word is out: the couple have taken up the reins as directors of a new outfit called Contagion that will, from October, partner with Vivaki to lead the Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) business won by Razorfish in moderately interesting circumstances back in May.
When Colenso picked up DB’s Export account off Saatchi & Saatchi in July last year, the family of beers was losing relevance and needed a fresh approach. So, to try and reverse the decline, the new coupling went back in time and found the solution sitting right in front of them.
When Pacific Magazines New Zealand handed over the licences for three of its print babies to APN News and Media a few weeks back, the quarterly NZ Weddings magazine was the one remaining orphan. Apparently, it was offered as part of the package, but, presumably because it was a local publication and was an outright purchase rather than a publishing licence, APN chose not to take it on. Tangible Media had no qualms, however, and has added the magazine to its growing specialist stable.
If you’ve seen the recent Vodafone ads New, Mobile and Naked Broadband and wondered ‘that’s cool, but how the hell they’d do that?’, you’re probably not alone. And while it was a fairly simple goal for Colenso BBDO and Flying Fish director Wade Shotter to try and position the brand as cutting edge, this behind the scenes video shows that it certainly wasn’t a simple task creating the ads.