Author Ben Fahy

Over the past few years, there have been numerous attempts to make magazines more interactive. Sadly, most of those attempts tended to revolve around gimmicky, impractical augmented reality stunts, where a magazine might be held up to the computer screen and a photo ‘comes to life’. There was already a medium for this: it was called video. And there was plenty of it on that thing called the internet. But for the first time in a long time, if some of the app demonstrations deliver what they promise, the integrated digital content soon to be offered up appears to offer actual benefits to everyone involved in the process—the readers, the advertisers and, if the money starts coming back, the publishers.

Professor Sylvie Chetty, a marketing researcher from Massey University, and Professor Colin Campbell Hunt of Otago University, have won a prestigious award for a 2004 article that challenged existing theories and showed companies export in their own “Kiwi way”.

Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy Group, takes to the stage at the TED conference to opine on the benefits of intangible value, placebos and how tinkering with perception can be better than trying to fix reality. An erudite and rather comical talk from the quintessential adman about the psychology of marketing. And his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life. Highlight of the speech: his idea to solve the world’s environmental problems by making all convicted paedophiles drive Porsche Cayennes.

To celebrate the weekly arrival of Ads@6, Vincent Heeringa, esteemed publisher and gadabout, has penned a song: “Ads@6/Ads@6/Oh how we love you Ads@6/Studies have shown/And experts agree/that a surprising number of viewers seem to like them more than the actual news/”. Nice isn’t it. Best use of fingers in an ad this week goes to Webjet. And Westpac features on the list of big ad spenders, which is a good enough excuse to link to this rather boganic financial promotion.

Kapiti Ice Cream is jumping on the pop-up ‘brandwagon’ this week and opening three temporary exhibitions around Auckland to showcase the best of New Zealand design and dish out a few of their creamy ‘pop-upsicles’ to wandering freegans.

In May last year the Consumer’s Institute announced the release of its new endorsement scheme Consumer Recommends. But since then Sue Chetwin, chief executive of the Consumer’s Institute, says only “seven or eight” companies have signed up to use the brandmark in their advertising and promotional activities.

Apparently, it’s doppelgänger week, where Facebook users are encouraged to change their profile photo to someone they’ve been mistaken for. But it’s always doppelgänger week at StopPress. We are shameless in our pursuit of lookalikes (and men who look like old lesbians), so send in your best stunt doubles/doppelgängers/uncanny resemblers, either of yourself, famous people or unsuspecting friends and family, and the best of the bunch will be plied with amazing prizes.

Genesis Energy and DraftFCB have laughed in the face of conventional filmic wisdom by choosing to work with animals (and even the children of animals) in a new TVC that shows its rather dextrous and “ever-popular pukeko stars” painting a pedestrian crossing to help keep the neighbourhood chicks safe *awwwww*.

In news that will bring joy to the hearts of Kiwi font purists, Auckland design company Alt Group has picked up three Certificates of Typographic Excellence in the Type Directors Club TDC56 competition in New York.

Two disparate markets will be temporarily combined from next week, with Gianpaolo Grazioli of Giapo and Jayson Bryant of The Wine Vault promising to bring Aucklanders a range of new frozen taste sensations by using some of New Zealand’s best sauvignon blancs in a series of sorbets.

Nickelodeon NZ has released a new logo to replace the “historical splat”, with new livery launching on-air, on-line and in all off-air marketing collateral. And the Nick brand police are obviously on high alert, chasing down transgressors who don’t follow its very strict, specific, capitalised and unintentionally entertaining logo guidelines.

With a mix of pomp, ceremony, well-managed PR and a fair bit of international media interest, Air New Zealand today unveiled the final prototype of its new cabin upgrades for the soon-to-arrive fleet of five Boeing 777-300s.

A group of New Zealand’s ‘ultra-premium’ wine producers have established a new marketing group called The Specialist Winegrowers of New Zealand (TSWNZ) and the five founding members hope their obsessive desire for quality (a passion they say could possibly be seen as a mild-form of insanity) might help New Zealand wine escape the commoditisation trap they feel it is currently in danger of falling into.  

Two New Zealand film-makers, Tim McLachlan and Rajneel Singh, have made it through to the top five in 100% Pure ‘Your Big Break’ short film competition. And Tourism New Zealand is pretty chuffed with the campaign’s success.

Visual effects and animation studio Oktobor has appointed Bruce Everett as its new general manager. And his first task? Announcing a few more appointments, of course. 

The Internet Bureau (IB), “the original New Zealand online media buying agency”, is set to join forces with digital acquisition company Catch!Media, with the decision to merge based on continued online advertising industry growth and the need for a full-service digital offering.