Start spreadin’ the news… NZ’s own Dave King, M&C Saatchi NZ’s executive creative director, has won the prestigious Irving Wunderman award at the 34th John Caples International Awards Gala, held recently in New York. In fact, the entire Kiwi contingent will be ‘waking up in the city that doesn’t sleep’ to find they’re ‘king of the hill, top of the heap’–between them they managed to bring home 50 awards from a record 51 finalist places (that’s one more than Australia, thank you very much), including seven Golds, 12 Silvers, six Bronzes and 25 Finalists. That’ll melt those little town blues.
Author Cath Winks
In this exciting installment of who goes where; Carly Flynn hits her Target, a Barrell role for Samsung, Plankton floats across the Tasman, Carat dangled to Sewpershad, a US import for MediaCom, Simpson’s lovin’ it at Macca’s, JML Communications expands its girth, Adshel adds Atkinson, Touchpoint’s independent new chair, and Urlich is ‘worth it’ for L’Oréal NZ.
Nearly 30 years after Bob Jones famously smacked over TV reporter Rod Vaughan, Jones has beaten the unlucky Vaughan a second time – to win New Zealand’s most famous media award. In a cruel twist, Jones fought off Vaughan to win the latest Alcohol Press Sponsorship Award (ASP) as a result of the National Business Review’s announcement that Vaughan had joined the business newspaper’s staff.
Do you love downloading music, but are afraid of the copyright laws? Luckily, there’s now a totally guilt-free, legal way to feed your ears. So, fish out that old library card of yours that’s been tucked away in the depths of your wallet since last millennium, and voila! All Auckland library members (from all 55 libraries in the Auckland region) now have access to millions of music files from the Sony Music back catalogue – for free!
Auckland indie Federation has been chosen by Emirates to handle its creative account in the New Zealand market. Federation won the account after a robust pitch lasting several months, understood to have involved at least two other agencies, including the incumbents Saatchi & Saatchi. As the agency of record, Federation will be responsible for brand, digital, direct and trade marketing, working alongside the Emirates corporate communications team in Dubai.
DDB New Zealand was among the few to win Gold at this year’s Asia Pacific Advertising Festival (ADFEST 2012) Lotus Awards. The agency won Best in Show in the Promo Lotus category for Steinlager ‘Believe’. And the team also took home a Gold at the Film Lotus awards, one of only eight handed out for Sky TV ’60 things in 60 seconds’ and a Silver Press Lotus for Campaign for Best of Social Engagements for Coastguard New Zealand’s Mayday Appeal.
To raise awareness of Good Books’ benevolent raison d’être, which is purely to raise money for Oxfam, String Theory teamed up with Buck to create the first of three videos in a digital campaign called Good Books Great Writers. It’s a stunning homage to the High Priest of Gonzo – Hunter S. Thompson, and deserves plaudits for its incredible script and spectacular imagery.
M&C Saatchi and the New Zealand Fire Service have launched a new multi-media campaign ‘Could you live with yourself?’ to promote the installation of smoke alarms. Currently over 90 percent of fire fatalities the New Zealand Fire Service attends do not have working smoke alarms.
On Wednesday CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG) is hosting a special event, Re-Imagining PR. It’s PR, ‘but not as you imagine, or know it’–because with social media constantly evolving, PR business models are also having to. Lynne Anne Davis, managing director Fleishman Hillard Asia Pacific, is one of the speakers at the forum, and she answers a quick Q&A for those of you who can’t wait for Wednesday’s gig.
PHDIQ wins Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Award, and in doing so, finally knocks Draft FCB off its winning streak.
National Australia Bank’s (NAB’s) ‘break-up’ campaign was so good it ended up as the lead story on the news, and generated countless free publicity before going on to win last year’s Grande Prix at Cannes Lions. With digital technology evolving faster than you can say business model or best practice, it’s now even more important to stay up to date with PR. To this end, CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG) is hosting a special event on 21 March: Re-Imagining PR. The brains behind the ‘break-up’ campaign, NAB’s Kevin Ramsdale and Clemenger BBDO’s Tim McColl Jones, will be sharing their creative nous at the forum, but here’s a few morsels of their method to whet your appetite.
In another round of bankland swings-and-roundabouts Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has appointed Colenso BBDO as its new creative agency, in alignment with with its Australian parent bank. BNZ spends around $10 million on advertising a year, so it’s a good win for Colenso, but Westpac may not be so thrilled… it dumped Saatchi & Saatchi for Colenso BBDO just 18 months ago.
Think neon-filled skylines, The Strip, epic experiences, and of course a wedding chapel. Cody’s new TVC, made by Barnes, Catmur & Friends and Curious, marks Cody’s first foray into television commercials, and takes three good mates on a man-cation to Sin City… so, will it measure up to the real Vegas, back home?
It’s a novel way to do business. The National Business Review is launching a new performance-related freelance contributors system for its online news service. Last month we reported the authority had some positions vacant. Today it has announced a new freelance scheme, which is ‘as well as’ not ‘instead of’ replacing those staff. The service will link the value of each story to its popularity on the site.
The power of good public relations, not to mention the perils of bad, cannot be underestimated, just ask Qantas, adidas, or Telecom. To help marcomms folk avoid such epic PR fails, CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG) is hosting a special event, Re-Imagining PR. It’s PR, ‘but not as you imagine, or know it’–because with social media constantly evolving, PR business models are also having to. Matt Bruhn, one of the speakers at the forum, answers a quick Q & A for those of you who can’t wait for the 21 March gig.
Now in its third season, MasterChef has moved from Sundays at 8.30pm to Tuesdays at 7.30pm, so is it still pulling in the punters? According to Nielsen figures the show is more popular then ever, with over 200,000 viewers watching this season’s first episode. That’s up 40,000 from last season, and in its target demographic (25-54) it won a 29 percent audience share–up six percent on last year.
Hats off to some great gets in tellyland recently. John Campbell kicked it off on Thursday 1 March with a brilliant interview with Kim Dotcom. The interview garnered world wide attention, and was picked up by international networks Rtl Germany, NBC America, and Reuters. Then on Sunday both David Tamihere and David Bain broke their silence for the first time in a night of must-see TV. Both did time… but did they do the crime?
Looking for some words to read and pictures to look at? We’ve got just the thing: a freshly minted copy of NZ Marketing magazine. It’s out now, and there’s plenty to sink your eyes into. Our cover star Dave Walden feeds our own Vincent Heeringa some humble pie, during a very long, very expensive and very overdue lunch; James Hurman shares a few parting shots; we look at whether it’s the best or worst time to be in the TV biz, head outdoors to see if 2011 was just a fluke, and talk to some recruitment high-rollers to find out where job hunters should be looking; Nielsen’s AIS figures show 2011’s big spenders–and where they spent it; and there’s a rundown of all the winners of the RSVP and Nexus awards.
Toyota New Zealand has teamed up with Saatchi & Saatchi for its latest Camry campaign, which is aimed at the ‘executives of life’. And, in terms of being so chock-a-block full of Kiwi patriotism it makes your teeth hurt, it’s right up there with Air New Zealand, Telecom, the BNZ, and, more recently, Mercury Energy. Of course, it was always going to be tough ask following up the Hilux’s ‘tougher than you can imagine’ campaign, but–hang on to your steak and cheese mate.
With only two things certain in life, death and taxes, accountants can count themselves lucky (geddit?) they’re in one of the few sectors with almost no need to advertise. As the late great Albert Einstein himself pointed out: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.” So, you know there must be a GFC happening when you see previously cloistered bean counters putting down their calculators and promoting their maths skills in a fancy-pants digital marketing campaign. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) has teamed up with Clemenger BBDO and OMD to launch its first advertising campaign in five years.
This time last year we were oohing and ah-ing over the mad ball skills of the All Blacks. Which turned out to be the mad skills of the mighty ABs—and the special effects jiggery pokery of Brandspank. So when #aliwilliams tweeted “Haha yeah that copter thing was hilarious. Izzy took it out. BOOM!” along with a news announcement on the All Blacks and BackingBlack’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, followed shortly after by the release of a film showing the All Blacks smashing a “coptercam” out of the sky with a rugby ball, we should have guessed… we’d become victims of yet another ad campaign ‘going viral.’
NZ Book Month is back with the same plan it’s had for the last seven years: to promote books, reading and literacy amongst all Kiwis, young and old. To do this the organisers are repeating last year’s Books Change Lives campaign, and distributing more than four million $5 vouchers, aimed at putting a book in the hands of every single New Zealander. This simple idea got extraordinary results last year, when New Zealand was the only country in the developed world where book sales rose rather than fell.
Visit Ruapehu launched its first-ever TVC campaign last weekend. It’s aiming to drive interest in the region’s two new cycle trails, which form part of the Government’s national cycleway network, Prime Minister John Key’s baby from the 2009 Job Summit.
The Super Bowl may be the most expensive and viewed commercial break, but these ads from Hyundai and filmmaker Wes Anderson, that aired during the Academy Awards ceremony, are in another class altogether. Cleverly targeting film buffs, the ads spoof popular movies and Knight Rider, as well as Anderson’s own inimitable style. The director brings his quirky aesthetic, seen in films such as The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox, to both commercials along with his whimsical style and retro set design.
Working Style is experiencing a lot of success with its savvy new advertising campaign ‘They’re Wearing Our Gear Here’. Its latest print ad came third in the January/February round of prestigious Glossies, beating some of the country’s top agencies. You would expect a campaign like this to come from a top creative advertising, but Working Style is bucking the trend with this one. Warning: the following material could make agencies very, very afraid.
The January/February round of voting for The Glossies has been tabulated, and FOUR’s Home of NOT Rugby in ACP’s Metro, cooked up by FOUR and Special Group, has taken top honours with 27 percent of the vote. Yellow Pencil BrandSharp’s effort for Red Paris in NZ Marketing got them tantalisingly close, with 26 percent, and Chris Dobbs was third for Working Style in Metro (10 percent). That’s two in a row for Special Group…
Who’s it for: Mercury Energy by TBWA\Tequila
Why we like it: It’s the talented Tiki Taane, and with profits from his song going to Starship Children’s Hospital what’s not to like? That and the goofy Footrot Flats-esque mixture of animation and reality.
Youtube …
Mercury Energy is celebrating New Zealand’s “good energy” in its latest TVC. Tiki Taane has that in spades, and has happily lent his talent to the ad, which was made by TBWA\Tequila, with the Always On My Mind singer recording a new version of Over the Rainbow and donating all proceeds from the sale of it to Starship Hospital. What a good country!
TV3 has matched rival TVNZ’s talent show announcement with an ace card of its own. The much anticipated local version of hit renovation show ‘The Block’ is one step closer, with the ‘fab four’ sponsors announced. Bunnings, Kiwibank, Mazda and Wild Bean Café are the inaugural ‘foundation partners’ of this long awaited local series, and the call has gone out for contestants. Three million Aussies watched the final live show, of the most watched series in Australia, where it consistently out-rates Masterchef.
Andrew Kordek is the co-founder of Trendline Interactive, a market research agency based out of Chicago. Before that, he was responsible for strategy at Groupon, the first ever group-buying start-up, and fastest growing company of all time. With nearly 20 years marketing experience, Kordek knows his stuff. He’s an avid blogger, and advocates responsible email marketing. He was in New Zealand for a few hours last week, so we nabbed him, and made him spill the beans…