The death of radio has long been predicted. Just think of that classic hit by The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. Yet, somehow good old radio has managed to sidestep every media tsunami heading towards it, surviving television and now living through the age of music streaming. But, how? We chat to two people pulling strings in New Zealand radio, MediaWorks’ Leon Wratt, and NZME’s Mike McClung as well as AUT’s Dr Matt Mollgaard to find out their take.
Author Holly Bagge
It’s no walk in the park measuring an audience in today’s ever-fragmenting media climate. While radio was once a stylish, yet clunky looking box taking up a decent portion of the living area, surrounded by Mum, Dad and their rosy-cheeked 2.5 children, now, we can access radio almost anywhere, anytime, through a range of devices. We tune in to GfK’s Deb Hishon and TRB’s Peter Richardson about how radio audience measurement works, how it stacks up to other media measurement systems, its challenges and what sort of insights GfK’s survey results offer.
It’s been over a week since Spark launched Spark Jump, an initiative to provide subsidised broadband to families in need. We chat to Spark’s GM of corporate relations Andrew Pirie about the telco’s wider social strategy, its purpose and using technology to make a difference.
You know it’s mayoral election time when your street, mailbox and favourite cafes become flooded with images of smiling candidates. It’s usually not long until someone puts spray paint to billboard, which often solidifies the images even more in one’s memory. But, having your face plastered over different types of media isn’t cheap and this is a luxury Auckland mayoral candidate Chloe Swarbrick, who has next-to-no funding, doesn’t have. We chat to Swarbrick about what it’s like running a campaign with little money and if this would have been possible at all ten years ago.
The Spinoff has had a lot to celebrate lately, having just blown out two candles, and now it’s hired its first general manager in Kerryanne Nelson. We chat to editor Duncan Greive about the hire and what this means for the team.
New World has released its latest collectible miniatures, but this time it’s not tiny plastic Nutri-Grain packets, cooking oil or Super Wine biscuits, it’s taken a more sustainable turn and has launched Little Garden instead, enabling kids to collect miniature seedling kits. We chat to GoodSense managing director Kath Dewar about New World’s decision to move away from plastic collectibles.
Last night, well-dressed folk from the magazine industry made their way (in freezing cold wind) to the Auckland War Memorial Museum to attend the 2016 Magazine Media Awards, where celebrations took place over a gala dinner to honour the best storytelling and management across print, online and events, or as the Magazine Publishers Association would say, ‘beyond the page’.
The New Zealand Blood Service took part in the largest ever global donor recruitment campaign last month, where the letters A and O were removed from logos, brand names and social media accounts to draw attention to the urgent need for more donors. We chat to NZBS National Manager Marketing and Communications, Asuka Burge about the experience rolling out the campaign in New Zealand and what challenges came with it.
Shortly after starting at Lion in 2014, Lana Blair performed well beyond what her limited experience should have allowed, taking two of its key brands from strength to strength. This is one young marketer to keep an eye on.
Bigpipe has advertised on its first ever billboard after focussing most of its advertising budget online, saying it wants to mix things up to reinforce its message.
There are some strict rules about advertising around the Olympics and alluding to the games, so much so that there is a 27-page report by the New Zealand Olympic Committee outlining the ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s of the 2016 Rio Olympics. We take a look at the rule book and reveal some of the brands here and further afield, who’ve been trying to steal some Olympic thunder.
Vodafone has launched a campaign, via FCB, to tap into the much-desired youth market, pushing its new customisable mobile packages and other deals, saying the initiative is different from anything it’s done before. And next week it will be marooning someone on a barge in Auckland Harbour as part of the promotional activity. We talk to Vodafone head of segment marketing Delina Shields about the thinking behind the campaign and why it’s placed such an emphasis on the young’uns.
Consumers have become a lot more conscious these days, spending far more time researching before purchasing, not just picking up a product because it looks pretty on the shelf. We chat to Adrien Taylor about his cap brand Offcut Caps – which rose from scraps of offcut fabric – about his brand’s ethos and why it’s crucial for brands to have a purpose beyond making a profit.
Fifty years ago the Radio Hauraki DJs, pirates, ‘Good Guys’ (or whatever you would like to call them) were cruising around the Hauraki Gulf on the Tiri, blasting rock and roll tunes out through the airways and into the eager ears of Kiwis from north to south. We chat to former pirates Ian Ferguson and Curtis Dobbie about how the original Radio Hauraki managed to get advertisers on board and what their favourite stories are from back in the day.
Trade Me has launched a new brand campaign called ‘Life Lives Here’ via DDB, opting for a more emotive approach to connect with Kiwis.
After 18 months of having its comment section switched on, RNZ has announced it will no longer allow comments on its website and it will phase out the capability on its site by the end of the week, instead encouraging comments on its social media channels, we chat to RNZ’s Megan Whelan about why it made the decision and what it means for its audience. PLUS: how technology might improve comment sections in the future, and Fairfax’s approach to its comment sections.
If you were wondering where that bright floodlight was coming from that was beaming up into Auckland’s night sky was last weekend, well look no further. It was merely ANZ, marking the launch of the next phase of its Olympic campaign, which has seen it release a brand new app where users can send Olympians messages through the stars (yes, you heard correctly) as well as another TVC by True promoting the app and creating anticipation for the Rio games, which kick off early next month.
The founders of The Social Club, a two-way market place where influencers can login to view brands and brands can login to view influencers was launched late last year and according to its founders, recently penned a partnership with Mish Guru to improve its offering for brands and influencers alike.
We’ve had a couple of stories recently about the extracurricular creative pursuits of people in the ad industry. So we thought it only fitting to cover those of Brendan Boughen, a Microsoft PR aficionado by day, cartoonist named Jim by night, who’s on the home stretch of his Pledge Me campaign to fund a book of cartoons and writing about people’s obsession with technology.
Bowel Cancer New Zealand ran its high profile Art Chairs campaign through Whybin\TBWA to raise money and awareness for the disease in New Zealand, which has one of the highest incidences of the cancer in the developed world. We caught up with Whybin creative director Tim Huse to find out his thoughts on working with not-for-profits and whether advertising has a responsibility to help in whatever way it can.
Clemenger BBDO/Proximity might be considered a traditional agency, but it’s certainly not operating that way. We caught up with the agency’s three leading lights to find out what they’ve been working on, what they think of the industry at the moment and how their NZTA campaigns manage to nail it every time.
The New Zealand Blood Service has launched a heart-warming campaign for World Blood Donor Day, bringing forward people whose lives have been saved from donated blood to say ‘thank you’ to donors. The launch coincides with the service’s new app, which has been upgraded with a range of new features to make it easier for New Zealanders to give blood.
The Coffee News has been doing its weekly round in cities, towns and suburbs throughout New Zealand since 2001, and businesses are lining up to have their ads in the periodical. So, what is the secret to this unassuming publication and its longevity? We chat to Coffee News New Zealand director Helen Fisher about.. well, why it’s still a thing.
There are so many ads that just slip right by us, in fact, most of them do. But when a giant campaign is launched featuring NBA star Steven Adams and promising the build of five basketball courts in your city, it’s hard not to notice. And to notice is to anticipate and when there are hold ups, people get annoyed. We talk to Spark’s Clive Ormerod about the latest on The Boroughs’ roll-out and what the telco might do differently when launching the next courts.
In what might seem an unusual approach for a company rolling out Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) across New Zealand, Chorus has included a print element in its latest campaign.
I’m sure we’ve all had those day dreams, when we’re sitting in traffic on the way to our jobs (even when we like our jobs) of simply turning around, giving it all up and pursuing something else we love, our passion. Whether it be sailing, cooking, art, music, whatever. And in what is a bit of a rare story these days, that’s exactly what J. Walter Thompson’s former executive creative director Cleve Cameron has done. He left his cushy executive role to focus on releasing an album. We caught up with Cameron to find out where he’s at now with the release, what he plans to do for work and why sometimes you’ve just got to ‘Do’ it.
The coveted Canon Media Awards, celebrating excellence among New Zealand’s media across a range of platforms took place on Friday where winners were announced from a whopping 1,603 entries. Here’s a look at who took away what.
Microsoft is doing a pretty good job of reaching younger people through its marketing. It’s obviously noted that filming an ad of a laptop, slow panning over all of its sexy angles isn’t quite going to cut it anymore, at least not for all audiences. Recently it teamed up with Fairfax for a content partnership called The Change Makers to spruik its Surface Pro 4, which saw it reach out to a younger audience through the stories of New Zealanders-cum-influencers doing great things.
Volkswagen has released a new spot via FCB that shows New Zealand hockey captain Simon Child toying with the features of his Golf GTI after arriving to the hockey turf a little early. This spot follows on from VW’s recent pulled ad, which invited criticism for showing unsafe practices. And while the new spot doesn’t show any slipping and falling, it does tread into risky territory by focusing on the speed of the new vehicle.
Last year Fairfax underwent some massive changes, restructuring its editorial staff into local teams and specialist areas, shifting a large part of the focus away from newspapers and over to the digital realm. This emphasis on digital seems to have paid off, as Stuff managed to grow its audience and has now used it to leverage a partnership deal with TVNZ, where Stuff readers will be able to view One News video from the site as of Thursday, which might mean more time spent on the site and in return TVNZ gets a taste of Stuff’s audience.