Author Skye Wishart

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Google NZ-backed project produces teen marketers
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New Zealand marketers this is for you – the Web Rangers programme has provided you a pool of marketing talent for the years to come. The programme, backed by Google NZ, Netsafe and Y&R, enlisted 14-17 years olds from around the country to tackle the issue of cyberbullying and promote safer and smarter internet use – because who better to come up with a marketing campaign than the demographic itself?

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Dry July launch video by Toybox confronts the hangover in style
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What makes people do Dry July? Screaming headaches and lowered IQ, greasy breakfasts with two days’ worth of calories, smartphone picture evidence of bad nudity ….and maybe even a goat inexplicably resident in the kitchen? Or is it because they want to see what they could achieve without a hangover?
Toybox, Clemenger BBDO and many freelancers have created the mesmerizing animation for the 2014 Dry July launch video.

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Forest & Bird interactive print campaign now wielding more valuable birds
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Forest & Bird’s interactive print campaign continues to forge ahead, and this time readers will be graduated from using a $5 note and asked to reach for their $10 and $50 note, to put the whio or the kokako back into the illustrated scene. Meanwhile, the $5 campaign is forging into uncharted territory for Forest & Bird: the readers of New Idea.

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BrandWorld joins forces with Niche Media to reach more ethnicities
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Advertising solely in English just doesn’t cut it anymore, Aucklanders. The city has the highest percentage of overseas-born residents in the country – 2013 census data says it’s a whopping 40 percent. Over 1 in 5 people are Asian in Auckland, and Hindi is now the fourth most common language in New Zealand, after English, Maori, and Samoan. And don’t breathe easy, Wellington – 25 percent of you were born overseas, too. That’s what Brandworld noticed, and so the content marketing company signed an agreement to work with ethnic media specialist Niche Media to get to work on this diverse audience.

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Skinny Mobile and DNA relaunch website targetting mindsets
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Last year, Skinny Mobile’s selfie-billboards and teen stock imagery were kicked to the curb, when the company rebranded itself to appeal to a wider (and more lucrative) audience than 16-25 year olds. A year in the making, Skinny has now also reskinned website – and, unlike a recent TVC, the new skin has a slick design and user experience journey.

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Paralympic medallist at Attitude Pictures takes out Apollo Award
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Fourteen years ago, Jai Waite dove into a wave in Greece and hit a sandbar, becoming paralysed from the chest down with only limited function in his arms and hands. Now, as production editor at Attitude Pictures, he’s won a prestigious Apollo award for his documentary “Jimmy Wants a Job” – and it was edited using his knuckles.

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From agency to muesli – Jono Sorensen’s next venture
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When Jono Sorenson left advertising agency Carat in March to become a sales director at Diverse Media, he signed up there for only three days a week – because the rest of his time he now devotes to muesli.
He and fellow muesli-fan/fiancé Lucy Leckie have launched The Muesli Hub – “a platform to build your own muesli online and have it delivered to your door”. They want to inspire people to re-prioritise breakfast.

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GSL Promotus fights rheumatic fever for HPA campaign
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It’s winter and for some people in New Zealand that means a trip to the hospital for injections or even open heart surgery, because of rheumatic fever.
GSL Promotus is behind a national Health Promotion Agency campaign to let more people know that strep throats, if left untreated, can develop into rheumatic fever in at-risk populations. The campaign involves six different TVCs, a multitude of radio ads (in English, te reo Maori, Samoan and Tongan), online videos and banners, and Adshel posters.

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String Theory takes gym fans into the zone for Les Mills Immersive Fitness launch
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Rather than sweating it out with barbells, grunting gym buddies, or shouty instructors, what if gyms let you escape? That is, let you go to that place in your head that ‘happens’ when you’re rocking out in a dance tent or speeding up a glacier on a bike. It’s called the zone, and it’s where Les Mills wants to take customers, with its new virtual-reality based venture called The Project: Immersive Fitness.

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New Lynn wine website dominating the USA
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Above the American-style Lone Star steakhouse in New Lynn, Auckland, is a very Kiwi office that runs the most influential wine website in the United States. So, aside from feeding off the subliminal vibes of country music wafting up from the restaurant every day from 4.30pm, how did Wine Searcher get from suburban New Zealand to dominating the US online wine scene?

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Countdown’s Dreamworks Heroes campaign brings some welcome good news
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In a change of tack from giving out free cutlery, knives and glassware, the embattled Countdown followed New World’s Little Shop suit recently and hawked DreamWorks Heroes 3D collectible character cards and albums. And kids and adults alike have loved it, with general manager of marketing Bridget Lamont saying the campaign saw millions of cards in the hands of Kiwi parents and kids, and more than 100,000 albums sold out across the country.

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Wool-I-am is back in town (and country) in Cavalier Bremworth’s latest push
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Cavalier Bremworth’s Wool-I-am originally appeared in a series that was launched almost two years ago and espoused the benefits of wool carpets over synthetic. This time the New Zealand carpet maker’s campaign, once again via Federation, focuses on the company’s unique ability to manage the quality of its wool carpet right through from the farm to the tufting plant in Auckland, to the customer’s floor, with its sheep mascot posing in Napier, having a cappuccino in Auckland and even driving a truck.

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Weirdly intuitive: the tech behind Handley’s Shoulder Tap campaign
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When Kiwi entrepreneur Derek Handley advertised for a new right hand human, his campaign The Shoulder Tap had more than 1000 applicants from more than 30 countries – from billion-dollar hedge fund managers to prison managers to activists. Yes, Handley’s reputation and vision pulled for sure, but there was also some clever Kiwi technology behind the campaign.

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Smooth Visa-card-toting skaters take April Ad Impact Award
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Remember the slightly creepy corporate robot ad in 2011 for Visa Paywave? It almost made cash look cool. But in April this year the marketing changed tack with a sepia-coloured, quirky fantasy world made of skate bowls and skater girls and boys. It made contactless Paywave cards look so smooth the ad took out the Colmar Brunton Ad Impact Award for April.

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Sealord and Saatchi & Saatchi embrace their inner pyros with burning billboard
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The billboard seems to be a growing darling of marketing and this year, for the first time ever, outdoor entries at the Cannes Lions overtook the number of press submissions (5660 outdoor entries vs. 5007 press entries). And while the majority are still static and passive, some of the more progressive outdoor executions aim to inspire more interactivity, both in real life and, increasingly, online. And Saatchi & Saatchi has gone down this road, setting a manuka billboard on fire to launch Sealord’s new hot-smoked salmon.

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Everybody needs good neighbours
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Is the thought of knowing who your neighbours are, sharing fruit with them, discussing neighbourhood crime and having a street barbie rather retro? Well, those golden times of safe, strong neighbourhoods could be coming back if new private website, neighbourly.co.nz, has anything to do with it.

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Contagion takes TV2 into the real world
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Towering beanstalks, enormous tomes and lie detection are the ingredients in Contagion’s new campaign for TV2, which aims to enchant viewers into picking up the remote for the new season of programmes that started this week by focusing on Once Upon a Time and Revenge.

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Is honesty the best policy? Boundary Road Brewery’s trying to find out
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Stolen from your mum’s purse? Relieved yourself in a swimming pool? Told someone that, no, they don’t look fat in that? Boundary Road and Barnes, Catmur & Friends are looking questioningly at you. And a new ‘scientific’ online survey seeks to gauge Kiwi honesty, with a campaign asking cider-drinkers or free-stuff-sifters to answer 15 questions in The Great Kiwi Honesty Test and win a season’s* worth of the new bevvie, Honesty Box Cider.

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‘No jiggery pokery’: DraftFCBers on the Driving Dogs phenomenon
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When it comes to Kiwi viral sensations, we may have a new champion, because DraftFCB, Mini and the SPCA’s campaign that put homeless mutts behind the wheel of a modified Mini has been picked up by most of the world’s major media outlets, been the most shared video on BBC three days running, with 225,000 shares to Facebook and 7,900 to Twitter, and ranks as the biggest news event on Campbell Live in its seven-and-a-half year history.

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Want to see your life flashing before your eyes?
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We’ve seen Facebook data used effectively to tap in the modern narcissistic streak, especially with Intel’s Museum of Me, but Clemenger BBDO and Resn have flipped that upside down—quite literally—with a brilliant anti-speeding campaign in the form on an online game for the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA).