Author StopPress Team

Vodafone’s Keith the postie and piggy Sue celebrate Christmas.

Recently, ASB re-developed Kashin the money box to bring it in line with the increasingly cashless society. And for its latest campaign in support of St John, the bank is keeping the focus on children by telling the story of an animated toy ambulance saving a solitary teddybear lying in the garden.

Every year, Canada’s Strategy Magazine asks local agencies to indulge in some creative self-flagellation to celebrate its agency of the year awards. Last year, there were riffs on vending machine stunts, the industry’s culture of long hours and many other advertising-specific issues. And this year is no different, with fun poked at everything from brands co-opting female empowerment to the ridiculousness of “spec” work to the benefits of early targeting.

Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.

Those working in marketing, advertising and media are generally suckers for a new trend and live in constant fear that are somehow behind the times. Like magpies, they swoop around, find shiny things to take back to their nests and regularly attack cyclists. Many are betting big on virtual reality being the next big platform and a range of brands—from Samsung’s live-streamed birth to Jaguar NZ’s recent ‘actual reality’ stunt—have jumped on that bandwagon recently. The New York Times has also embraced it (with the help of Google Cardboard) and sees it a nascent form of storytelling, but The New Yorker is slightly less convinced the technology will be able to improve the reading experience, as the very funny video about its ‘mind-blowing virtual reality experience’ shows.

Globally, eSports is surprisingly big (at least to non-gamers). And, with news that a local tournament is set to come to a Sky TV pop-up channel, it’s starting to gain traction in New Zealand. At this stage, MyRepublic has put its name on the hoardings, but sponsors are few and far between for the local event and it’s not clear if Sky will sell advertising around it. But due to the growing popularity of eSports among the hard to reach younger (and predominantly male) demographics, it is starting to attract interest from major brands, including Snickers, which recently punked thousands of people on the gaming platform Twitch.tv.

We’ve created an extremely prestigious, potentially quite scandalous list*. Don’t tell us you’re not on it.

While the profligate days of very long lunches and company credit card-funded excess are seemingly—and for some, unfortunately—well behind us, there’s no doubt that many of those in the persuasive arts still engage a fair bit of corporate hospitality. Colenso BBDO’s ex-chief executive Nick Garrett, who recently took on a job at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne after five and a bit years in the role, was certainly in that category. So what better way to honour his legacy than with a visual reminder of one of his favourite haunts, SPQR in Ponsonby.

Rebel Sport has kicked off its summer promotional push, with a brand campaign by Ogilvy & Mather that calls on Kiwis to take advantage of the warmer weather by getting outside and breaking a sweat. PLUS: Red Bull tries to get its brand messaging into consumers ears through Pandora.

Canadian agency John St has developed a reputation for skewering the latest marketing trends with its parody videos. So far it’s taken aim at click farming, real-time marketing, fear-inducing experiential and the internet’s undying love of cats. And now it’s released another gem showing how it can co-opt the idea of female empowerment that brands like Dove and Always have tapped into and prey on female insecurities to help sell more stuff.

Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.

While we generally prefer to write about good advertising campaigns here at StopPress, we’re happy to give the bad ones a prod from time to time, whether it’s for blatant rugby bandwagon jumping or cringey beach cricket. So here are a few that have got our goats recently.

Spanning two wars and a bit of rugby in between, Dave Gallagher’s story, which is presented on a Steinlager ad alongside vintage photos and props, makes for compelling reading—and it comes as little surprise that the judging panel for the Newspaper Ad of the Month singled it out as the standout creative in September.

Newspapers love big events, as brands hoping to show their tactical advertising flair tend to gravitate towards them. That was certainly the case after the 2011 Rugby World Cup win, as it was on Monday when the team backed that performance up by beating the Aussies. But we found a few more full-pagers in a special World Cup lift-out in the Herald this week, as well as some other rugby-related efforts.

Facebook announced a stonking third quarter result today, beating analysts’ expectations with US$4.5 billion in revenue and a 14 percent increase in the number of monthly active users. But, much more importantly for the world’s largest social network, Richie McCaw has finally signed up and got the blue tick after a bit of pressure from the socially savvy Dan ‘Mince on Toast’ Carter. And, just a couple of days in, he’s already close to the 300,000 fan mark. If he keeps that up, he’ll soon be getting thousands to post ‘authentic’ pictures of him in his Versatile house, wearing his Beats headphones and using his favourite teeth whitening brand.

A few months back Vodafone launched a campaign aimed at teaching parents how to keep their kids safe online. But sometimes you need more than a parent’s guidance. You need technology. And Torch, a special router for parents that claims to stop kids from accessing dodgy content and imposes limits on the amount of time they spend online, created an ad that shows how innocent search terms are not always so innocent.

Something that stood out during our research for the influencer feature in the latest edition of NZ Marketing was the willingness of brands to relinquish creative control to the content creators they work with. So we followed suit by handing the cover creation duties over to a few brands we interviewed for the issue.

Here at StopPress headquarters in Auckland, we unfortunately don’t have the promise of snow days during winter to get us excited for a few unexpected moments away from office. However, various states across the US get covered in a white blanket so thick during the colder months that it renders it virtually impossible for citizens to get to work or school. And rather than mourning the confinement that often coincides with snow days, Nike has decided to celebrate the freedom these moments offer in a new spot by Wieden + Kennedy.