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It’s not uncommon to hear media owners talking up the benefits of their specific media channels—and occasionally giving competing media channels a serve. It’s less common to see agencies doing it. But Auckland interactive agency BKA has given it a nudge, putting up a cheeky—and perhaps slightly ironic—billboard on its building on Great North Rd in Auckland to show that it’s actually “better than a billboard”.
The marketing deal between Google’s Android and Nestle’s Kit Kat was celebrated by the marketing fraternity (the choc-tech website is worth a look) and met with surprise by some in the tech space (it was initially thought the new IOS would be called Key Lime Pie). But, as this cartoon suggests, real humans may have a different take on the deal.
Fairfax Media New Zealand has appointed Campbell Mitchell, most recently the general manager digital, marketing and retail sales at The Australian, to the role of marketing director.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Some of the best ads in the local newspaper business were celebrated last night at AUT. Unfortunately, no-one from Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington was there to pick up the Best Art prize for its Wellington Zoo ad. But News Works NZ’s Lorne Maltman was on hand to accept it in their absence, and he revelled in the win, giving the longest speeches of anyone and receiving resounding applause for so openly claiming others’ spoils. Plus: Special Group’s violent Agency League run-down.
Old Spice has undergone a major resurgence in recent years, becoming the no.1-selling antiperspirant and deodorant and body wash brand in North America, and it all kicked off with American actor and former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa on a white horse. That ad by Wieden + Kennedy was one of the most-talked about commercials of all time and won a Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix. And now, with Old Spice launching a range of products in New Zealand, he’s reprised his role for an online video in which he aims to “define what it means to be a New Zealand male”.
The BBC has suffered two embarrasingly public epic fails. Newsreader Simon McCoy, whose past gaffes include appearing to snooze on the job, has now presented an item while clutching a ream of photocopy paper instead of his iPad.
Product demonstrations are a dime a dozen. Product destruction demonstrations, not so much. But that’s exactly what local footwear label Yours has done.
The 65th Primetime Emmys are coming up soon. But before they choose the best actors and TV shows, they chose the best commercial and it was Canon’s beautiful ‘Inspired’ spot by Grey and MJZ director Nicolai Fuglsig that took it out.
DDB’s campaign for the YWCA promoting equal pay for women has found plenty of favour with awards juries around the world, most recently at Spikes Asia. And it’s also got the tick of approval from the judges of the 2013 Newspaper Ad of the Year awards, winning the main prize and the award for Best Topical advertisement.
Dunedin-based company Animation Research Limited is behind the amazing on-screen graphics and very popular mobile apps for the America’s Cup and while the chatter about the event is mostly positive, its chief executive Ian Taylor has penned a strongly worded missive saying that certain media commentators, politicians and, by extension, the general public are missing the point of the America’s Cup. Plus: Animation Research’s visual gift, ‘Kia Kaha San Francisco’.
Adshel has once again joined forces with its main charity Surf Life Saving New Zealand for the annual Creative Challenge, which is now in its third year. And it’s calling on agencies to put their names in the hat.
Westpac has put a few of its besuited bodies on the line and created a giant human red sock in Britomart to show their support for Emirates Team New Zealand. Who says bankers don’t have a heart? And elsewhere in America’s Cup land, a few cheeky Kiwis decided Larry Ellison’s place “needed some decoration,” so they added a few New Zealand flags.
The winners of the Spikes Asia Awards were announced overnight and the Kiwi agencies fared pretty well, with TBWA\ and DraftFCB winning Grand Prix awards in the Media and PR categories for Tourism New Zealand’s Middle-Earth Passport Stamp and Mini/SPCA’s Driving Dogs respectively, while DDB Group’s haul made it the third ranked agency in the region and Open (nee Naked) was the region’s top ranked media agency with its wins for Unitec.
Apple found plenty of success when it added some colour to its iPods. And while some think Steve Jobs would be rolling in his grave over the company’s shift to cheaper handsets, that’s where the company is headed after it announced the launch of the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S. And it’s released an ad via TBWA\ to promote its colourful models.
Just when we thought we’d seen the heights of interactivity with the online video Just a Reflektor, where you can control special effects using your phone, Virgin Mobile has stepped it up another notch with Blinkwashing.
Flickr and Getty Images joined forces a few years back to build a platform that would enable the creation of a first class collection of royalty free and rights managed photographs. Photographers can submit their efforts to the Getty Images Call for Artists group and the Getty Images creative team then reviews photos, looking out for images they feel are marketable based on their expertise and inviting new photographers to join. There are now more than 600,000 images (and counting) from over 115 countries available to license (check out the full gallery here) and Getty has compiled the top-sellers globally.
In the third instalment of TVNZ’s Future Now series, digital and social media specialist Ian Howard discusses how Kiwi advertisers can use social networks to open up conversations with their customers, create a community around a brand, generate engagement and drive sales.
Mitre 10 Dream Home finished up a couple of weeks back. But Tui has created its own, male-centric dream home, with an entertaining prank that saw a number of kegs plumbed into an Auckland house so that every tap poured cold beer. Plus: Tui and BK up a tree.
Greg Shand, one of New Zealand’s most experienced communications professionals, died suddenly at his home in Piha last week.
Vodafone has had a rough time of it in Australia recently, losing 1.5 million customers since 2011, facing the threat of a class action suit by unhappy customers and reporting a massive AU$899 million loss last year. Now it’s reintroducing the brand to the nation and asking consumers to ‘Discover the New’—and it’s done it by creating a fairly strange campaign that aims to get mobile phone users to see the world like a child again.
The return of Karl Fleet, TRN’s Carolyn Luey joins the IAB board, Sky TV brings in some new blood, Sugar & Partners adds a couple of names, Born Digital gets a new general manager and Twenty stocks up on staff after a few wins.
The company credit cards are out in force this week for Spikes Asia and most of the shortlists have been announced, with, unsurprisingly, many of the campaigns that featured at Cannes also featuring in Singapore.
Predictably, David Cunliffe won the Labour Leadership battle. Perhaps just as predictably, given the united show the party needs if it’s going to give National a run for its money at the next election, Cunliffe’s leadership rivals were gracious in defeat. The exception, perhaps, was dark horse Ned Stark.
A diverse set of magazine covers will battle to be the best in their category and the country in this year’s iSUBSCRiBE Maggie awards.
Universal Music is working to digitise the remainder of its local release collection to take advantage of all digital music services available here.
We’ve seen it before with Dollar Shave Club—both the blades and the wipes—and tampon subscription service Hello Flo. And now there’s a new entrant into the entertainingly crass and completely over the top online ad annals: Poo-pouri.
Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle’s brilliant ‘Back to the Start’ campaign used animation, emotion and a celebrity cover to tell the sorry story of industrialised food production. It caught plenty of attention and won plenty of awards for its trouble, including a couple of Cannes Grand Prix in film and branded content. And it’s following the same strategy for the follow-up, The Scarecrow.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Here we have the Old Spice guy riding a horse backwards – over the in the US the brand is getting fresh with a new series of commercials for its association with the NFL.