One of the talented StopPress Team of Content Producers made this post happen.
Organisations like the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority have a difficult job dealing with the multitude of complaints that come flooding in. But they do get to laugh at the ridiculous ones and P J Radich, the chair of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, has released a list of trivial complaints that it has received.
Australians are renowned for their dignity, manners and good grace. So it’s no surprise to see a bunch of ex-Wallabies erecting a billboard that offers the All Blacks a warm welcome to Australia for the Bledisloe Cup.
Telecom and Vodafone both announced today that Telecom has dropped court proceedings against Vodafone, after the latter’s SuperNet advertising ruffled some feathers.
APN won the pitch for Tourism Australia’s media business recently, relieving Fairfax of its duties. But now Fairfax has a broader range of destinations to promote, after signing a deal with the House of Travel that encompasses contextual commerce and co-created content.
Clearly drug testing is not a priority at Berlin ad agency Storz & Escherich, because the company produced this ad for pre-owned Minis.
Four well-known New Zealanders—Judy Bailey, Colin Mathura-Jeffree, Jon Bridges and Michael Van de Elzen—are packing their bags and indulging their passions in Australia as part of Tourism Australia’s new content marketing campaign with APN.
Looking for that special something for the ad man/woman that has everything? Then you can’t go past Creative Miscellaneous Materials, a website that offers a vast array of remarkable products to help those working in the persuasive arts.
The good cutlery is being shined, the wait staff are being put through a rigorous training regime and the country’s top marketers are getting out their lint rollers in preparation for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards at The Langham on 29 August. Tickets have been selling like hotcakes (or, to bring that phrase into the modern era, like iPhones) and there are only a few seats remaining before we put up the ‘full’ sign. So if you want to secure your spot, click here to get yourself a ticket.
Another senior hire for Y&R, another big scalp for the Radio Network, a rare expansion at MediaWorks, more volume for Volom and a fashion expert for Pead.
Ogilvy & Mather has taken out this month’s Newspaper Ad of the Month with its topical ad for Beneful that responded in canine style to an article claiming playing with sticks was no good for dogs. The win takes them to six points and sees them join DDB at the top of the Agency League table.
Apparently New Zealand hasn’t run out of talent just yet, because not long after MediaWorks’ big talent show wound up, TVNZ’s big talent show gets set to start.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Marmite has been a huge topic of interest in New Zealand over the past few years, with the closure of Sanitarium’s Christchurch factory after the earthquake leading to ‘Marmageddon’. But the Marmite brand has a different problem in the UK: people keep forgetting to use it. So it’s spoofed the current crop of animal welfare reality shows with an ad showing some horrible cases of yeast-based neglect.
Richard Branson wasn’t always the suave, successful mogul he is today. In its latest ad, Virgin Mobile shows Branson’s life story in exactly one minute and three seconds. And yes, he always sported that beard, even at two years old.
Is it just us, or is $379 not that much money to spend for an action figure that looks just like you?
There’s been a lot of talk about football rights in New Zealand recently, with online offering Coliseum unexpectedly snatching that trophy off Sky and Sky then raining on its parade slightly by signing deals directly with four English major clubs to show delayed coverage of their games. But as newspapers embrace video, and as humans embrace mobile, it’s not just broadcasters looking for content anymore, as evidenced by this great ad for Sun+ Goals that features football fans watching when they shouldn’t be.
Creative types can be a bit precious about their image. But not Mumford & Sons. The beardy folk rockers aren’t above taking the piss out of themselves and, with the help of four funny men—Ed Helms, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, and Will Forte—the band has created what Buzzfeed calls the best music video of the year.
Dr Who nerds have been all aflutter this week after Peter Capaldi was named as the new 1000-year-old time-traveller. He’s renowned for his role as the potty-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the brilliant show The Thick of It. And this guy has decided to combine the two roles and create a trailer that gives fans a glimpse at what the upcoming series might be like (block your ears children, salty language ahoy).
EY, which until recently was Ernst & Young, has announced the finalists of this year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
Fairfax’s new local chief, True launches new space division, APN staffers on the move, Checkpoint Charlie launches, Jason Gunn and TRN part company and Admission on the move.
Brands tend to inflate their importance in people’s lives. And The Onion has showed this phenomenon in its inimitable fashion with a clip featuring “fans from all over the country flocking to see all of their favourite brands” at the Lollapalooza music festival.
Last week Vodafone took out the awkward ad placement award, and we’ve got a contender for this week’s edition, with an ad on Stuff promoting ‘beach fale fun in the sun’ in Samoa running alongside a story warning of a tsunami. Pesky news, always wreaking havoc with those commercial messages.
After a brief but rewarding fling with StopPress and Idealog, tech reporter/photographer/regional man of mystery Sim Ahmed finished up yesterday and is off to work for POS start-up Vend HQ. But we’re not letting him get away without mentioning a bit of copyright hilarity he was involved in on Twitter last week.
Snapper chief executive Miki Szikszai noticed an awkward ad placement on the New Zealand Herald’s website this morning.
Carin Hercock swaps APN for Nielsen, the Red Bulletin takes a new approach, Sim Ahmed and Simon Pound join start-up Vend HQ, Damien Shatford signs with the Sweet Shop, Republik gets some Aussie biz, Big Mobile gets bigger, Rose Matafeo changes channels, Stefan Korn takes Creative HQ reins and APN Outdoor heads to Broadway.
The Luddites among us may remember the pre-mobile age as a wonderful time when you didn’t feel obliged to check your work email before you went to bed and phubbing wasn’t a threat to the very fabric of society. Telco beast Qualcomm sees things a bit differently and, in an entertaining, pratfall-heavy online film that’s clocked up 2.3 million views in a few weeks, it’s attempted to show what the world would be like without mobile. Answer: violent and crazy.
Kiwi ‘post-punk revival’ band The Naked and Famous have recently been holed up in Los Angeles studio trying their best to overcome That Difficult Second Album Syndrome for In Rolling Waves (by the way, That Difficult Second Album would be a great name for a debut album). And the band has once again called on Special Problems to direct the music video for its new single ‘Hearts Like Ours’.
Work for insurance giant lands digital agency SpaceStation a gong from Yahoo.
As this news report shows, being able to read an entire newspaper—aside from ‘the pictures, ads or comics’—on a computer was a giant technological leap back in 1981. While this development has certainly been good for the readers, it hasn’t been too beneficial for newspapers. And you can see where it started to go wrong. As David Cole from the San Francisco Examiner says in the clip: “This is an experiment … We’re not in it to make money.” Some might say the same strategy holds true 34 years later.
Many thousands of people from the global comms industry descend on Cannes every year to judge, learn and drink. But why? This film, which was produced as a collaboration between Lions Festivals and Jack Morton Worldwide to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the festival, explains what happens, how it inspires creativity and why it’s become so alluring.