This post was created by one of the small but mighty StopPress team of journalists. Among their number are: Zahra Shahtahmasebi, Niko Kloeten, Penny Murray and Rachel Tsai. Send your news to [email protected].
Companies are always on the hunt for new and interesting ways to get our attention, even if they can hold it for just a few seconds. It’s a bit like trying to stand out amongst a large school of fish. Well, a Wellington company thinks it’s found the answer, and all you need is cardboard and a bit of magical production dust.
Super Bowl 49 delivered the goods on the field yesterday, with a last gasp victory for the New England Patriots, a brawl at the end and some impressive dancing sharks for Katy Perry’s halftime show. Once again, it proved to be a ratings goldmine for NBC, ranking as the “highest overnight rating in Super Bowl history and a four percent increase on last year”. That’s why advertisers pay around US$4.5 million for a nationwide spot—and why so many people seem to be interested in the ads. Herewith, a collection of the goods, bads and uglies.
Following this week’s announcement that NZME had established events and experiential divisions and since Fairfax made a similar move last July, StopPress contacted Mark Pickering, the chair of the Experiential Marketing Association of New Zealand (EMANZ), to share his thoughts on how these moves might impact the Kiwi experiential market.
Following on from a similar move by Fairfax in July last year, NZME has now announced the launch of NZME Events and NZME Experiential in a bid to further consolidate its business in these two areas.
Last week, a listener’s decision to thumb up Steely Dan’s Josie while logged into Pandora took the platform to the milestone of 50 billion thumbs up across the United States, Australia and New Zealand. PLUS: Pandora reveals most-liked songs in New Zealand.
To make it a little easier for brands to navigate the treacherous social media terrain and tell their stories more effectively, Jonathan Hendriksen* launched Shuttlerock, a platform that lets businesses aggregate socially sourced content, photos and videos on their websites. And Lady Gaga’s even using it.
Nielsen has released its list of the ten brands that spent the most on advertising in 2014, according to rate card data. And, as has been the case over the last few years, Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs once again slogged at out for the top two spots. Here’s a rundown of which other brands spent big over the course of last year.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Newcastle Brown Ale has already attempted to hijack Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl campaign, the crowd-sourced ad competition. And global advocacy group Sum of Us has followed suit by releasing a parody ad showing that a penchant for corn chips is impacting the rainforests of Asia.
As the popularity of the these guys on YouTube attests, humans are partial to slow motion. And, with the help of Camistry, Burger Fuel decided to slow things down for its Christmas party.
Industry happenings at Prime News, Colenso BBDO, Satellite Media, Finch and Font.
From relatively small-scale beginnings in Whangarei in 1979, Michael Hill has over the last 36 years grown into an international enterprise that today has 280 stores globally employing about 2400 staff in a variety of roles. And as a culmination of this ongoing growth, the company is set to feature alongside the world’s major brands in what is arguably advertising’s biggest showcase, the Super Bowl.
Nielsen has released its annual list of the top ten websites Kiwis visited over the course of December. And while the list was populated by the usual suspects, there were a few surprises in terms of the year-on-year changes for some of the websites.
Two weeks ago, Google announced it would stop selling its Google Glass Explorer, which went off the market on January 19. And this news coincided with an announcement from Microsoft on the release of a prototype of Hololens, a PC headset that runs on Windows 10.
Google has released a video showing off the numerous possibilities of Project Ara, a concept smartphone with a modular design that allows users to swap out different components in order to cater it to the individual.
With the relatively recent advent of streaming services, watching TV shows is becoming less about being home at 7.30pm on a Wednesday and more about watching episode after episode until your eyes start to bleed. But what to choose given the time constraints? As Lightbox gets set to screen Better Call Saul exclusively in February, as Sky gets set to launch its long-awaited SVOD service Neon after a series of delays, and as TVNZ gets set to launch its rejigged OnDemand platform, there are more options than ever for Kiwi viewers. So here’s a handy guide from Nielsen that shows you how long it will take you to watch some of the world’s most popular shows, end-to-end.
George FM has set up a live stream of a jar of lollies. And though this might sound slightly insane, humans have in the past shown the proclivity to tune in to the mundane.
Tom Uglow works on the periphery of the advertising industry, bringing ideas that exist only in the imagination into the real world. Based at the Google offices in Sydney, he has already lent his creative touch to innovative projects such as The Cube, and he says there’s much more to come.
Taking the beep test is something of a rite of passage for many young Kiwis. And Heart Kids and Method have put a modern, cricket-based spin on it in an effort to raise awareness of the charity.
Arran Birchenough, the country manager for Getty Images in New Zealand, shares some insights on how brands can find that stock image sweet spot that lies somewhere between the generic and the overly contrived.
Chromesthesia describes situations in which hearing certain sounds automatically evokes—in the words of Wikipedia—an experience of a colour. This is one of the rare examples in which a person is able to see a sound, giving something that is intangible to the eye a corporeal representation. But the isolation of the senses also goes the other way, in that the concept of sounds—in particular music—is not necessarily easy to capture in the visual form. For companies in the music industry, this limitation has until now meant that their logos could not necessarily embody the sounds that they sell. Wireless audio company Sonos has however managed to bridge the gap with its new logo.
Karen Walker’s campaign for her new season range of eyewear features the obligatory stunning model. But it’s a lot hairier and toothless than usual and it marks the first time the brand has used a ‘celebrity’.
Did you know that theres a guy that specialises in capturing your gnarly C.O.D deaths? How else did you think they got that awesome footage?
New World has been in fine marketing fettle in recent months, with two delightfully insane adverts involving bread-based real estate and vegetable-based romance and one mad ad for its netball sponsorship. And while its Christmas campaign wasn’t quite so surreal, the ads featuring Santa Claus hiding in plain sight as a supermarket employee named Noel also caught viewers’ attention and managed to take out Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact award for November.
Milk consumption is declining in a number of developed markets, with the Washington Post stating that the average American drinks 37 percent less milk today than they did in 1970. Similar trends are evident in New Zealand, with the Herald estimating that it has decreased from 139 litres a head a year in 1974 to about 81 litres a head last year. There are a number of reasons for that, including rising prices, a proliferation of other beverage options and one recent study that appeared to turn the received wisdom of milk’s health benefits on its head. But, following on from Fonterra’s Milk in Schools Initiative, Anchor and Colenso BBDO are continuing their mission to get cow juice into the gullets of more New Zealanders by convincing parents that milk helps grow healthy kids.
Anchor’s charming tale and Bigpipe’s random instances of coffee chaos get the nod of approval this week.
Following the news that Clemenger BBDO’s long-serving executive creative director Philip Andrew has handed over the reins, we’ve decided to republish a sidebar from an agency profile in NZ Marketing that talked about the formative days of the Wellington agency.
Industry happenings at Spark, NZME, Dentsu Aegis, MediaWorks, Icebreaker, Pure SEO and Vega.
To be fair it’s not an ad for themselves, but rather for Friskies and is the latest addition to the ‘Dear Kitten’ series.
