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As one famous Brit hits our screens, another famous Brit departs, because Dame Judi Dench’s time is up as the voice of ASB. And while Saatchi & Saatchi has already presided over an online campaign, a cool Spotify app and some nice print work for Big Yellow, it’s just released its first TV push with a spring home loan campaign offering borrowers some cash, Samsung Galaxy tablets and a taste of ‘fully furnished’ domestic bliss.
Wendy Rayner’s new reign, Michael Laws drops the mic, DDB makes a deposit, changes at Woman’s Weekly, no comment from Fairfax, Top Gear New Zealand heads across the ditch, Charlie’s finds a new chief, Ideas Shop adds a new general manager, Alt Group pleases ze Germans, Mi9 moves them up the chain, Simon Barnett heads back to TV, Dominic Bowden takes on X Factor, Datamine adds an ‘Owl’ and Bright Sparks beefs up in the south.
QR codes have slowly started to infiltrate the local scene, but it’d be a stretch at this stage to say they’ve rocked the marketing world. Enter Boxtcode, patent-pending smartphone technology that aims to resolve the limitations of QR codes, with location-based technology that connects consumers with brands via a four digit code rather than a barcode that requires scanning.
Following a story in the Herald over the weekend about increased competition leading to a drop in broadband prices and increases in data allowances, new player Flip, a business in the CallPlus group of companies, and its agency Sugar&Partners decided to take the opportunity to link itself with the news and promote its offer of free* broadband with an ad in yesterday’s Herald.
Those with a penchant for posteriors may have noticed the outdoor campaign for StepOut Nature’s new range of bamboo socks and tights. And one of our dear readers had his morning brightened today when he saw this perfectly timed lamp-post shadow on Ponsonby Rd. Perhaps a caption competition is in order.
They say you can’t buy experience, but you can buy experiential agencies and that’s what Professional Public Relations has done with the acquisition of specialist experiential marketing brand SublimeNZ, an offering it hopes to grow in Australia across PPR’s six state offices.
While some could probably think of nothing better than a bit of silence, having to do without your favourite sounds forever is a different kettle of fish. So, to show what role sound plays in people’s lives, Bay Audiology, Shine and Exposure’s Kevin Denholm have taken a charming—and very Kiwi—look at how customers can keep ‘hearing the things you love hearing’.
The Maggies judges have spoken and the covers they have deemed to be the country’s best will now fight it out for top honours in their respective categories, plus the coveted overall cover of the year award, as they go up for a public vote over the next five weeks at www.themaggies.co.nz.
While Google’s AdWords scheme has taken plenty of wind out of the sails of print media—and traditional directory services—here and around the world, one thing Google lacks is the sales force on the ground to sell to the small to medium enterprises that make up such a big chunk of the economy. So, to remedy that, it partners up with resellers and New Zealand-based tech company Gopher has become the third local company alongside Yellow and Localist to be named as a Google AdWords premier SME partner.
Keen to get your foot in the door at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney? As any young creative knows, one of the biggest challenges is cracking that door open. But aspiring creatives can now go inside the Sydney branch after it claimed to be the first agency in the world to team up with Google to create Saatchi Street View.
The time has cometh once again, when the upper-lips of men around the country—and the world—are given a temporary hairy embrace as part of Movember celebrations. And Carat has stepped up to the plate and challenged the rest of the marcomms industry to get growing and support the cause.
Lindauer and DDB’s recent tear jerker created a bit of a stir when it was released, with some seeing it as low hanging fruit and others (particularly the female target market) seeing the hyperbole as spot-on. But the piece de resistance of the over the top campaign was a champagne tower that was filled with salty male tears* during the 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty Style Weekend at the Cloud.
It’s the web app that keeps on winning, and after numerous awards for Colenso BBDO and Mars Pedigree’s ‘Doggelganger’, it’s added another prestigious trophy to the cabinet: The Diamond Award at the Direct Marketing Association’s International Echo Awards.
As far as unintentionally humorous advertising cult heroes go, you don’t get any bigger than the silver fox in the Colorsteel ‘Roof Shout’ ad who looks a little bit like one of the old guys from The Muppets. Well, heeee’s baaaack with his hedge clippers in a cameo for the ‘Roof Shout’ follow up, which celebrates “30 years of being the roof of New Zealand”. And this time there’s a bit of a nod and a wink about his appearance from Coxy.
It’s been a pretty good year for bcg2 and Mediacom, with a few new accounts and plenty of plaudits at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards for the work done on Pfizer’s ‘Viagra = Avigra’ campaign. And it’s notched up another win after being awarded the Freedom New Zealand account from incumbents M&C Saatchi Sydney/Auckland and Carat without a pitch.
Along with the main ‘every time you swipe something a little bit good happens’ TVC featuring a bunch of playful animals, the idea of creating little moments of joy has been brought to life in the real world with some nice experiential executions, like swipe-activated bubble gum billboards, bubble blowing Adshels and even a seat and a magazine on the Wellington waterfront. But for its latest trick Fly Buys has got the Wellington City Council on-side and is trying to bring some joy to an eight-year-old boy named Elijah.
We’re fans of ad agencies that back up what they do for their clients by advertising and we think they should do it more often (*cough, StopPress media kit, cough*). DraftFCB leads the pack in that regard and has created a great brand that it can hang its hat on. There’s a pretty big gap back to second, but Special Group has been known to talk itself up from time to time. And to celebrate its packaging pin at the Best Awards for OOB ice cream and drum home its belief that design and advertising need to kiss and make-up, it placed this ad in last week’s Herald.
DDB, Barnes, Catmur & Friends, 2degrees, Clemenger and Colenso all walked away from the Langham last Thursday with varying degrees of Effie-inspired joy in their hearts. You can check out all the winners here. And, thanks to CAANZ and Richard Leonard, those more interested in the humans who attended can check out a few pics below.
New Zealand goes a bit funny when famous folk come for a visit. It’s that classic Kiwi combo of pride and self-doubt. And it was no different when Eva Longoria popped in recently to spruik some of her perfume, cut the ribbon on The Shopping Channel and answer a few questions at an event put on by Woman’s Day and L’Oreal. The security was almost Obama-level, with pre-event checks and phones handed in at the door, but with a bit of baksheesh we managed to get our hands on collection of glamour shots from the night. So fill your boots. And eyes.
Teaser campaigns aim to get attention, and given the story about BNZ’s unbranded billboards had five times as many clicks as any other story in September on StopPress, it got plenty of it. After the reveal, there was also plenty of interest in chief marketing officer Craig Herbison’s explanation of the thinking behind the purposefully controversial campaign, with some blasting it and others applauding its boldness. So now the ‘Be Good With Money’ platform is out there, BNZ and Colenso BBDO are on a mission to prove the bank can help New Zealanders do just that. And the first cab off the rank is its TotalMoney offset mortgage.
The Australian version of the Newspaper Awards, the Caxtons, took place over the weekend, and the Kiwis more than held their own, with Special Group repeating last year’s effort and coming out on top with four, and DDB, Colenso and Tourism New Zealand’s Australian arm picking up two apiece.
Tower’s last campaign was based around some of the things it had learned about is customers in its almost 150 year existence as an insurance company (like 52.4 percent of its Roadwise call outs are for flat batteries), and along with its new agency .99, which was appointed as Tower’s full-service agency a few months back, it’s found another truth to base its new campaign on: people will always find something to worry about, no matter how trivial.
Revolution Fibres, an Auckland company that uses nanotechnology to make super strong fibres—in particular, for air filters for household ventilation systems, high strength fishing rods and fabric to enhance skin healing—claimed the supreme prize at the 2012 New Zealand Innovators Awards. And in the categories most relevant to the marketing community, Syrp’s Genie, Kiwibank’s online relationship management, The Gibson Group’s TouchHistory innovation, audio/text fusion Booktrack, virtual world SmallWorlds, paperless receipts company Paperkut and The Nutter’s Club also took home prizes.
In what could be seen as either a blow for rugby purists lamenting the sport’s descent into commercialism or a massive boost for the New Zealand Rugby Union—and the game as a whole—global insurance company American International Group has signed a five and a half year sponsorship agreement that will see its logo take pride of place in the middle of the All Black jersey.
IABNZ chooses its new executive weapons, Flying Fish signs up the ‘young Lee Tamahori,’ Eye adds to its Kiwi arsenal, Waitemata Films adds another directorial string to its bow, Telecom’s Chris Quin joins the Icehouse and Waikato-based HMC expands.
There are plenty of moral dilemmas working in—and writing about—marketing. At its core, it’s about using creativity and communications to grow businesses. And, often, using creativity and communications to grow businesses selling products that some deem harmful. As this Ad Age story points out, Alex Bogusky used to work with Coca-Cola when he was part of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, but after a bit of a break, he’s now fighting the other, less well-resourced activist corner, delivering a bit of an uppercut to Coke and other producers of sugary drinks with a four-minute long animation about a family of unhealthy, fizzy-drink-loving polar bears who finally see the light.
It wasn’t too long ago Saatchi & Saatchi was showcasing the joys of life in the Air Force in an effort to drum up new recruits. And now it’s taken to the water, with a new Navy campaign that “uncovers the extraordinary life of adventure, belonging and purpose that comes with being a sailor” and features a stirring rendition of the national anthem by New Zealand’s oldest living Navy veteran, 96 year-old Vince ‘Cyclone’ McGlone.
It might be our national fizzy drink but you’d probably be hard pressed to describe the flavour of L&P. And explaining what L&P tastes like is the central theme of four new TV spots launched in a new campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi, along with the Taste-a-liker – an app that encourages the brand’s 190,000 strong Facebook community to share their own thoughts on the flavour.
Unilever has announced the outcome of a global review of its media planning and buying agency services and, just as it did in Australia, it’s retained the incumbent in New Zealand, with PHD defending its turf.
The government has an eye on changing the way it markets the country as a whole, and in a recent StopPress column, Courtney Lambert argued that a mixed agency model was the way to go.