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].
Charlie’s has just launched its new straight up cola, which has “honest stuff like actual kola nuts, real malt, natural cane sugar and a cheeky squeeze of lemon”. But, in a nice touch, it’s also decided to tell drinkers what isn’t in the can just to see if they’re still paying attention.
We live in increasingly visual times. And no-one’s got time to read those pesky words anymore. So every week we’ll publish a few graphs that need very little explaining. This time, Sky’s impressive revenue and share figures over time.
Since the beginning of the week, Men’s Health has been causing people across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to do some serious double takes, thanks to a controversial set of posters that are designed to encourage men to talk about their health issues. But Men’s Health isn’t the only organisation making Kiwis gawk. Love Your Condom has continued its risque approach to raising awareness about condom usage among the nation’s gay men with a new campaign that features the chiseled body of poster boy James Luck.
As Santa is to kids, so is the John Lewis Christmas ad to the creative community. And once again it has slid down the collective chimney and landed with an emotional, animal-related thud.
As we wrote last week, the classic endorsement approach in New Zealand seems to be bunging a rugby player (or even a coach) on your ad. But Invivo’s strategy is at the other end of the spectrum, with international talk show host and self-proclaimed he-devil Graham Norton called on to help create—and now help promote—a very special wine.
Colenso BBDO and DDB continued their award-winning streaks by each picking up a pair of gongs at this year’s edition of Mashable’s annual awards show, the Mashies.
Internationally, McDonald’s recent financial results were well down on the same time last year, and it’s trying a range of things to counter the decline, including offering customised burgers. In New Zealand, sales figures weren’t available for this year, but the arrival of Georgie Pie helped lift performance in 2013. And it’s aiming to continue that growth by offering McCafe coffee via drive-thru.
Pickling enthusiasts will be pleased to find that the new Google Calendar app for Android embraces this niche hobby.
Recruitment campaigns for the New Zealand Defence Force usually focus on patriotic duty or the diversity of experiences on offer. But for its latest push, it’s focusing on fitness and, with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi and Roam Creative, it has created an app called Force Fit that lets potential recruits ensure they’re fit enough to pull on a uniform.
Planned obsolescence and apparel manufacturers go together like chimichurri and steak, with small changes to jerseys requiring true fans to buy new ones regularly. But, at a launch event in London ahead of its northern tour, Adidas claims to have made some big changes to the fancy new hi-tech All Blacks jersey by getting rid of the white collar, adding gun-metal grey lettering and, after player feedback, making two versions: one for the forwards and one for the backs.
A Baltimore based woman used crowdfunding to pay for her expensive late night Uber ride. PLUS other crowdfunding oddities.
Aldi Mobile pulls together a trio of the worst employees ever to illustrate that consumers tend to be different.
At end of June, upon lifting lid of Lightbox, the Spark subsidiary’s head of programming and local content Maria Mahony told StopPress that she was in talks with local film distributors to secure a deal to screen several local shows. Shortly after Lightbox’s announcements, Quickflix sent out a release saying that it had snapped up pair of local shows, which Lightbox was thought to have been interested in, and this seemingly spoiled the party for the newcomer. Then, when Lightbox later revealed its lineup there was a clear Kiwi-shaped hole in its programming, leading to questions as to whether the subscription video on demand (SVOD) provider would in fact be adding any local shows to its lineup. However, these questions have now been answered by today’s announcement that Lightbox has added no less than 19 local shows to its catalogue. UPDATE: Quickflix ups its local game with seven more shows.
Given the insight that Kiwi worker down their tools at 3.29 every Friday, at this time on 12 September FCB created a radio roadblock by playing Mitre 10’s ‘Bring on the Weekend’ song across six stations. And this creative—if somewhat unconventional approach—has now resulted in the agency winning an Orca award for the month of September.
2015 will mark the 35th anniversary of the Axis Awards, and to commemorate this milestone CAANZ will be showcasing some of the work that has been awarded over the course of that period. But, as has always been the case, this year’s edition will be about awarding the best work produced over the course of the last year. And to do that as effectively as possible, CAANZ has introduced a few changes to the awards categories for this year’s event.
The bar for long-form advertising on YouTube has been raised by the ambitious projects several major brands over the last few years. Guinness, Chipotle, Johnnie Walker and Chanel No 5 have all commissioned the development of creative projects that seemingly conflate the disparate worlds of advertising and entertainment. And recently, when Honda released a series of teasers for its upcoming campaign, it seemed as though the online community would be treated to another online advert posing as a short story. But, what we got was something quite different.
Right in time for the gambling rush that annually coincides with the Melbourne Cup, TAB has launched a new campaign via Sugar & Partners that features a group of friends seated on a flying rollercoaster. And while this might sound like an aptly terrifying metaphor to accompany the ups and downs of gambling, the characters depicted in the 45-second ad seem to enjoy the trackless journey through the sky.
There will be plenty from the marketing community gearing up for the Melbourne Cup today and, with a couple of Kiwi options, the TAB is aiming to get the locals to lay down a few more bets this year. But founder and chief executive of NZ Tax Refunds NZ Cilla Hegarty has managed to combine marketing and horses in a very different manner: racing a branded thoroughbred/”fast-moving advertising billboard” called Gottagetmywoohoo.
Every year, multiple sclerosis awareness week sees hundreds of bucket-shakers hitting the streets to raise funds for those who suffer from this debilitating disease. But this year, MS Auckland wanted to raise more money and more awareness than ever before. So indie agency Hunch came up with a way of illustrating the disease’s effects—and raising some cash—by shacking up with Hell Pizza and sending out a few deliveries to unsuspecting recipients.
No doubt the bed makers were happy to see Arianna Huffington extolling the virtues of sleep, lambasting the burn-out culture of the corporate world and promoting the idea of nap rooms at work during her recent visit to New Zealand. And here are a few recent efforts to get Kiwis buying a new rest station from a vampirical Sleepyhead, a rugby-loving Slumberzone and a design-savvy Sealy.
Some believe there’s no bigger sucker than a marketer who thinks they’re missing out on a trend. And Toronto agency John St has managed to illustrate that by gently skewering its own industry and the lemming-like traits of those who inhabit it with a series of very funny clips about catvertising, making things go viral and exFEARiential marketing. And its latest effort, Reactvertising, continues that trend. John St creative Jacob Greer answers a few queries about the success of its comical self-promotional strategy.
As we wrote last week, there are a few Kiwi brands experimenting with the captivating loops of Vine. And, to announce the arrival of its new online boutique, Lacoste asked social media savant Zach King, who gained fame through the digital trickery displayed in his online videos, to help out.
Once again, a number of facial follicles are being left to run rampant this month to raise funds for men’s health as part of Movember celebrations. And this year, in an effort to drive sign-ups among ‘mo bros’ and ‘mo sistas’, BBDO Toronto created a moustachioued male stereotype called Bruce to show that, despite the often hideous appearance of those who take part, they really are heroes.
On Wednesday night, Belinda MacDonald and Neena Truscott, dubbed the Modern Day Hippies, were crowned the first winners of My Kitchen Rules New Zealand. This moment concluded the battle for New Zealand’s latest food porn crown, while simultaneously bringing an end to a ratings battle that has waged since TVNZ first decided to schedule its programme against MediaWorks’ The Block NZ. StopPress takes a look at how the two formats fared against each other.
A theme park in Sweden has created the most terrifying outdoor poster of all time, just in time for Halloween.
Given they create butter, ice cream and steak, cows are quite possibly the most delicious of all the beasts. But they’re bad for the environment, and some believe they’re bad for our bodies. So Oatly’s chief executive Toni Petersson decided to embrace the power of music in advertising with a unique performance about oat milk.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Facebook has said it needs to sell 50-100 million Oculus Rift headsets to make it meaningful. But Dos Equis is getting in early and offering fans a dose of virtual reality.
MediaWorks’ new chief executive Mark Weldon took to the stage last night to show off the company’s new and returning content for 2015. Here’s what he said about the power of local, the future of TV and the effectiveness of multi-media.
We live in increasingly visual times. And no-one’s got time to read those pesky words anymore. So every week we’ll publish some of our favourite graphs. In honour of MediaWorks’ new season launch last night, here’s one that shows what’s been happening to overall share of audience in commercial radio since 2005.