Jason Jones, former creative services manager for DraftFCB and more recently head of integrated production at Sugar, bought The Collective Force from founder Christina Force a few months back. And with refreshed branding, a new website and a re-energised roster of photographers including Andreas Smetana, Charlie, Chris Lewis, Kieran Scott, Sara Orme, emerging talent Tom Roberton, Charles Howells and Spid, he’s looking “to reclaim its position as New Zealand’s premier photography agency”.
Author StopPress Team
DDB may have a bit less work on with Wattie’s, but it’s getting geared up for the arrival of Westpac in about three months, and it’s announced a few of the anticipated hires, with three experienced campaigners joining the team: art director Toby Morris, planning director Rupert Price and group account director Cath Bosson.
We wrote about Brother’s plans to promote its naming rights sponsorship of the brrmm brrmms a few weeks back. And the multi-channel campaign went live this week, led by a cool new TVC created by Raydar and SPG/Kaleidoscope that’s about as far away as you could get from the Japanese company’s previous TV efforts and links its technology with rally driving by bringing a print out of a car to life.
Four years after McCann Worldgroup New Zealand re-opened its Auckland office, it has more or less pulled the blinds and locked the door. As a result of the consolidation, its clients will now be serviced from the much larger Australian operation.
Depending on how you look at it, second screening is either breathing new life into live broadcasts and showing TV is about shared experiences, or offering proof that viewers aren’t really paying full attention to what’s on the box. Either way, it’s proving fairly popular in New Zealand, with a new survey of 482 smartphone users released by IABNZ and 3DI showing that 63 percent of them are simultaneously using their smartphones and watching TV.
Les Mills International (LMI) is one of the country’s biggest under-the-radar business success stories, and its fitness products can be found in more than 14,000 gyms in 80 countries. And to help keep in touch with them all—and reach some fairly ambitious goals for growth—it has appointed Contagion as its new global media social media partner, effective immediately.
We know you marcomms folk like to wine and dine from time to time. And the Lewisham Foundation Awards rewarded the best in the Auckland scene recently, so here’s some food—and drink—for thought if you’re planning to impress.
A total of 225 entries were received across 13 categories for the 2012 edition of the Magazine Awards. And after the judges had their wicked way with them all, they ended up choosing 144 finalists. Some category finalists will be announced at the Gala Awards Dinner on June 28.
A record 34,301 entries from 87 countries have been submitted to the Cannes Lions 59th International Festival of Creativity, an overall increase of 19 percent versus last year. And, after a total of 347 entries from New Zealand across almost all of the 15 categories, the Kiwi contingent will be aiming to improve on its rather slim takings last year when things kick off in ten days.
Maggie Christie integrates herself into Clems, Stefan Lepionka steps down as head juicer at Charlie’s, Heartland agency upgrades its Tracta, Newstalk ZB wins gold in New York, 8com cuts the ribbon at new Auckland office, Craig Franklin swaps Oz for New Zealand, and Tony Bozzard joins KMS Data.
It’s all go in the local broadcasting world at the moment. Sky’s content deals with ISPs have been put under the microscope, Freeview has started its final push before the digital switchover and announced some impressive technological additions, streaming service Quickflix has given Kiwis another (legal) way to watch, and, as Igloo’s 15-second teaser ad by Sugar shows, the “new kid in town”, with it’s colourful blobby mascots, is getting set to launch after the joint venture between Sky and TVNZ was recently cleared by the ComCom.
Kelly Bennett, the founder and managing partner of Eleven PR New Zealand, has been tapped on the shoulder and will lead the expansion of brand activation, experiential and PR services for the TBWA\ network throughout Asia Pacific.
We let out a wee chortle—and felt a wave of ‘there but for the grace of God go us’—yesterday when we received the run-down for this week’s edition of Media7, which was to discuss the proposal by Fairfax to outsource some of its Australian sub-editing requirements to New Zealand. But, slightly ironically, given the episode’s focus on the loss of local knowledge and errors of fact slipping through unnoticed as a result of such decisions, it probably could have done with a sub.
Amateurs regularly seem to think they can foot it with the big boys. Usually they can’t, but technology is helping even things up a bit and Panasonic and Auckland digital shop Tango have launched a cool interactive campaign/social experiment to see if the new Lumix cameras do as they claim and allow anyone to shoot like a pro.
Continuing Tangible Media’s strategy of special issues and brand extensions seen with the likes of NZ Weddings Planner, Everyday Dish and NZ Rugby World’s First XV, next in line is the hunting market.
With customers embracing the internet and social media in ever-increasing numbers (the Banking Ombudsman has just released a new guide for online banking), Canstar has embarked on its first review of the New Zealand online banking market and ASB, a bank renowned for its digital chops and social focus, has been named the best of the lot.
Penis graffiti is immature—and almost always funny. This effort in Hamilton was able to be seen from space, this effort on the Liteiny Bridge in St Petersberg had some serious scale to it, this one came to life to stop STDs, and then there was the recent effort in Australia where a long-time magazine designer went out with a bang by sneakily putting some cockinballs on the cover of Beat. Now our neck of the woods is abuzz with cartoon genital-related scandal after some unseemly goings on at DDB.
According to Nielsen’s Online Retail Report, the number of online shoppers in New Zealand has now reached over 1.6 million (49 percent of the total population aged 18+), an increase of 122,000 on the previous year and more than double since 2004.
JWT’s Angus Hennah comes home, Rachel Ellerm kicks off her new female-centric strategic consultancy Frock, Pluk continues to grow, Orcon puts its weight behind CanTeen, The PR Shop pulls a deuce, and 2degrees and TBWA\ put their Ad Impact gloves on.
After officially winning the Vodafone account at the end of February, DraftFCB has sent some of its first work into the wild, with one simple retail ad for “the nakedest ever broadband deal” and another slightly more out-there idea—quite literally—for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III.
Colmar Brunton has just released some survey results that show 60 percent of New Zealanders follow a brand on social media and more than two thirds think a social media presence adds to the brand’s appeal. But what those consumers say when they’re talking to those brands is another, very different question. So we thought we’d republish a column by The Research Agency’s Andrew Lewis that ran in the last issue of NZ Marketing and detailed the interesting results of a survey on how people interact with brands on social media.
Kiwis of all ages are prolific users of social media but, according to a recent Colmar Brunton survey, it’s not just to keep up to date with family and friends. Nearly 60 percent of Kiwis follow at least one brand and over one third (37 percent) say a social media presence makes a brand more appealing to them.
We wrote about Colenso’s win of the Tourism Fiji account back in early April, and the island nation has added another Kiwi agency to its roster after Auckland-based full service web agency Sparks Interactive was named as its new website partner.
Adam Good returns to the region, Y&R bolsters its Welly offering, prodigal Prodigy returns, Unlimited chooses its new editor, AWARD school opens for its second year of business in New Zealand, Eleven PR loses one of its flock to Mt Maunganui, and TVNZ names its Olympic team.
After the defection of TVNZ’s ex-head of sales and marketing Paul Maher to MediaWorks recently, general manager of media solutions Jeremy O’Brien has taken over half of that role and been announced as the new head of sales.
Special Group is the first New Zealand ad agency ever to be asked to talk at the Semi-Permanent creativity conference, which packed out the Aotea Centre in Auckland for a few days recently and featured headline acts like New York artist Ron English, UK digital agency Hi-Res, San Francisco-based Industrial Light & Magic and Wallpapermagazine. The local lads opened proceedings in front of around 2000 people with a talk centred around the eight things they do to make their work more effective that showcased the diverse range of work they have produced over their four years of existence—including the Best Award-winning packaging work for ecostore and the 2011 AXIS-award winning AXIS opening film. So here’s a summary of their presentation.
The NZRU will no doubt be hoping the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup win might put a bit more lead in its commercial pencil to help get through a fairly difficult time for the national sport. And it’s managed to retain five of the team’s major sponsors, with Coca-Cola, Unilever, Sanitarium, Barkers and Bvlgari re-signing as All Blacks sponsors for undisclosed sums.
You can read all about it here, and you can see all about it here.
It’s time to get back to our ABCs. And our Nielsens.
For only the second time, the new magazine circulation methology has spewed its quarterly data, coinciding with the Nielsen Magazine Comparatives Q2 2011 – Q1 2012 readership results.
And the news: it’s all up for most and a …
A handful of Kiwi agencies have made it into the finals of the APMA Star Awards, celebrating the year’s finest promotional and experiential marketing across Australasia.
Apollo Marketing NZ, Loyalty NZ and Below the Line (the only indie Kiwi agency) are among the 31 finalists shortlisted from a pool …