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].
After working with the likes of the Internet Party, Schick, Metro magazine and 2degrees in the local market, Auckland-based digital company Interlike is now setting its sights on the Russian market.
Jessica Simpson has helped sell countless women’s magazines around the world. And Woman’s Day managed to nab some exclusive photos of her special day for the latest issue. But an eagle-eyed reader sent us one of the photos from the spread and someone’s failed to fix up a bit of cheeky face-fixing.
Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has appointed Republik to its media and creative account, and this move will see the agency part ways with Peugeot after 10 years.
While drones are being used for nefarious purposes in warzones, they’re being put to good use elsewhere, as a clip posted on Al Brown’s Facebook page shows.
In the 80s, after the rest of the world turned its back on David Hasselhoff, the German fans stuck with their bare-chested man. And although his slow-motion running along the beach and his talking car do play a part in this fame, it is in fact his singing career that has made him a staple on television screens in the country in the latter parts of the decade.
Recently, a chatbot called Eugene Goostman is thought to have passed the Turing test by convincing a few people it was a 13-year-old boy (RadioLab discussed the issue of talking to machines in a great podcast a few years back). And as artificial intelligence continues to develop, human-android interactions will become an increasingly common—and perhaps problematic—occurrence. But even if they have our sentience, they can never have our smell. Unless …
As Damon Stapleton wrote recently, the idea is the gift, the award is the wrapping paper. His employer, DDB Group, shares this philosophy and, in a rather earnest video that showcases some of the best ads ever made, it gives ‘the idea catchers’ a pat on the back and attempts to prove Bernbach’s quote about creativity being the most powerful force in business correct.
To commemorate the return of the Pretzel Bun, Wendy’s commissioned the Boyz II Men trio to give a smooth and sonorous rendition of the tweets sent in by fans of the hybrid burger.
ASB has launched a new campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi to draw attention to its GetWise initiative, which has been created to educate kids on how to be smarter with money. In the new 60-second spot called ‘Creating cash-clever Kiwis’, a series of adorable kids are depicted giving imaginative answers to questions about money. Then, once the kids have had their say, a narrator interjects saying that ‘kids have some funny ideas about money’ before prompting viewers to visit the GetWise section of the website.
Entries are now open for the 2014 Newspaper Advertising Awards, with the usual prize of $10,000 for Newspaper Ad of the Year. Last year, DDB won it with its YWCA advertisement promoting equal pay for women with the headline “from now until the end of the year, women will work for free”. This year, there’s a thousand-dollar media lunch on offer too.
Industry happenings at Trade Me, the Herald, MediaWorks, New Zealand Rugby, and BKA Interactive.
Beer is renowned for loosening the lips. But it’s not often you see a beer with loose lips of its own.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
For a large number of people in this industry, the idea of Dry July is probably a punishment worse than death. So if you’re in that category, then book yourself some tickets to Dish Drinks, where wine writer and bon vivant Yvonne Lorkin will take you on a journey beyond the well-known red wine varieties of Pinot Noir and Merlot to explore a world of fabulous lesser known red wines, such as Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Tempranillo.
Global marketing and advertising resource Warc launched the Warc 100 last night, an annual ranking that is “designed to be a benchmark for commercial creativity”. And Colenso BBDO/Proximity featured three times and DDB featured once.
Greenpeace has been nipping at Shell’s heels for years, pulling out everything from fake press releases to sneaky banners at car races to a big emotional ad featuring a homeless polar bear to draw attention to the oil company’s proposed Arctic drilling. Now it’s targeting one of the world’s most-loved brands, Lego, after it signed a deal to create a series of toys for Shell. And it’s flipped the premise of the hugely popular Lego Movie to show that everything is not awesome.
Speaking during the Cannes Lions festival earlier this year, Getty Images founder Jonathan Klein uses a series of iconic images to illustrate the intrinsic potential of an image to move the viewer and how photography can, in fact, play an integral role in shaping the way we see the world.
Three Mobile’s most recent spot in the UK was one ol’ big sorry. They said sorry fopr the hot dog legs, the plane wings, the sunsets and the #NoFilter instys.
Earlier in July, Kiwi start-up Postr launched with the promise that it would pay users to host advertising on their smartphones. And while this could prove a novel way to encourage mobile users to voluntarily accept advertising as part of the experience, the premise has already been taken a step further by an app called Quack.
Humans typically go to great lengths to avoid advertising. But every once in a while it’s so good that it … gets stolen. And Beck’s Playable Posters, which were created by Shine and launched to promote the beer brand’s sponsorship of NZ Music Month, were apparently “disappearing like sausage rolls at a birthday party”.
Tunisia-based 3SG BBDO has launched a new smartphone-based application that provides a means by which to support the cognitive functioning of those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
In April, StopPress reported that a team of Wellingtonians was planning to launch a technology start-up called Postr, an app-based service that would get brands into consumers’ pockets by serving ads on their smartphone homescreens. And now, only a few months later, the project has officially launched and is accessible to the Kiwi public.
If you believed the hype, social media was destined to knock traditional media off its perch and marketers have invested heavily in it in recent years. But Kiwis’ engagement with brands and companies on social media is on the slide, with a Colmar Brunton survey on the social media habits of New Zealanders showing the number of Kiwis who follow brands on social media dropping from 41 percent in 2013 to 27 percent this year.
Brazil’s 7-1 hammering at the hands of the Nationalmannschaft has rendered all other conversations over the last 24 hours completely irrelevant. And in addition to hijacking all office-based conversations, the footballing debacle also took hold of Twitter, breaking a few records along the way. And, in an effort to give a graphic representation of how mad the online community went during the match, Twitter published an interactive map that shows how people throughout the world responded to the each goal being scored.
In terms of vehicular annoyances, people who put those little white stickers of their family on the back window rank pretty highly. Why, people, why? Personalised plates are not far behind. And cheesy spare tyre covers are also a leading cause of road rage. But this one, which was spotted in deepest suburbia on a leisurely Sunday drive, is an exception and, with some quality Engrish, shows the essence of the RAV4 brand.
The 21-gun salute applauds the efforts of the Electricity Authority, Sky TV and Steinlager.
Up until relatively recently, Kickstarter had rules and a degree of vetting to try and keep out the scams and fakes. That meant there was no funny business like that seen on various auction sites. The rules have changed, however, and now it’s basically a free-for-all as long as “it’s not illegal, regulated or dangerous”. And one of the first major beneficiaries of that has been Zack Danger Brown, who asked for $10 to make his first ever potato salad and currently has over $30,000.
Y&R NZ has picked up where FCB left off by launching its first campaign for What’sMyNumber.org.nz since winning the Electricity Authority account after a competitive tender earlier this year. The new campaign, unveiled over the weekend, features a series of of people in torturous work-based scenarios and aims to remind Kiwis of what they endure in order to earn their salaries.
Samsung loves poking fun at Apple and their fans. It has been a big focus in their ad campaigns over the last couple of years and they’ve just done it again with their latest spot, titled “Wall Huggers”.
