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In this series, we talk to Kiwi keyboard tappers that have managed to shift from the personal realm of blogging to create online media brands that are widely read (and in some cases profitable). In the latest segment, we chat to Russell Brown, the owner of Public Address.
Moves and shakes at Mediaworks Radio, ANZ, Silvermoon, Touchast and Big Picture Media.
Direct and digital agency Twenty already has a sizeable insurance client, and it’s added another after winning the Asteron Life account after a competitive pitch.
A couple of Auckland’s major private schools have dabbled in billboard advertising, but private Christchurch girls school Rangi Ruru has taken things up a notch with its first ever TV ad, which has been launched to promote the school and its 125th anniversary.
Around the world, media owners are making changes to their commenting policies, with Google enacting a controversial real name policy on YouTube and Popular Science removing the comments section altogether because it felt ill-informed views “can be bad for science”. StopPress has plenty of great, insightful commentors. But many of them prefer to stick the boot in and push their own pseudonymous agenda, so, in the interests of transparency, the real identities of anonymous commentors can now be revealed with the click of a button.
Radio New Zealand stalwart and “probably New Zealand’s best-known voice” Geoff Robinson gets his gold watch today, after almost 35 years in the host’s chair of Morning Report. Today’s show went back over some of the big stories he’s covered in his time, like 9/11, the Rainbow Warrior and the Christchurch earthquakes, as well as some of the lighter moments, like struggling to talk into a recorder while riding a rollercoaster in Texas. And a number of the country’s best-known broadcasters—including some of the more than 30 co-hosts he’s worked with in his time—were there to pay tribute to the man Kim Hill called “continuity at its best”. Radio New Zealand put together its own tribute to his remarkable 44 year career at the national broadcaster and created a short clip featuring some of his and his colleagues’ reflections.
If you don’t mind giving your colleagues the appearance you have an awkward tic, Trade Me’s new way browse and bid by blink is just the ticket. Of course, the beta release date of 1 April could be a coincidence, we’ll let you decide about that – and what could be veteran broadcaster Geoff Robinson’s next move, internet radio morphing into the world of the fax machine, Gmail takes the wraps of shelfies and other hijinks.
Last year, after releasing a spot that featured Neal McDonough lecturing viewers on the superiority of the American way, American automotive-producer Cadillac provoked the ire of many viewers, who felt that the self-celebratory promotion typified many of the negative connotations that people often assosciate with American consumerist culture. And now, in what could be seen as an effort to assuage some of the reputation damage done by its competitor, Ford has released a new TVC that parodies Cadillac’s version and shows that not all Americans are simply preoccupied with accumulating unnecessary material items for selfish purposes.
Nosh founder Clinton Beuvink says his new venture, Sample Co Black Box, is a combination of old school in-home sampling and a real time digital relationship with consumers. The service aims to make sampling more targeted and overcome the increasing difficulty marketers have in getting their message across via traditional media.
Stock imagery is sometimes criticised for presenting little more than over-used clichés, which offer little in the way of original brand representation. So, in an effort to illustrate that this criticism doesn’t apply to its offering, Getty Images has just released a new video montage that showcases the broad range of imagery across its catalogues.
Ernst & Young, now known as EY, is one of the ‘big four’ professional services firms, which, according to Wikipedia, handle the vast majority of audits for publicly listed companies. So, given its numerical nous, we couldn’t help but notice a rather ironic multiplication error on the back cover of EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year magazine, Exceptional (which is available here and features Rod Drury on the cover).
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Sky’s fairly firm grip on sports broadcasting in New Zealand is one of the major reasons for its continuing success. And a new initiative called Sky Next is aiming to give some of that success back to help 18 of the country’s emerging athletes get to the top. Plus: DDB and The Sweet Shop offer a glimpse at the life of an athlete.
Outdoor media owners often claim that one of the main strengths of their medium is that ads are not sandwiched between content and can’t easily be ignored. That’s undoubtedly a positive thing if it’s a good ad, but what if they’re not?
We’ve seen Betty White, Paul Henry, Alf Stewart and even Godzilla featuring in Snickers’ ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ campaign. And now, in one of the best recent efforts by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, we’ve got some rather progressive builders shouting out empowering statements to women.
Parodying corporate marketing cliches and generic stock footage is basically a modern day sport (and advertising knobbery regularly comes in for a skewering too). Now stock footage provider Dissolve has combined these two elements into one by adding some of its clips to the words of Kendra Eash and creating the world’s most generic brand video.
Johnson and Johnson in the middle East have a new campaign that taps into grandparents’ need to constantly see pictures of their grandchildren. The company is offering a frame and an app that lets parents send such images to grandparents daily, feeding seniors’ cute baby addiction.
HTC has thrown out the tech product ad rulebook, telling potential buyers to point their queries the internet’s way. It’s far from a lazy strategy and the silence as they wait for you to do your research is strangely compelling.
Plenty of car brands have ambassadors. But Audi has taken that a step further—and added in a Queen track—for its ‘Stay Uncompromised’ campaign, which features Ricky Gervais in the lead.
Samsung’s latest TVC for the Galaxy Pro tablet range has no qualms making digs at the opposition’s expense. The Microsoft Surface and Kindle aren’t spared and neither is the iPad, which apparently doesn’t cut it in terms of features despite its “retina thingy”.
BeIN Sports has a dream offering for football fans and men everywhere: a vuvuzela that with one blast changes the your cable TV channel to the big game. It’s not just the stuff of adland fantasty, it’s a real product fans can get line for.
Industry shuffles at Cadbury, Saatchi & Saatchi NZ, the All Blacks, BrandWorld, Clemenger, RAPP and Word of Mouth.
Touchcast says digital installations like the one it sourced and ran for Telecom’s Cut & Paste design contest recently are a growing part of its business. That’s because audiences get deeply engaged, says managing director Andrewy Hawley.
As Kim Dotcom shifts his attention to the political arena with the formation of the Internet Party (and he’s a step closer to making it official following the approval of his sign-up app), his time as Orcon’s mascot is coming to an end.
When advertisers and TV people commandeer bus stops, the results are often very entertaining.
Over 25,000 people have joined the hunt to find the missing Air Malaysia flight MH370 by scouring through scores of high-resolution satellite photographs that have been uploaded to the Tomnod website by DigitalGlobe.
Aside from the gazing into space, the squinching and the gratuitous holding up of hands in order to get the money shot, what else do watch ads have in common?
There’s a lot of talk about the role the media plays in creating unrealistic expectations around body image (check out this disturbing video to see the lengths some will go to). But, surprisingly, there’s been very little talk about the recent spate of itchy heads among women starring on the covers of magazines and whether they might be creating unrealistic expectations of scalp health.
In this series, we talk to Kiwi keyboard tappers that have managed to shift from the personal realm of blogging to create online media brands that are widely read (and in some cases profitable). In this segment, we chat to Mauricio Freitas, the founder of Geekzone.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.