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TVNZ is currently taking a bit of flak over the direction—and the fairly significant decline in ratings—of its new primetime show Seven Sharp. But one of its faithful servants has continued to perform, with the first episode of the fourth season of MasterChef increasing its total audience by almost 100,000 viewers compared to last year.
According to entrepreneur Nick Hindson, New Zealand is ranked second in the world in the number of new businesses that are started up, but more than half don’t last the distance. So, in an effort to teach New Zealanders—be they school children, corporate ballbreakers or budding entrepreneurs—about business sense and financial literacy in a more entertaining way, he has created a new board game called Market $hare, which features 64 real New Zealand businesses. We’ve got a couple of games worth $89.99 to give away and all you have to do is tell us what the next addition to the Monopoly board will be after the cat was chosen recently following a public vote.
Samsung has been one of the big movers in the mobile space in recent years, and, with a series of quality ads based around its ‘Next Big Thing’ tagline, has had plenty of success from taking the fight directly to Apple. While the late Steve Jobs rejected the idea of a stylus, Samsung has fully embraced the idea for its Note series and, to demonstrate the kind of artistic trickery the newest model is capable of, Colenso BBDO and Samsung collaborated with the New Zealand Herald’s legendary satirical cartoonist (and one of the oldest fathers in the world), Peter Bromhead, in an effort to go beyond the banner and become part of the content.
The New Zealand Rugby Union is on a mission to prop up the national game with more corporate money. Last year, AIG stuck its name on the All Black jersey. And now Pink Batts has signed up for a three year sponsorship deal that will see New Zealand’s referees stepping out in pink for the Investec Super Rugby, ITM Cup and renamed Pink Batts Heartland Championship. But, unfortunately for some sporting sadists, they won’t be forced to wear actual Pink Batts like the 2008 Snug campaign.
The magazine industry is doing better than its counterparts in newspapers when it comes to retaining readers, with the majority of New Zealand publications showing stable or increasing readership according to Nielsen Consumer and Media Insights.
DDB has cleaned up the last two Newspaper Ad of the Month awards, with YWCA Auckland’s ‘Demand equal pay ad and Volkswagen’s ‘Beetle to win a Beetle’ taking out the December and January rounds respectively. The Judges for both rounds—Leisa Wall, DraftFCB; Paul Hankinson, Hanko; Lisa Fedyszyn, DDB (who abstained) and Kate Humphries, Media Design School—said VW’s ad “enticed people to make the iconic VW beetle shape with their bodies in order to win a VW, is an inspired way to induce beer gut envy, particularly if those beer guts have just enjoyed a good holiday season.”
SparkPHD NZ is through to the Festival of Media Asia 2013 Awards shortlist with campaigns for Rexona and TRESemmé, the only Kiwi agency to make it to this stage.
Worrying figures for TVNZ, whose Seven Sharp show has lost 40 percent of its audience since the start of the week, placing it near competitor Campbell Live.
Big news in ad land today, with the confirmed resignation of David Walden as head of the agency he helped set up 14 years ago. Toby Talbot steps down as executive creative director.
In the ultimate show of first world problems, one in ten New Zealanders say their offline relationships suffer because of the amount of time they fritter away online, according to a survey by Canstar Blue.
Local company eBUS, which offers a cloud-based TV ad delivery system, is the latest in a string to be bought up by an overseas firm.
Rapp Tribal welcomes some new blood, ApolloNation introduces itself, OMD finds a digital director, The Radio Network makes some changes in ChCh and Jetstar names its new NZ head.
Remember the unfortunate guy who unwittingly became a spokesman for a particular brand of lubricant on Facebook last year? Now telly presenter Rachel Smalley is battling Facebook herself in an effort to get a photo of her used in a weight loss advertisement taken off Facebook.
There have been plenty of changes at APN NZ of late, with the relaunch of the Herald last year and restructures of both the editorial and sales and marketing teams. And now the Herald on Sunday, the country’s best performing newspaper, is getting its turn with what editor Bryce Johns calls “a complete revamp of the paper’s look and feel, and improved content mix”.
The average game of NFL contains only 11 minutes of action, the rest of the three hours is spent on replays, shots of players, and commercials. It’s no wonder then that there’s so much hooplah around Super Bowl ads, because for some it’s the only entertainment amidst the spectacle that is American football.
Sir Paul Holmes passed away today at the age of 62, surrounded by family in Hawke’s Bay. Tributes have already started flowing through for the man who inspired or infuriated New Zealanders, and here we share a few.
Admission grows like topsy, Fuse gets a Christmas present, Oddbird takes flight, Firebrand joins the Salt stable, Komli signs up The Economist, Josh Moore, Philip Andrew and Dave King get jury nods, Matt Palmer joins The Feds and Lance Kelleher re-signs with 8com.
Where Kiwi kids may once have had a melting Popsicle dribbling down their chin as they climbed trees, played BYC or harassed geckos over summer, it seems they’re much more likely to be eating a Popsicle and staring at a screen these days. So, to tap into this evolution and add a bit of digi-fun to the brand, Tip Top and Colenso BBDO have tipped their hat to the classic arcade game Asteroids and custom-designed something similar to promote the new Popsicle Blasta.
For all those media minds looking to have their say on the best media thinking of the past year, prospective judges need to have their applications to join the Media Awards panel in by 4pm this Friday.
Igloo boss Chaz Savage has resigned from the fledgling pay TV venture, and is taking up a role with Telstra in Australia, according to a spokesperson for Igloo.
Following on from last year’s Donna Time campaign, which moved the focus from young Maori mates to slightly boganic mums, NZTA and Clemenger BBDO have launched an eye-straining new print campaign that targets families where drink driving is a common behaviour and, like the previous campaigns, encourages someone to speak up about it.
In an effort to “be in the right place with the right inventory”, APN Outdoor has reached an agreement with the sole remaining principle of JAM Billboards, Vanessa Bryce, to acquire its three remaining billboard licenses in Auckland, effective from 1 February.
Gareth Morgan’s Cats to Go crusade has led to much gnashing of teeth from the heavy petters, a vast array of feline puns and plenty of conversation, both here and, with the story featuring on Mashable and Huffington Post, around the world. And Mammoth and Sugar & Partners have decided to hitch their ‘Warmth Lovers’ campaign to that wagon by creating a contextual online ad showing that its spokescat, Prince Nikolai Stroganov III, is already pretty happy inside.
As the tide of digital has washed over this industry in recent years (the Ad Contrarian calls it The Triumph of Disinformation), blowing the trumpet of traditional media has been fairly tough going. But as part of the magazine industry’s renewed zeal to grow advertising market share and convince clients it is an effective advertising medium—and in an effort to inspire some optimism among those selling magazine ads and show how magazines are evolving—the Magazine Publishers Association is putting on a conference featuring big brained magazine supporters such as Y&R’s James Hurman, Fisher & Paykel’s Sonya Aitken, Pacific Magazine’s Peter Zavecz and Contagion’s Richard Thompson.
At 22, Derek Handley became the country’s youngest ever managing director of a listed company. Around ten years later, he sold The Hyperfactory to US marketing behemoth Meredith. And now, in between helping create the ‘future of reading’ with Booktrack, he has announced plans to list his latest venture, mobile media specialist Snakk Media, on New Zealand’s alternative stock exchange. He’s also co-founded an organisation alongside Sir Richard Branson called The B Team that aims to find a new and more sustainable version of capitalism. So what does the future look like to him?
There are those among us who have some serious issues with grammatical errors. And, with a healthy dose of ‘there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go us’, we couldn’t help but notice a slightly ironic ad talking up the BBC World Service in the New Zealand Herald. First Jimmy Savile, now this. The controllers will be aghast.
Anyone trying to find out what different marcomms agencies do is likely to be overwhelmed by a surge of meaningless jargon and general incomprehensibility. In recognition of this, a Tumblr called Agency Wank has compiled “the wankiest slogans and text on ad/marketing agency websites”. Here are a few pearlers.
The new Mother of the Nation returns to primetime, Yellow adds a digi-double, DraftFCB in full production, Air New Zealand’s new people person, Homestyle finds an editor, Allied Press shakes hands with a rival, and Anthony Reardon heads online.
When Lumino The Dentists launched its inaugural TV campaign back in 2011, winning Fair Go’s ‘coveted’ worst ad award probably wasn’t on the KPIs. MediaR’s Tony Richards was a good sport when he collected the trophy, and, much like Lily Salter from Big Save furniture the year before, he said ‘New Zealand’s biggest kiss’ had actually worked brilliantly, despite the animosity shown towards it by some in the industry (and the Fair Go voters). But now, to the relief of some, the road-trip pash-fest has been replaced by saying cheese in its latest TV campaign.
