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If you haven’t rocked the horns at CAANZ’s Battle of the Ad Bands yet, you should put it on your advertising-related bucket list. But if you can’t wait until next year, this year’s festivities were captured beautifully—and, for those in the film, probably embarrassingly—by the gang at Flying Fish.
The primary sector has played a massive role in propping up the New Zealand economy during this recessionary period and while farmers might not be tucking quite as much cash under their mattresses as they have been in recent years, they’re still very lucrative targets, as evidenced by the massive number of companies greasing up to them at Fieldays. And now Nielsen has released results of its inaugural Nielsen Rural Survey to show how they can best be reached.
Wellington, which fancies itself our arts and cultural capital, will no longer have to miss out on the creative love-fest that is Semi-Permanent.
Ah The Glossies. How we’ve missed you. But you’ll be overjoyed to know we’ve saved the best for last with a bumper double edition to round out this year’s competition. So peruse the entries, marvel at their quality and cast your vote.
The Flight of the Conchords used the power of laughter in its charity music video to help raise funds for CureKids. But The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation’s 2012 Breast Cancer Action Month campaign, which features a new recording of Chris Knox’s iconic Kiwi ballad ‘Not Given Lightly’ and a music video starring famous and not-so-famous New Zealanders who want to remind the women they love to be vigilant and reduce their risk of breast cancer, is using the power of tears to get its message across.
Last year Sealord and Greenpeace got into a bit of a stoush after the environmental group’s ‘Nice logo. Bad tuna’ campaign aimed to draw attention to what it believed was a seafood company “buying its tuna from fishing companies that are needlessly destroying marine life”. Sealord called it misleading in the extreme and got its lawyers involved. And it might have to give them another call, because following up from the company’s first ever brand campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi, Greenpeace has released a spoof ad that again takes aim at Sealord’s sustainable credentials.
TSB managed to get itself on TV remarkably quickly after the announcement of the National Bank/ANZ fusion with a message aimed directly at the customers who see the rebrand as an opportunity to switch. And, as expected, the rest of the banks were close behind with their own various overtures.
A few big switcheroos in Wellington, with Assignment Group, Saatchi & Saatchi and Clemenger BBDO ringing the changes, Naked lures one of its own back home, Rachel Broadmore swaps banks for booze, Ben Rose swaps bureaucracy for banks, the Orange Group ups its events arsenal, and Random House announces a new publicist.
There were a few raised eyebrows when Telecom chose a turtle to play the role of brand mascot in the new Tommy and Boris campaign. And Vodafone has taken the opportunity to subtly poke fun at its major competitor with a cheeky wee number starring its spokesboy James Rolleston and a greyhound called metaphor.
He’s a world-class academic, a gifted leader and a massive attribute to the marketing community. And now The University of Auckland’s Rod Brodie takes his rightful place in the TVNZ Marketing Hall of Fame.
From the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign to the launch of the Honda City, George Hickton has proven time and time again that marketing is a philosophy that underpins a business, rather than just a function within it.
By mobilising apathetic New Zealanders to see if they could get a better deal on their power, the What’s My Number campaign changed the electricity retail landscape.
Based on the nugget that Kiwis wanted homemade desserts without having to make them at home, Dollop has found a sweet niche. And, on the smell of an oily rag and with a good sprinkling of intuition, it has quickly become a nationally recognised brand and doubled its sales in the past year.
54 percent of Kiwi online shoppers now own a smartphone, according to PwC. And thanks to the search engines in their pockets they are likely to know things about your market before you do. This should put the mobile customer experience near the top of the to-do list for many companies and the MA’s September Brainy Breakfast, which, for the first time in several years will also be held in Wellington, focuses on five key mobile experience trends that will help get you up with the play.
The Promax BDA awards aim to celebrate the world’s best brand, creative and marketing initiatives within the television industry—and the agencies and network creative departments responsible for them. And TVNZ and Spicer & Martin, Sky and Brandspank, and MediaWorks all returned home from the Australia/New Zealand ceremony last week in Sydney with a few gongs between them.
The cut-off looms for this year’s Maggies, a competition that lets the great unwashed decide on New Zealand’s best magazine covers. So, esteemed publishers, editors and minions, enter your covers immediately.
Following on from its win in the Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Award for its LiptonSlide campaign, PHDiQ has taken out the latest edition of the competition for its launch of the Samsung Galaxy III on behalf of Vodafone.
Given New Zealand’s feverish excitement during the Olympics when our gold medal tally was greater than that of the usually better performing Australian Olympic team, there’s still a fairly healthy dose of ‘friendly’ rivalry between the two nations. Over the years there’s been a bit of talk about New Zealand becoming the seventh state (and it happened briefly during the Games when, for the first time since 1912, the two nations came together as a rogue state known as Aus Zealand) and, from a marketing perspective, plenty of companies have decided to take care of business in New Zealand from Australia. But subtleties and local nuances are important when it comes to communications, as TVNZ-NZ Marketing Award winners Volkswagen and Z Energy can attest, and some things that work in other markets might not work here. And that’s the card British American Tobacco has played in the latest instalment of G2 Sydney’s animated Agree Disagree campaign, which taps into New Zealand’s patriotic, independent, Aussie-hating streak and questions the wisdom of following Australia’s lead on plain packaging legislation.
Sponsorship is less about logos on hoardings and more about activation these days (although ANZ might disagree after its logo-fest at The Cloud for Valerie Adams’ gold medal ceremony last week). In fact, some believe the old ratio of three dollars for every one spent on the sponsorship should now be upped to five. So in an effort to offer some added value to All Blacks fans, Adidas and Carat have unveiled Game Day, a Facebook application that lets them follow live commentary, comment on the game, track up-to-the-minute stats, access player and team profiles, weigh in on referee calls, vote for man of the match, and buy Adidas gear.
Just Juice has Antonia Prebble, Symbio has Lorraine Downes and now Cool Charm is aiming to up its street cred by launching a campaign starring its new ambassador: Kiwi electropopper Zowie.
When it comes to dairy products, there’s a perception they’re all basically the same. So how do you convince 13 different markets in the Pacific to choose your brand? Fonterra aimed for their hearts—and, in doing so, tried to make those hearts a bit healthier.
State’s ‘With You in the Water’ programme has found the sponsorship sweet spot and improved its standing in the eyes of New Zealanders by helping to keep them and their families safe.
Subcard, the customer loyalty programme of Subway in New Zealand, is one of the most progressive loyalty schemes in the country. And, as it turns out, it’s also one of the most progressive loyalty schemes in the world, because it has been named as a winner of the third annual Colloquy Loyalty Awards, an event presented by LoyaltyOne and Visa in the United States to honour groundbreaking innovations in loyalty.
Back in 2007, a man by the name of Mike Orange decided he needed to start looking after himself a bit better. In the realm of male cosmetics, there were plenty of hand me downs from corporate monsters used to producing feminine products, but nothing that “promised quality at a reasonable price without the made up words and fake science”. So DirtyMan skincare was born—and, rather appropriately, it was born in a dingey bathroom on a building site. So, for all those men questioning themselves after watching the latest Lindaeur ad, or all those women who want their men to be more manly, we’ve got a couple of prize packs to give away and all you have to do is tell us a dirty joke.
Campbell Arnott’s New Zealand has formalised its relationship with marketing agency Belowtheline after six months of competitive pitching on a project-by-project basis, putting the agency in control of “through-the-line marketing” across in-store activation, consumer promotional work and select television work for the company.
Jon Ramage moves into PR, DDB feels like four, Nicky Bell joins the new Kea board, Paul Kenny launches a new media company, and PriceMe wins a big Asia Pacific accolade.
You may have seen Samsung’s feisty print ad dissing the features of the soon-to-launch iPhone 5. Now Samsung has launched a TVC in the US that once again takes aim at the lemming-like Apple fans by trying to show that the tech company du jour is, in fact, a bit behind the eight ball and its products—block your ears Apple lovers—are so mainstream they’re even popular with parents.
Last week, Chris Tremain, the minister of internal affairs, announced the launch of the cross-government Common Web Services initiative, which aims to streamline the tender processes for central and local government agencies to save time and money. And 42 providers across seven categories have made the cut.
Switching banks is such a hassle almost nobody bothers. But by triggering change to the system and then creating a category-breaking campaign to let everyone know how easy it was to do it, new customers came flooding in to Kiwibank.
A premium brand launching entry-level products is a risky strategy. But where there’s risk, there’s often reward, and that was certainly the case for Red Witch Analog Pedals and the Seven Sisters.