Author StopPress Team

Air New Zealand filled up a room with social media sponges and marketers yesterday to hear Randi Zuckerberg, the former Facebook marketing director and less famous sister of Mark (some might say she’s the female equivalent of Doug Pitt) and Wildfire’s Jessica Gilmartin speak. And if any Kiwi company was going to sponsor a social media breakfast, it would have to be the very socially active national carrier. But in case you haven’t been paying attention over the past few very difficult years in the aviation industry, it has put together a video explaining the airline’s approach to social media and showing what it has managed to achieve as a result of its focus on it .

There weren’t too many particularly memorable promotional efforts from the wide range of Rugby World Cup sponsors last year. But a few stood out, and one of them was MasterCard’s Priceless Moments series by McCann Sydney and Prodigy. Now the agency has followed that up with a pretty funny spot promoting a competition that’s offering one lucky—and, judging by the ad, potentially very annoying—rugby fan a trip to Europe to watch the All Blacks play Italy, Scotland, Wales and England.

One of the smart things about Pak ‘n’ Save’s proposition is that it isn’t really based on price, it’s based on value. And that was proven recently when it was judged to be the best value brand in the country. Its entertaining corporate spokesstick Stickman has been beating that particular drum in his inimitable animated style for a few years now and DraftFCB’s self-reflexive, whimsical campaign is one of our favourites here at StopPress (not everyone likes him though). And the two latest spots reaffirm that.

All the Kiwi design shops missed out in Cannes, but Alt Group has been awarded five red dots, including a sought-after red dot: best of the best in the red dot awards in Berlin for The Social Kitchen, a project created for Fisher & Paykel in collaboration with The Engine Room restaurant and furniture design company IMO, following on from the silver Clio award it won in New York.

The APMA Star Awards, which celebrate the past year’s finest promotional efforts, took place last week in Oz, with New Zealand marketing agency Belowtheline the only Kiwi agency to take home a gold, winning the top award in the ‘best sponsorship leverage’ category for its ‘Game Plan’ promotion for Sanitarium’s sponsorship of the All Blacks before and during the Rugby World Cup.

Following on from the recent news that Carat took the Sovereign Insurance account off OMD without a pitch, the agency has further bolstered its client list after being appointed to manage strategy and media buying for Bendon brands like Lovable, Elle MacPherson Intimates, MacPherson Men, Davenport, Pleasure State and Stella McCartney Lingerie across New Zealand.

Put the over-achieving founder of digital agency AKQA Ajaz Ahmed and the vice president of digital sport at Nike Stefan Olander in a room to talk about the possibilities—and challenges—of the digital realm and you end up with Velocity: Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital. We’ve got one copy to give away, and all you have to do is tell us what we might be doing, how we might be doing it and what we might be doing it with in the future. As John Elfreth Watkins showed, though the suggestions may sound wacky at the time, they often have a habit of coming true.

Toyota has held onto its number spot in the 2012 rankings of Interbrand’s second Best Global Green Brands report, but Johnson & Johnson isn’t far behind and Danone (#9), Ford (#15), and Starbucks (#36) are rising fast, with tech and automotive brands dominating.

Haystac has been selected as Tourism Victoria’s New Zealand PR agency after a rigorous competitive pitch process that began in March. Expressions of interest from over 30 agencies resulted in 11 tender submissions, six shortlisted hopefuls and finally, three pitch presentations.

Swipe HQ, a Kiwi offering with echoes of US payment technology Square, is on track to hit the market in August. But founder Manas Kumar, chief executive of local tech company Optimizer HQ, which listed on the German stock exchange this year, says it’s more than just a transactional technology. It’s an “end to end” business solution.

ZenithOptimedia has once again gazed into its crystal ball and released its global adspend forecasts, including predictions for the New Zealand media marketplace. And both the global and local trends make for interesting reading.

Sugar is on the receiving end of some extra attention at the moment for its supposed effects on health and, as this very interesting piece in The Guardian shows, the finger is being pointed at the food we eat and drink we swallow for leading to an average 19kg increase in weight since the mid-’60s. But hey, at least the ad campaigns for these sugary elixirs are cool. Right? Anyway, the next instalment of V’s Motion Project has gone live, with “technology experts, motion graphic artists, dancers, Burundi drummers, guitarists, marching bands and the vocal talent of Brandon Black from The Wyld” banding together to create the track, ‘Can’t Help Myself’. Pull your hoody up, let your pants hang low and download it here.

Last year, we wrote a story about SodaStream’s The Cage, a global PR campaign that aimed to draw attention to the effects of packaged soft drinks on the environment. But the campaign has earned the ire of one of its targets, Coca-Cola, with the South African outpost issuing a cease and desist letter to SodaStream demanding its bottles be removed from The Cage at the Johannesburg airport because it claims to own the used bottles.