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].
This month’s stand-out newspaper ad was Tui Brewery’s ‘Valentine’s Day’ ad from Saatchi & Saatchi. The judges agreed that it showed “great use of the medium and was interactive” and that it “spoke nicely to the immediacy of newspapers”.
Dwarves the world over are dusting off their greens as St Patrick’s Day fast approaches. March 17 sees many things turn a touch green, and most people find enough Irish in them to justify celebrating with 13 million pints or so of Guinness. This year Jameson Irish Whiskey is adding to the party atmosphere by releasing a limited edition bottle of its finest. Designed by Paul Daly, we have one to give away, which you could win by impressing us with your finest hyperbole about the whiskey’s bouquet, nose, body and fruity yet subtle notes.
As the magazine sector’s revenue from sales keeps shrinking, publishers are increasingly looking to make up the shortfall by moving their brands into meat-space (and greasing up the paymasters with creative advertising solutions). And, following on from ACP’s successful 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty last year, it has just launched the next iteration of the scheme with 30 Days of Health and Wellbeing, “a cross-platform editorial and advertising initiative designed to promote health awareness and physical and emotional wellbeing”.
The Marketing Association celebrated the use of insight-driven marketing and data last week. And CAANZ will soon be celebrating what could be seen as the opposite end of the marcomms spectrum with the creatively-focused Axis Awards. And after 50 judges—and presumably the wonderous Axis Metal Detector—spent three days scanning the very best work in New Zealand this year, regular creative award-hogger Colenso BBDO came out on top with a massive 57 finalist nominations, followed by Special Group with another excellent showing on 21 and DDB Group and Clemenger BBDO on 17.
David Thomason and Lew Bentley take on Effie responsibilities, DDB Worldwide shifts its creative nerve centre to Shanghai, Mick Connolly joins Waitemata Films, Senate Communications nabs two senior bods, Miles Gandy kicks off his new biz with New Zealand Geographic, Datamine adds two to the flock and AUT trumpets another win for its students.
A galaxy of marcomms stars—as well as a few comets and plenty of space dust—graced the Langham last Friday night to see DraftFCB clean up at the RSVP Awards and, ah, no-one clean up at Nexus. So, for your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of people hugging their colleagues, posing awkwardly on stage as they get photographed and shaking Oliver Driver’s hand.
Six of the best Kiwi marcomms brains have been chosen to choose the world’s best campaigns at the 2012 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, with SparkPHD’s chief executive Louise Bond on the Media jury, M&C Saatchi’s executive creative director Dave King on the Direct jury, Y&R executive creative director Josh Moore on the Cyber jury, DraftFCB’s creative director Tony Clewett on the Radio jury, Mango Communications’ managing director Claudia Macdonald on the PR jury and Colenso BBDO’s creative chairman Nick Worthington the jury president of the Promo & Activation jury.
January was largely dominated by car ads with Jeep, Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Mazda, Holden, Nissan, Skoda and Ford all sharing screen time. There were the inevitable ‘Back to school’, Waitangi Day, and Valentine’s Day offerings.. no real surprises there… although artist Dick Frizzell popping up as an ambassador for the 2012 New Zealand Olympic Team, now that’s a surprise.
Outward Bound is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. So, to mark the occasion and show how the organisation has been unlocking Kiwi potential for 50 years, two 15 second TVCs—one aimed at those aged 18-26 years and another targeting those over 27—have set off on a journey of their own.
In a slightly unusual move, Motorcorp Distributors Limited has appointed Big Communications as its agency partner on the Land Rover and Jaguar brands while allowing it to maintain its existing relationship with Škoda. The other two Motorcorp brands, Renault and Volvo, will remain with Publicis Mojo, which was awarded the business in March last year, and media planning and buying for all four brands will stay with ZenithOptimedia.
Global integrated PR and communications agency Hotwire has rebranded its New Zealand operation Creo to bring it under the family name.
As an array of talent shows fill our screens, the sound of wannabes is nigh-on inescapable. But whatever your opinion on the worth of such content, there’s no denying they’re popular. And TVNZ is planning to add to the melee with a multi-million dollar local production of NZ’s Got Talent that will screen on TV ONE.
Beck’s recently launched a series of limited edition art labels on all its beer bottles. And to celebrate, Beck’s are giving away a swish prize pack, which you could win by sharing your artistic bent.
Around 450 industry folk turned up for APN Outdoor’s Friends in High Places event last night at Mantells to hear Tiki Taane, Sola Rosa, PNC, DJ Sambora and State of Mind. So if you were there—or you want to live vicariously through those that were—here are some glamour shots for your viewing pleasure. All the guests are invited to tag themselves in the album of party pics available on the FIHP Facebook page from this afternoon.
The country’s packaging heroes and villains have been unmasked once again thanks to the Unpackit awards, with the folks from Wanaka Wastebusters whittling down 200 nominations to the eight best and worst examples of packaging in New Zealand.
One of our dear readers had an embarrassing experience yesterday. And, by sharing his painful story, he hopes others can avoid a similarly embarrassing fate. He was using his iPhone to show some female colleagues a story on StopPress. They looked on in wonderment at the digital dexterity on display as he started typing the name of the esteemed vessel into the browser. But their eyebrows were soon raised when the list of search terms appeared, leading to an uncomfortable explanation about the fact that ‘stop premature ejaculation’ came up as a result of auto-complete, not because of his recent search history. Forewarned is forearmed.
Rod Vaughan joins the NBR, TVNZ announces Guyon Espiner’s replacement for Q+A, fast Foxtrot means changes at Tango, Rochelle Weaver swaps bus shelters for banks, Martin Shanahan puts some new boots on at Tangible Media, The Pond continues to burst its banks, TradeMe trades up, mobile advertising network InMobi launches in New Zealand, the PR Shop adds to its Aussie arsenal, Tina McIntosh embraces the child within and Ben English takes over at Adobe.
CAANZ has rung plenty of changes to the awards programme this year. And, for the first time, it asked industry big brains to apply or be nominated for their positions on the judging panel in an effort to add a bit of gravitas. And after 96 applications and 20 nominations were received, the CAANZ Media Awards Committee has announced 89 successful candidates for the preliminary round of judging.
Naked announced the appointment of Guy Cousins as its managing partner last week. And as he comes in the front door, highly regarded strategist and planner Simon Bird has snuck out the back for a role as the head of planning within Whybin\TBWA.
Life is tough. There are many undesirable situations in the world right now. The Greek economy, world hunger, Justin Bieber … Idealog doesn’t claim to have all the answers but its latest issue can help with some of the lesser details, like how to read your rival’s financial statements, shut down a dinner party bore, give a winning speech, get on the front page, self-publish and more.
Guy Cousins swaps SparkPHD for Naked, Yahoo! promotes two of its own, Rachel Broadmore swaps five-star for financial services, Ian Finch presides over New Zealand’s patent attourneys, Margaret Zabel takes the reins at The Communications Council in Oz and Renee Bushby changes tack.
In the two weeks leading up to Christmas it’s no surprise most TVCs, including those from Harvey Norman, Briscoes, Telecom, Sky, Lotto, Farmers, Postie, Warehouse Stationery, and the Warehouse were Christmas themed. Cadbury came up with the most original one, building an enormous snow globe in the middle of Auckland, at the height of summer. Bunnings bravely went against the grain, not mentioning Xmas at all, instead showing just how much fun can be had with a few good chainsaws…
As part of its efforts to push the barrow of ideas-led PR and discuss its impact on business in the modern world, the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group is putting on the Re-imagining PR event in Auckland on 21 March and bringing the brains behind the Cannes 2011 PR Grand Prix winning NAB Break Up campaign and the PR Gold Lion winning Bundaberg Watermark campaign, as well as Lynne Anne Davis from Asia Pacific PR agency of the year, Fleishman Hillard Asia Pacific, to New Zealand. We know it’s easy to come up with examples of PR gone wrong, but if you post an example of good PR that has helped a business or person, you could get yourself a ticket to the event worth $290.
It’s pretty tough going in the retail sector at the moment. And, as the digital wave keeps breaking, it’s increasingly important to try and keep up with the play. And, thanks to Westfield, local retailers will be able to get their heads around some of the issues affecting the sector at the inaugural Retail Brain Food for Breakfast Seminar in Auckland next month.
In a move that creates the largest design group in all Australasia, Designworks has expanded its Australian presence by welcoming branding business Yello Sydney into the group.
Hudson has released its latest salary and employment insights document for 2012. And, with modest optimistic hiring intentions across the sales, marketing and communications (SMC) profession in both Australia and New Zealand, it’s picking plenty of competition in the quest for talent this year.
After successfully completing initial projects through the year, BCG2 has been awarded the Canon New Zealand consumer business, which includes cameras, lenses, printers and printing consumables. It replaces Ballantyne Taylor, which maintains its role as Canon’s B2B agency.
Kiwi director Taika Waititi is currently trying to drum up some cash in order to get Boy shown in the US. And, after being nominated for an Oscar, directing a couple of Flight of the Conchords episodes and starring in The Green Lantern, his star keeps rising, as evidenced by this big musical number he directed for NBC that showed before its superbowl coverage.
Kono is already exporting its wares to 25 countries, but the Nelson-based Wakatū Incorporation’s food and beverage business arm is hoping to increase that number—and its exports to Asia—after being given a big brand spruce up by Wellington agency Mission Hall.
For one night only New Zealand’s best cheesemakers will showcase their award-winning fare at Monteith’s CheeseFest on Wednesday 29 February. Keen as mustard? We have three double passes to give away…