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The New Zealand marketing industry has long been adept at celebrating marketing greats who have made a difference and pushed the envelope that little bit further. It’s no different in 2011. Today, NZ Marketing magazine in partnership with the Marketing Association (MA) has opened the call for entries for the 2011 edition of the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards.
In what could either be seen as another blow to journalism in New Zealand, or a smart business decision that will put an emphasis on exclusive content for the major publishers—and lead to more competition between them—Fairfax has announced that it has discontinued its subscription to the NZPA service, a decision that looks set to bring more than 130 years of news gathering from the press agency in New Zealand to an end.
Paul Head, the managing director of his own consultancy business Strategic Thinking, has been appointed as the new CAANZ chief executive, replacing the outgoing Rick Osborne.
Australia’s CREATIVE magazine has swung its steel-capped boot and connected with Resn’s soft exposed junk for a third consecutive year at the Hotshop Awards, with the Wellington agency beating off stiff competition from interactive luminaries like Pusher, Three Drunk Monkeys and Whybin/TBWA/Tequila to once again take the illustrious title of best Digital and Interactive Agency in all the lands Down Under.
Everyone loves a deal. And the Great New Zealand Deal Wars have been spiced up considerably after the arrival of a few new players recently. Now Positively Wellington Tourism is kicking off WellingtonWednesday.com, a site that offers up some of the hottest tickets in town to draw attention to its events culture. But with a reverse auction format and only the cream of the Wellington crop on offer, the creators say it differs from the other deal sites on the market.
The polyester/labcoat clad investigative scienticians from Did I Believe It claim to have been helping you—yes you—think for almost 42 years. And, in what could be seen as New Zealand’s slightly more alcoholic answer to Look Around You, the visionary Silo theatre and the visionary 42 Below have joined forces to bring you a perfect theatrical/commercial muddle that aims to disseminate the silly, mad and historic facts about vodka. Ah, can you smell that? It’s art and commerce colliding. But not only are they helping you think, they’re also helping you win things. So in the spirit of weird, comical science edu-tainment that can be seen on the trailer here or the play’s Facetube page here, just come up with a completely nonsensical science-related question you would like answered and the weirdest effort will get one double pass to the show on Sunday 10 April. We’ve also got four very cool 42 Below gift packs (‘True Encounters of the Spirit of the 42nd Parallel) to give away.
Of note in this collection of televisual commercial messages, the Red Bull Trolley Derby gets set to take some skin off; a classic from Mini keeps it on top in the car class; Robert Harris launches a seemingly unnecessary product for lazy people; ASB and Expol let off a couple of groaners; Skinfood goes mainstream and gets itself on the telly; Tower hits the courts, Pinnacle Life continues with its enjoyable challenger brand cheek and a new campaign from Cigna tries to clear the murky life insurance waters; Magnum embraces temptation by sending a babe down a fire escape in a low cut dress; Telecom continues to push its Android smartphone wares hard, presumably welcoming news that Android took over from Apple as the biggest mobile operating system in the UK recently; and the Skyline ad maintains its place as the best ad on TV at the moment.
M&C Saatchi’s ‘Good Ugly’ ad for Warehouse Stationery took out the September edition of the NAB’s Newspaper Ad of the Month award. And the pair has nabbed another title for the innovative ad depicting a poorly shredded page where the content can still be read.
The latest TV viewership figures for March are out and, amid the many regularly overused adjectives (primarily staggering, dramatic, massive and all-important), both warring parties are, as per usual, claiming victories, with TVNZ’s news audience increasing substantially and MediaWorks trumpeting a big rise in more lucrative eyeballs since the launch of FOUR. And while there’s always a bit of press release-based argy bargy when these numbers are set loose, it’s pistols at dawn when it comes to the morning news figures.
The Axis Awards are now available to view on TVNZ Ondemand in glorious technicolour, so fill you boots with an edited package of the creative hoedown that includes red carpet highlights, as well as numerous interviews with gold winners, industry luminaries and the esteemed international judges explaining why they awarded certain campaigns. And, not to let an chance go by, TVNZ has also explained some of the creative opportunities the medium allows, with an explanation of Ad on Pause and the joys of the ‘Companion Banner’ chucked in for good measure.
Hey good looking. And hey the rest of you. Check out the good, the gooder and the gorgeous at the Axis awards on Thursday, as snapped by one of Getty Images’ many talented camera wielders. We have 200 prize trips to Hobart for the funniest comments. Annnnd go!
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As a founding member and the first course leader of the AdSchool at Media Design School, David Bell has whipped a multitude of young advertising minds into shape and readied them for the cut and thrust of the real ad world. And to honour these efforts over the years, he was handed the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 CAANZ Axis Awards last week.
The brief from TVNZ to the young advertising whippersnappers was to get more viewers to tune into ONE’s flagship 6pm bulletin. And Jono Fox and Jack Delmonte of Adschool took the win with their smart integrated campaign ‘Make Sense of it at Six’. The other finalists were Jen Waldron and Ben Polkinghorne of AdSchool and Adam Martin of AUT University’s Creative Advertising School.
Disappointingly, there were no golds dished out in these categories, but Colenso’s ‘Real Stories’ for TVNZ’s The Pacific took silver in the Outdoor Campaign section, as did DraftFCB for Prime’s ‘Eating Out’ (this campaign also won a bronze in the Transit Advertising—Single category). DDB and Sky’s rather nifty ‘Through Someone Else’s Eyes’ for the Travel Channel won bronze in the Outdoor Campaign section and also took a bronze for the Billboard—Special Build.
In the copywriting section, which included both print and electronic, DDB took bronze with its Noland ad for Sky’s Arts Channel, while in Art Direction & Typography, Clemenger BBDO’s Hamlet-inspired book sculpture for Booksellers New Zealand was awarded a silver and DDB’s Catalogue and Tee Shirt Folding Machine for AS Colour took bronze.
Hey look, a Friday afternoon press release about New Zealand’s favourite cliff-walking broadcaster Paul Henry, who has, blow me down, officially signed up with MediaWorks, both for radio and television duties. And here we were thinking he’d go to Stratos.
As the entry video shows, Yellow and Colenso believed you could get anything done with Yellow. But in a world dominated by Google, they had to say it loudly. And, like the award-winning Yellow Treehouse before it, Yellow Chocolate did just that. Whether this campaign achieved business results is debateable (Yellow could also be in line for the Creative Accounting Business of the Year), but that’s an argument for another day. In keeping with the creative Axis vibe, what is clear is that Colenso came up with a big, complicated idea, the Yellow powers that be were brave enough to run with it and the pair brought the many disparate parts together in the form of a chocolate bar.
Ewwwww, what’s this? Why it’s us, softly launching a juicy new Creative channel on StopPress. Just as you’ve come to love and expect, we’ve got loads of creative advertising to show off, and loads of news about advertising creatives. So to help you get it faster, we’re putting it all in one place—minus all the distractions. Just the work, the awards and the work. Check out the new channel here and fill your boots with a virtual cornucopia of Axis awards winners. Love, The StopPressers.
No golds were handed out in the Radio Single category, but DDB walked away with the next best thing, a silver for its ‘Van Gogh’ commercial, which was part of the Arts Channel radio campaign for Sky TV. It was the only award handed out in the category and adds to the Silver Lion Scriptwriting award picked up by DDB last year at Cannes. Listen to it here. No golds or silvers were handed out in the Radio Campaign category, but DDB won bronze for the Arts Channel campaign (Van Gogh, Rothco and Pollock) and TBWA\Tequila followed suit with a bronze for the 2degrees campaign. Anne Boothroyd and Bigid Alkema’s Sliding Doors was voted the best radio ad of the decade for the Radio Bureau’s Grandest Orca.
Hyperfactory’s Geoff and Derek Handley are offering to send a marketer on a whirl-wind tour of the US to to visit the best-of-breed in digital and marketing in the U.S. But you’d better hurry. The award entries close on Monday.
Colenso’s ‘Yellow Chocolate’ was the only campaign deemed worthy of a nod in the Social category and was awarded one of eight golds for its efforts, while DraftFCB’s ‘The Journal’ was also a lonely winner in the Digital/Interactive category after picking up a bronze.
The Soundtrack category honours original music or arrangement as well as exisiting music, and Speights ‘Man Like Natural’ campaign, with its ‘we can grow beards if we want to’ hook, earned The Sweet Shop a silver. Liquidstudios was the only other winner, picking up a bronze in the category for its sonic touch on the ‘Telecom Brand 2010’ campaign.
Colenso BBDO swept this category, receiving both of the awards that were handed out. Having received a silver at the AWARD awards for its ‘Dog Fight’ campaign for TVNZ’s mini-series The Pacific, it went one better this time round and picked up a gold. As well as staging a fighter plane spectacle in Auckland’s Mission bay, the campaign also featured a mural on Auckland’s Symonds Street adorned with hundreds of copies of authentic letters sent by marines, along with photos. Colenso’s other win was a bronze for its ‘A Rubbish Idea’ campaign for Heart of the City and Auckland City Council. ‘Flowerbeds’ were created on rubbish hotspots to discourage dumping and Auckland businesses given an education kit, including some of the floral rubbish bags.
There was only one award handed out in the websites category, and while DraftFCB and the Ministry of Health’s ‘The Journal’ wiped the floor at the RSVP & Nexus Awards, a bronze was all it warranted at Axis.
Earth Hour 2011 may have only recently wrapped up, but Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Ads In The Dark’ campaign has reaped the rewards for its efforts to draw awareness to last year’s Earth Hour, picking up a silver award in the charity category. The campaign featured popular commercials from Fatso, Instant Kiwi and McDonald’s, previously bathed in full light, being lit by only candlelight. Picking up the only other award in the category, also a silver, was DraftFCB for its ‘Make a friend in real life, not just online’ Facebook app for the SPCA.
Having picked up a bronze at the recent AWARD awards, DraftFCB has gone one better at the Axis, this time picking up two silvers in the Magazine Single category for some crafty interpretations of takeaway food in the wild. The first came for its ‘Fries’ print ad and the other for its ‘Kebab’ print ad, both part of its ‘Eating Out’ campaign for Prime TV’s Man vs Wild. The ‘Eating Out’ campaign snagged another silver for DraftFCB in the Magazine Campaign category and DDB picked up a bronze for its ‘Newman/Davis/Noland’ campaign for Sky.
In the Direct Response section, Colenso took gold for Yellow Chocolate and a silver for ‘A Rubbish Idea’, while Special Group also took gold for ‘Orcon Business Banner’. And in the Direct Campaign, Colenso came home with both awards, a gold for Yellow Chocolate and a bronze for TVNZ’s ‘Real Stories’ to promote its show The Pacific. In the Direct Mail category, ‘A Rubbish Idea’ and ‘Real Stories’ both took silver, as did DDB’s Catalogue & Tee Shirt Folding Machine for AS Colour.
DDB, Sky and Capital City Films’ ‘Leafblower’ spot took home the most metal of any TVC on the night, with a gold in the single television commercial category adding to its impressive haul. DDB also picked up a silver for Lotto’s ‘Lucky Dog’ (which has over 750,000 views on YouTube) and a bronze for Volkswagen’s ‘Milk Run’; Colenso picked up a silver for Vodafone’s ‘Double Back’ spot and a bronze for Frucor’s ‘Ladders’; and Saatchi & Saatchi picked up a bronze for Telecom’s ‘Sunrise, Sunset’.
Colenso BBDO took all three awards handed out in the Integrated category, with gold for ‘Yellow Chocolate’ and a bronze apiece for Frucor’s ‘V Ladders’ and TVNZ’s ‘Real Stories’ to promote its show The Pacific. It also cleaned up in the Titanium category, with ‘A Rubbish Idea’ taking bronze and ‘Yellow Chocolate’ turning gold once again. Special Group took the only Interactive Axis, winning gold for the ‘Orcon Business Banner’.
They’ve made rubbish into street art, devised a sweet outdoor campaign for the Vodafone New Zealand foundation and were chosen to represent New Zealand in the Young Lotus competition at Adfest in Thailand this year. So it’s no wonder the pair are starting to turn a few industry heads.