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].
Matt Shirtcliffe from recently born agency Shirtcliffe & Co and Darryl Wong and Kenton Osmond from RAPP, will be the guest speakers for the New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ hugely popular and completely free direct marketing workshops. So get in quick if you want to hear their numerous pearls of wisdom.
Bloomsberry calls itself the inventor of the world’s most fashionable chocolate. And the Kiwi-founded, London-based company is living up to that reputation: its trendy, chocolatey wares are now being stocked in selected outlets of one of the UK’s most fashionable High St clothing chains, Top Shop.
The tagline for the 2010 Women’s Refuge appeal almost says it all: ‘Living in fear isn’t living’. But Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington have managed to say a bit more about the scourge of domestic violence in New Zealand with their creative work. And by raising awareness of what it’s like to live in psychologically or physically abusive homes, it hopes more funds can be raised to help the women and children leading fear-filled lives.
Obviously the Adfest judges aren’t offended by the sight of horses in the throes of passion quite as much as some members of the New Zealand public, because, slightly ironically, DDB NZ took home one of the top awards, the Grande 360 Lotus, at the Asia Pacific advertising festival for a Moro campaign that celebrated the joy of coming fourth.
Small, very New Zealandy and not very old agency Josh&Jamie is steadily becoming not so small, continuing its solid run of victories after taking Fairfax Media’s online news-site Stuff.co.nz off incumbent Big Communications in a competitive pitch.
Air New Zealand’s daily deals website grabaseat.co.nz has appointed Trade Me’s advertising sales team to manage its existing advertising placement programme from 1 August, making it the second external website along with interest.co.nz to have its advertising exclusively sold by the Trade Me team.
Another week in marcomms land, another round of new hires, smooth industry moves and media swapsies.
After a tough couple of years working primarily on the Telecom account at Saatchi & Saatchi, creative group heads Connan James and Craig Farndale have packed their bags and gone free range.
After some big account wins last year, DraftFCB has gone on a bit of hiring spree to keep up, signing on Nick Smith as the head of craft, Steve McCabe as senior writer, Roslyn Koskela as the new HR manager, and four other humans for account service, media planning and creative.
The strife in Thailand had its wicked way with Adfest, the Asia Pacific advertising awards. But the dates were changed a few times and, instead of the usual Thai beach resort location, it was decided the big name judges would converge on Tokyo this week to make their decisions. And it’s fairly slim pickings on the finalist front for Kiwi agencies.
With three times as many entries than the 2009 edition, the esteemed judges of the 2010 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards had a pretty tough job ahead of them deciding on the finalists. But after plenty of discussion, dissection and deliberation, the judging has come to an end and NZ Marketing magazine and the New Zealand Marketing Association (NZMA) can announce this year’s leading contenders.
Five years ago Gary Lee, the founder of E2 Digital, and Neil Cameron, the managing director of Christchurch advertising agency Harvey|Cameron, had lunch. And what they talked about at that lunch—joining forces to create a fully integrated communications company—physically came to fruition earlier this week.
When New Zealand Post isn’t deciding what marketing-related events to sponsor, it’s devising ways to make some more money to pay for them all. And the Targeted Communications team thinks it has a big one on its hands with Genius, a ground-smasher of a new data segmentation product that aims to provide Kiwi marketers with the most targeted consumer information available in New Zealand.
Japanese tech behemoth Toshiba has followed up its sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup in 2007 by signing on as an official sponsor for next year’s event. And Pernod Ricard New Zealand, with its newly named international version of Montana, Brancott Estate, is also on board.
Tabulations are complete and the calculators have done their business for the 2010 Qantas Film and Television Awards, with a total of 637 entries being received. And while it’s two down on last year’s total, the award organisers feel it is a clear indication of the continuing “strength and resilience of New Zealand’s film and television industries”.
Cast your minds back to 2009. Now back at me. Now back to 2009. Now back to 2010. As everyone knows, it was a pretty lean year for all concerned, but the releases trumpeting various revenue increases seem to be flowing reasonably freely of late, with the latest coming from the Outdoor Media Association of New Zealand (OMANZ), which announced that gross media revenue for Q2 has increased by six percent from the same time last year, up from $14.3 million to $15.2 million in 2010.
The months are obviously getting closer together: the May winners of the ORCA’s were announced last week as The Radio Bureau did a bit of catching up. And the June certificates have also been handed out, with Karl Fleet and Tom Paine from Colenso BBDO taking out the top prize for their V Pocket Rocket Campaign for Frucor. Feast your ears on the June winning effort here.
The pioneering approach taken by the Ministry of Health for its National Depression Initiative proved to be something of a watershed for online social messaging and health communications in New Zealand. And the efforts of Wellington-based agency Resn have shown that the interactivity offered by the online realm is also proving to be an effective way of spreading the Smokefree/Auahi Kore message to Kiwi yoof.
The economy seems to be moving slowly in the right direction, the marcomms job market is picking up and judging by figures from the New Zealand Television Broadcasters’ Council (NZTBC) based on returns from TVNZ, MediaWorks TV and Sky (including Prime), the broadcast advertising dollars are following suit.
Catching the eye this week, the wee orange electoral roll man is back for another round in a pretty cool numerical and alphabet-themed campaign; the Doritos ads out of Australia look set to resonate with your typical corn chip eater; the All Blacks get stuck into some Coke Zero (inside word: Dan Carter sucks Coke in the ad but didn’t swallow during the filming); Allison’s Pantry ramps up the cheese; and the new Sorbent ad is a pretty good effort in this category (much like this ad for Sorbent toilet paper in Aussie).
A couple of weeks ago, Whittaker’s released its new commercial for Dark Ghana Peppermint into the wild. It featured a naked couple swinging about in the jungle and frolicking in pools of chocolate and, as expected, it led to a few wowsers venting their visual metaphor-hating spleens. Forgetting about the fun-hating crepehanger minority for a moment, the vast majority loved the new ad because it was different, slightly risque and visually compelling. But an interesting aspect of the whole tale is the persistent rumour that the chocolate used in the shoot wasn’t actually of the Whittaker’s variety.
As carrots are to stew, news is to the internet.
42BELOW is the latest company to jump on the augmented reality bandwagon with a new point of sale project it’s calling Fat-boy. And spokeshuman Jacob Pearson says the vodka gang is pretty proud of its new toy.
One year after US media and marketing company Meredith Corporation took a 20 percent stake in mobile marketing company The Hyperfactory, which was set up by New Zealand brothers Derek, 32, and Geoffrey, 35, Handley in 2001, ‘full alignment’ has been completed. Or, in less corporate US speak, ka-ching.
Kelly Bennett
It’s been a relatively stressful time for TBWA\ of late: around the same time the ASB account left the building, Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand (PlayStation) was also undertaking a thorough competitive review of its PR account. And it would’ve been a pretty bad look to lose that business too, but in news that’s sure to bring comfort to the Mayoral Drive offices, ELEVEN\PR, part of the TBWA\ Group, retained the account.
OMD looks to the future and appoints its first tech-head, Dow’s designs come to fruition and The Pond shores up its arsenal south of the Bombays.
Bakers Delight has released its new long-term brand strategy and it’s decided to focus on the expertise and authenticity of its bakers and baking methods and tap into the “growing consumer demand for fresh, natural and above all real produce”. And how ’bout some simple, pleasurable Mainland butter to go with that crusty loaf?
It seems the print media’s dastardly scheme to get aggrieved companies to take out full page ads is working: after Air New Zealand responded to a Listener editorial with a cheeky video featuring Rob Fyfe, a dedicated website and a few full-pagers, ecostore has decided to follow suit, joining the reactionary party last weekend after an article in the Herald about washing powder ruffled its eco-feathers.
Last week we had the pleasure of announcing the launch of the inaugural Creative Challenge, a new event being put on by Adshel, the Auckland Fringe and StopPress that aims to showcase the talents of Kiwi creatives and, at the same time, promote creative excellence in outdoor advertising. We also promised gratuitous publicity for the event, so here it is: registrations have been going very strongly so far, with DraftFCB first out of the gates. And there are also some generous new sponsors on board, with Carlsberg supplying the brown stuff, Stoneleigh providing the red and white stuff and Toto providing the delicious edible stuff.
