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].
Idealog and her ugly sisters NZ Marketing, StopPress and Celsias have given birth (by C-section) to Design Daily, a daily news site for Kiwi architects and designers. Launched today, the site covers projects, people, events and politics in the design industry. And it will also send out a weekly free email newsletter that you can sign up for here.
Big news came through yesterday that Kingsland indie agency Special Group had picked up the extremely coveted Grand Prix award in the Direct category at the Cannes Lions. Sadly, the Special Groupies were too busy doing actual work back in New Zealand and couldn’t get to Cannes to pick up the trophy, wallow in glory and revel in the fact that they were among the world’s best. But Our Maan in Cannes was.
This week on Ads@6, Sam Neill dresses up in traditional garb and avoids getting spat on by a South American beast for Kiwibank; Primo rewards those who choose the right fridge with a choir of soothing angels; and the Toshiba Heat Pump door snakes come clean and apologise for extravagant credit card use while overseas.
The fingernails were being bitten feverishly late last week as the New Zealand marketing community used every last second at its disposal (and a few more on top of that) to get the entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. But all’s well that ends well: the number of entries has swelled to more than three times that of last year.
The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (NZBCF) has seen the light – and the dark: its new Girls’ Night In fundraising campaign, which launched today, 22 June, and runs for two weeks, is putting a new, more contextual twist on the outdoor medium, with 20 of Adshel’s Create sites delivering a different image depending on whether the ad is seen during the day or at night.
Diana: pipped
At last, a rival to match the spectacular unifying experience that was Diana’s funeral: All Whites v Slovakia.
The ink, sweat and tears of New Zealand’s print industry were honoured on Friday night at the Pride in Print awards held at Sky City in Auckland. And Fonterra Canpac of Hamilton was judged the best of the best, taking out the most prestigious award for a metal baby food can.
Pressure, as they say, makes diamonds (it also makes heart attacks and oil spills, but in this case, let’s stick with diamonds). And the pressure is on to get your entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards, with the gates officially closing at 5pm today. But, if you require an extension, break glass, call Sylvia Devlin on 361 7763 or email [email protected] and plead your case.
Ah New Zealand, what an egalatarian paradise you are, a place where you can shake hands with the Prime Minister without fear of being tackled by secret service agents, where anyone can play golf, squash or tennis without being harrassed by bogans for being an aristocrat and where an All Black can deliver your mail and make you a cup of tea.
MEC is first cab off the rank in Yahoo!Xtra’s new quarterly Digital Strategy Award, taking the inaugural trophy for its Caltex with Techron online campaign. And, in other digi-news, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is on the hunt for Bolly Award entries and has also secured the services of a couple of digital gurus to discuss the importance of online advertising in the automotive industry.
As The Day Today so famously said: “Facts times importance equals news”. Here’s some now, and this time it’s about various industry comings, goings, movings, shakings, to-ings and fro-ings.
If they haven’t been washed away by the flash floods, six lucky New Zealand bastards are currently swanning about in the South of France. Of course, business is being mixed with pleasure: they are there in a professional capacity as judges for the Cannes Advertising Festival awards, which, as the world’s biggest and best advertising event, invites the world’s biggest and best advertising brains along to do the deciding. So here’s to them.
Entries for the 2010 EFFIES are now open. And categories A through P might just have your name on them.
yMedia, a social enterprise that aims to solve some of the digital communications issues faced by not-for-profit organisations through the power of creative collaboration, has just kicked off. And this time round, twenty student teams, a host of industry professionals and their respective community groups will all be going head to head in the annual new media competition.
Winston Reid is currently New Zealand’s favourite son. And, following DDB’s recent print ad, Dr Peter Richmond from the John Street Family Health Centre is probably a close second.
Fairfax Media is harnessing the raw power of the crowd to try and weed out a few more dodgy financial dealings from our elected officials, giving the public the chance to trawl through the thousands of pages of credit card transactions and receipts from 2003 to 2010 that were collated by The Department of Internal Affairs and review them online.
On a high after its big Qantas Media Award wins, APN New Zealand’s advertising rates are heading in the upwards direction as well.
It wasn’t too long ago that Designworks – and, possibly, the entire design community – was celebrating a big win at the recent 2010 Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards. And now it’s got some more positive news to crow about, with a new branch set to open in Christchurch.
The results for the most complained about ads in 2009 have been released by the Advertising Standards Authority. And the lucky winners are…
It seems Kiwis have found plenty to grumble about, well, when it comes to advertisements anyway. The folks at the Advertising Standards Authority have been kept very busy according to their 2009 Annual Report, receiving complaints about 829 advertisements (up from 703 in 2008), with 1339 total complaints.
This week on Ads@6, various commercial entities try to sell things through the power of free-to-air television. Of note this week, not much, although soup month is finally upon us. And it should be a worthy follow up to 2008’s international year of the potato.
It’s fairly standard practice for publishers to beat their editorial chests after the Qantas Media Awards are dished out. Of course, victory is always in the eye of the beholder (and, given the number of awards handed out and the size of the New Zealand market, there always seem to be plenty of beholders). But this year APN has nabbed the big ones: the Herald on Sunday was judged to be New Zealand’s Best Weekly and Best Overall newspaper for the second time in its five year history and The New Zealand Herald took the award as the country’s best daily newspaper.
Fairfax Media hasn’t been making too many friends recently: last week it decided to close business newspaper The Independent. And now it has fallen foul of a rival publisher after incorrectly claiming ownership of a magazine in some of its recent sales material.
With a combination of pomp, ceremony, donuts, coffee and the unflinching enthusiasm of Te Radar, a stellar line-up of speakers for this year’s Semi-Permanent “design symposium” was announced last week at The Church in K Rd. And there’s plenty on offer for the Kiwi marcomms community this time round, particularly in the interactive and experiential marketing fields.
With physical mail fighting a difficult fight against “electronic substitution” and potential cost-cutting measures at New Zealand Post have been in the news recently, the postal workers may be disgruntled. But the marketers shouldn’t be, because the Targeted Communications department has just launched a new website filled with insights and data that aims to help make targeting easier.
The Cannes Lions advertising festival, the Big Daddy of the global advertising awards calendar, will be kicking off in just over one week. And StopPress will be bringing you all the action, every single bit of it, almost constantly.
Want to be the envy of all your marketing friends? Want to turn up to industry events and social functions with an even ‘smugger’ grin on your face? Want some ammunition to back up your request for a raise? Well, you’d better rattle your dags, because there’s only one week left to get your entries in for the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards.
To get 42 Below to the point where multinational booze behemoth Bacardi wanted to buy it, Geoff Ross and his gang of merry vodka purveyors had to master the dark arts of PR and viral marketing. They were shameless, controversial, funny and confrontational, and, as a result, they managed to tap into a wide array of media networks to help establish the brand’s reputation.
TrinityP3, the Australasian marketing management consultancy, has set up shop in New Zealand. And the long-awaited merger of Blackwood Communications Group and Grey Global Group has also been announced.
DraftFCB has been appointed to provide advertising and specialist media relations services to Statistics New Zealand for the 2011 Census; Mango has taken the Tourism Malaysia PR gig; JML gets to talk up the Velux 5 Oceans around the world yacht race; and Bold Horizon will be doing the digital work for the National Fieldays Society.