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].
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter arguably rule in internet land. Not only have they resulted in the emergence of overnight celebrities, they have created a new clip culture and a whole new world for marketers to explore. In Fact, YouTube is the number two search engine in New Zealand. So if you’re brainy, you’ll know that utlising their marketing potential is well, the brainy thing to do.
Mergers, cabs ‘n’ advertising, promotions and new awards –just another week in the land of communications news then. Here’s your round-up.
TV3’s ASB Business and Sunrise have lost the battle to stay alive, with the announcement this morning that both shows have been canned.
Time is running out for young creative and media prodigies to enter the Fairfax Media Young Lions competition, which offers four fresh-faced souls a chance to attend and compete at the Cannes Lions, the largest and most prestigious advertising festival in all the world.
First they claimed Crowded House, now this: an Earth Hour ad for Unilever’s Persil brand that was produced by Sydney boutique agency Naked Communications has won the Newspaper Advertising Bureau’s (NAB) March Newspaper Ad of the Month.
It wouldn’t be an ‘eggxaggeration’ to say that it’s Easter. And with Easter comes new pagan life, and with new pagan life comes news of various industry happenings about things like Cadbury, The Sweet Shop, Pead PR, Hunter, Top Gear magazine, MSN, APN, DB and Cannes.
Following on from two golds in the ‘charity’ and ‘art direction and typography’ categories at the 2010 Axis awards, Colenso BBDO’s animated film of Maurice Gee’s novel Going West, which was produced for The New Zealand Book Council to promote books and reading, has received another nod, this time from the Museum of Art and Design in New York.
Progressive Auckland church St Matthew-in-the-city has put up its Easter/April Fools billboard, and this one, which features Jesus on the cross saying “Well this sucks. I wonder if they’ll remember anything I said,” appears to be much more palatable to fun-hating prudes and religious zealots than the last innuendo-filled Christmas number.
Fairfax Magazines has purchased Driver magazine and will merge it with New Zealand Autocar from the May issue, after it became clear to John Baker, of former Driver publisher Tangible Media, that the publishing landscape had changed and two magazines devoted to new cars couldn’t be supported, particularly given the large decrease in sales of new cars in recent times.
Over 150 marketing professionals are expected to attend the New Zealand Marketing Association’s (NZMA) Smarter Data: Working Harder forum next week, with Affinity Id’s chief executive Geoff Cooper leading the lineup of speakers.
The finalists for the CAANZ media awards have been announced, with OMD New Zealand (fresh from the agency of the year win at the Fairfax/AdMedia soiree), SparkPHD and Starcom NZ nominated for the big one, media agency of the year.
Wholly Bagels owner and founder Charlie Daily decided on his marketing strategy out of necessity: he had no budget for mainstream advertising, so, instead, he decided to use giving and generosity as his major marketing tool. And so far it’s proven to be a very effective approach.
All the news (about pyar, new baby food, ice cream, banned ads, loin tingling, non-profit organisations and green marketing) that’s fit to print – and now in handy meta format.
Why we like it: As Mother always said, put some animated needlework in your ads (or your songs) and you’re bound to win the TVC of the week prize on StopPress. And the artisanship on display in this quirky, handmade and awfully time-consuming little number that was …
Econsultancy and the Online Marketing Summit have produced a US-based report called the Value of Social Media that is based on a survey of more than 400 client-side marketers and agency respondents. And Andy Beal, founder and editor of MarketingPilgrim.com, took a gander, with his major observation being that 61 percent of the companies felt their measurement of the return on investment (ROI) from social media is either poor or very poor.
Claire Stapleton and Duncan Munro from Y&R Wellington have taken out the Bolly Award for their Metservice campaign ‘You Can’t Change the Weather’, impressing the boffins with a digital execution that allowed punters a chance to play God.
M&C Saatchi has added a prize trophy to the cabinet after being appointed the New Zealand-based marketing team for Jetstar, ousting the incumbent Harvey Cameron and beating out DDB.
This week in the Ads@6, the Suzuki Swift is apparently still the one. And the ad is definitely still the one that will make you scratch your own eyes out. Protex follows suit with an ear/eye-scratchingly bad jingle of its own. Perhaps John Rowles should think about becoming a consultant following his famous victory in the Great New Zealand Twitter jingle survey recently.
NZ Lotteries isn’t spilling any beans on how much it paid to get Donald Trump involved with the new Big Wednesday promotion, but David Higgins of Duco, the events company behind the highly successful Tua versus Cameron fight, has intimate knowledge of the magnate in question and believes it probably cost much more than the estimates currently doing the rounds.
In the world of ‘feminine hygiene products’, sometimes known as ‘tampons’, there are certain advertising rules that have, over time, become engrained: weird blue liquid, euphemisms galore, unrealistic happiness, slow motion beach shots, dancing, basically all the things the above video parodies. But ad agency JWT and US tampon company Kotex decided to flout some those rules for a new campaign in an effort to ‘get real’ about ‘that time of the month’. But everyone knows TV isn’t about reality (unless it’s ‘gritty’) and it seems there’s no room for the horrible, disgusting v word on US TV screens.
DDB New Zealand has announced the promotions of two of its senior creatives, with Dave Brady replacing previous head of art and “crafty bastard” Mike Davison and Paul Hankinson taking on the role of head of copy.
The 2010 Seminar Programme at the Cannes Advertising Festival has been announced and more clients than ever are set to take to the stage and dish out their 0.02c, including Yahoo!, Microsoft Advertising, Facebook, MasterCard, Kraft Foods, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hewlett-Packard and Coca-Cola. So, get the company credit card out and pick those brains.
Unless you’re scared of large, uninterrupted blocks of text, why would you read a story about one boring thing, when you could read a story that deals with a whole range of exciting things? That’s right, you wouldn’t. Or would you?
Independent design and ad agency Strategy has snaffled Ogilvy New Zealand’s recently departed head of planning Michael Prentice. He will take up the role of group strategic director for the Auckland, Christchurch and Sydney offices and will also be general manager of the Christchurch office.
After a stellar 2009 – so good, in fact, that it’s currently on a pitch ban – DraftFCB has taken the 2010 Fairfax AdMedia Agency of the Year award.
Monocle magazine, a respected mouthpiece in the fields of design, trends, retail, art, pop-culture and politics, has published a list of the world’s 25 best retailers and Takapuna’s The Department Store has taken the number one spot.
Comedian and writer Raybon Kan, who has recently returned to Kiwi shores after a stint in London, is set to dazzle the magazine industry with witty quips in his role as MC at this year’s Magazine Awards.
You may be an official or unofficial ‘brand ambassador’ for all things social media in your organisation. Maybe it’s even in your job title. But how do you formalise social media within the company without it becoming oxymoronic? And how do you get more people involved?
A virtual e-cornucopia of comings, goings, changes, movements, postings and various new things compiled to belatedly celebrate the long-awaited departure of summer.
Eco-friendly Kiwi cleaning brand ecostore has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Duane Reade of New York, which, with more than 250 outlets, is the biggest drugstore chain in city.