The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
Social media channels based around images are getting our attention faster than others, a recent research snapshot by Colmar Brunton shows. That’s partly because of channel fragmentation, but also because pictures put us in touch with our feelings, the company reckons.
We wonder if someone who hangs out in gyms too much dreamed up this video for Gillette that puts training moves to music. In any case the experiment for the company’s Clear Gel deodorant created a catchy number.
Kiwis are getting their own version of a 24 hour online event designed to whip shoppers into a frenzy, modelled on a day that kicked off in the US in 2005. The organisers are targetting a Kiwi-sized proportion of the sales results a similiar day achieved on debut in Australia despite that site crashing under the weight of web traffic.
Colenso BBDO has formalised its relationship with Samsung and will be the agency of record for all its various divisions, making it one of the few markets in the world where the Korean behemoth isn’t aligned with a Leo Burnett agency. But it means the agency has had to say goodbye to a long-time client, Haier-owned Fisher & Paykel.
The radio survey results always make for entertaining/confusing reading. There’s certainly no shortage of self-aggrandisement (‘We’re number one* in shemales^ aged 48-49# between 10pm and 10:15pm!’) and MediaWorks Radio was pretty chuffed with its performance in this round. So, to showcase the network’s galaxy of stars and its ability to reach Kiwi audiences, it created an entertaining and very self-deprecating clip showing its DJs swapping stations and attempting to appeal to very different demographics than they’re accustomed to. Mark Leishman reprezent biatches!
Vodafone is carrying on its tradition of releasing apps designed to help more Kiwis use technology – this time it’s one for senior smartphone newbies.
We’ve seen a few companies turn their back on traditional staff recruitment lately, and now Aussie tech firm Big Commerce has done the same thing, in an even geekier way. In its search for engineers, it put posters up in Sydney with tear off strips traditionally reserved for phone numbers, But instead of a phone number there was a complex code candidates had to crack.
Samsung’s Smartwatch is among a raft of new timepiece tech to hit the market of late, but it’s not the only clever watch to be celebrated in popular culture. Samsung is celebrating its place in history with a new video, A Long Time Coming.
GE’s resource maximising machines are the star of a new USS Enterprise Crew – the cast of a BBDO New York campaign for GE.
Kiwi internet users continue to fuel the growth of global heavyweight websites like Google and Facebook and homegrown successes like Trade Me. Horizon Research’s latest numbers show Google is the country’s most used website.
Labour’s broadcasting spokesperson Kris Faafoi and associate ICT spokesperson Clare Curran have labelled the warning given to Sky TV by the Commerce Commission over its contracts with content deliverers as a slap with a wet bus ticket.
Another week of quality Kiwi TV work, with DB Export, Sky, Steinlager, Trade Me and Telecom getting special ribbons to wear on their blazers.
DraftFCB’s Analy Tigers took the win at Adshel’s Creative Challenge last week. And here’s what pressurised creativity looks like.
60 creatives turned up at Generator in Britomart last week to eat, drink, be merry and spend one hour devising an outdoor campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand (SLSNZ) as part of the Adshel Creative Challenge. And it was the team from DraftFCB—Kevin Walker, Ant Bell and Adam Taylor, AKA team ‘Analy Tigers’—that took the win.
Chapel Bar and Bistro is risking more religious ire with two new executions in its Seven Years of Almighty Nights campaign. The series kicked off last year to celebrate the bar’s seventh birthday and showed Jesus and Mary in compromising poses after a hard night.
How do you give a show that’s been running for 25 seasons some extra life? You get a director like Guillermo del Toro on board and set him loose on the couch gag. Plus: some other guest-directed couch gags.
Celebrity news anchor Ron Burgundy, aka actor Will Ferrell, has made his screen comeback in a new series of spots for the Dodge Durango. It’s classic Burgundy as the vehicles features are explained – it comfortably fits two turkey sandwiches, or 70 packs of gum and a glovebox that “goes on for inches”.
Vice has gained a reputation as an arbiter of cool, with its gonzo reporting, its humorous and fiercely sarcastic opinion pieces and its focus on bacchanalian excess. Plenty of brands looking to ride on these youthful, alternative coat-tails are employing their services through native advertising and branded content. And its stories have also inspired a brilliant fake Twitter account @Vice_Is_Hip.
Trade Me kicked off back in 1999 when Sam Morgan saw an unmet need for an online marketplace selling used goods. That’s largely still how consumers see it. But around 40 percent of its listings are new goods, so it is aiming to draw attention to that aspect of its business in the lead up to Christmas with a campaign via Whybin\TBWA featuring naked fat men, well-coiffed dogs and apparent rectal probes.
The DB Export family has benefitted from a bit of extra attention in recent years. First, the story of Morton Coutts was used to establish the ‘let nothing come between a man and a great beer’ brand platform. Then DB Export Dry used wine to sell beer in one of the best campaigns of 2012. DB Export 33 was up next and showed the kind of sacrifice men drinking the low-carb version were making for their better halves. And now DB Export Gold is being given its time in the sun, with another entertaining ad featuring a heroic man and his trusty dog.
The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints over a Dove Hair care ad which said 90 percent of Kiwi women recommended Dove Hair Care; and another about a Radio Hauraki billboard that showed drive show host Matt Heath giving passers by the big finger.
It appears no cats were harmed in the making of Vodafone and DraftFCB’s new TVC celebrating the launch of the telco’s new TV service Red Home, pitched as a reason for Kiwis to switch to fibre.
Telecom will launch its 4G network in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on 12 November for prepaid and plan customers. The telco is offering free 4G SIMs until the end of January next year and asking customers to visit its website to pre-register for the upgrade and check whether their phone is compatible.
The latest radio survey results have just been released, so we’ve decided to republish an edited version of Lynda Brendish’s story on New Zealand’s radio scene that originally featured in the July/August edition of NZ Marketing.
The T2 radio survey results are out. And they present a mostly positive picture for radio year-on-year.
Jane Sweeney plans a combination of board seats and executive positions having closed the door on her nine year career at the top of PR firm Porter Novelli. Offshore stints could also be on the cards, but she wants to stay based in New Zealand.
The judges for News Works’ Newspaper Ad of the Month competition didn’t deem any entries worthy of winning in either August or September, but three ads—DDB’s Reflect, Ogilvy & Mather’s Auckland Council Elections, and bcg2’s Ezetrol—were given special mentions in September, earning them one point each on the Agency League table.
Whybin\TBWA’s ‘Results Don’t Lie’ campaign for the 2013 New Zealand Effie Awards put a few creative big-wigs from New Zealand’s advertising industry in a dark room, gave them lie detector tests and asked them about the legitimacy of their most awarded campaigns. The results have been comical and controversial in equal measure and, with awards night looming, the agency has stepped it up a notch, announcing that one of its own—chief creative officer Toby Talbot—will take to the stage for a live polygraph test as part of the evening’s proceedings.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
The NZRU has made no secret of the fact it wants to get more sponsorship dollars. And certain All Blacks are already making their own endorsement hay while the sun shines. Sadly, big locks Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock aren’t on that list, but, as this clip shows, the cocktail-loving hard men are well and truly up for it.
Not long after one German car company chose its favoured agency, another German car company is following suit, with DDB, Special Group and DraftFCB getting set to duke it out for the BMW and Mini business.
US department store giant JC Penney either wants to laugh at the expense of customers who say the word hashtag in public, or has failed to heed the warning sent by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake in their skit on the Late Night show about how silly social conversations would sound in real life.
Sometimes companies make outrageous claims in the name of marketing themselves – like saying they can create a webpage in mid air in seven minutes. But Kiwi startup Designbymobile put their money where they mouth is and did just that – and got some quick publicity in the process.
A new Orcon campaign with Contagion gives the ISP a chance to get new customers and frontman Kim Dotcom a chance to push his political barrow. Orcon is using what it calls a “fun, cheeky” video featuring Dotcom, and social media activity, to push its $99 uncapped internet plan on fibre or ADSL.
The floor of the car is a place where various horrors tend to lie undiscovered until the annual clean. Honda has tried to remedy this in its new people mover with an in-car vacuum cleaner. And, along with a series of ads featuring the voices of Rainn Wilson and Neil Patrick Harris, it has also taken to Twitter to let various snack and toy brands know that they don’t stand a chance against its powerful suction.
The dirty secret of gamification – which chairperson of our Game Developers Association Stephen Knightly defines as using game thinking and mechanics to engage customers and users – is that the psychology is nothing new. The good news is it still works.