The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
The season debut of New Zealand’s Got Talent got a less rapturous audience reception, with the 90 minute episode getting an average audience of 611,100 for those aged five plus watching live and played back on the same day, although consolidated Nielsen data wasn’t yet available.
Funny drugs, little things and serious get the gong this week.
Mitre 10 Dream Home finished up a couple of weeks back. But Tui has created its own, male-centric dream home, with an entertaining prank that saw a number of kegs plumbed into an Auckland house so that every tap poured cold beer. Plus: Tui and BK up a tree.
iSite recently launched its new highly targeted outdoor media planning service. And in an effort to show it off to media agencies and marketing professionals, its new agency The Business took a very literal approach to the concept of shooting an ad.
Greg Shand, one of New Zealand’s most experienced communications professionals, died suddenly at his home in Piha last week.
Vodafone has had a rough time of it in Australia recently, losing 1.5 million customers since 2011, facing the threat of a class action suit by unhappy customers and reporting a massive AU$899 million loss last year. Now it’s reintroducing the brand to the nation and asking consumers to ‘Discover the New’—and it’s done it by creating a fairly strange campaign that aims to get mobile phone users to see the world like a child again.
The company credit cards are out in force this week for Spikes Asia and most of the shortlists have been announced, with, unsurprisingly, many of the campaigns that featured at Cannes also featuring in Singapore.
A few weeks back NZTA and Clemenger BBDO launched the second phase of its drug driving campaign, ‘Shopkeepers’, which used humour to create awareness around the fact that having a toke before getting behind the wheel wasn’t safe, despite beliefs to the contrary. And, just as it did with Legend, it’s followed that up with an ad/short film aimed at the Maori community that shows how children view the behaviour of their blazed parents.
Predictably, David Cunliffe won the Labour Leadership battle. Perhaps just as predictably, given the united show the party needs if it’s going to give National a run for its money at the next election, Cunliffe’s leadership rivals were gracious in defeat. The exception, perhaps, was dark horse Ned Stark.
A diverse set of magazine covers will battle to be the best in their category and the country in this year’s iSUBSCRiBE Maggie awards.
The full launch of the Radio Network’s internet radio service iHeartRadio has had a boost from social media activity around the recent free concert featuring Kiwi artist Lorde. The app has clung to the top free music app spot in the Kiwi iTunes store since it launched.
Universal Music is working to digitise the remainder of its local release collection to take advantage of all digital music services available here.
We’ve seen it before with Dollar Shave Club—both the blades and the wipes—and tampon subscription service Hello Flo. And now there’s a new entrant into the entertainingly crass and completely over the top online ad annals: Poo-pouri.
Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle’s brilliant ‘Back to the Start’ campaign used animation, emotion and a celebrity cover to tell the sorry story of industrialised food production. It caught plenty of attention and won plenty of awards for its trouble, including a couple of Cannes Grand Prix in film and branded content. And it’s following the same strategy for the follow-up, The Scarecrow.
Following a major shakeup of the senior hierarchy at Fairfax earlier this year, attention has now shifted to the rest of the conglomerate, with more job cuts looking inevitable. Plus: how the changes affect Fairfax Magazines.
Company leaders afraid of losing control by using enterprise social networks should know their company needs to communicate with networks as much as individuals using personal social media, says Yammer’s co-founder.
A group of independent creatives have been invited to join The Selective, a newly launched service launched offering creative and marketing support to managers and agencies.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
CanTeen New Zealand’s new ‘Never Alone’ campaign is designed to shock and get people thinking about the direct and indirect effects cancer has on young people.
Here we have the Old Spice guy riding a horse backwards – over the in the US the brand is getting fresh with a new series of commercials for its association with the NFL.
Saatchi & Saatchi in Italy has created a very cool campaign with Formula One driver Jarno Trulli racing around tracks set by winners of a Facebook contest.
ATEED (Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development) has launched its Spring campaign to entice Wellington and Christchurch residents to visit Auckland.
After five years at Loyalty New Zealand, and three in the role of chief executive, Lance Walker is off for a six-month sabbatical in France with his family. So does he call us loyal?
The Magazine Publishers Association has selected the finalists for this year’s Magazine Awards from 240 entries, up from 228 last year. Fairfax, Bauer Media Group and Tangible Media are well represented with 39, 36 and 30 finalist nods respectively.
Ericsson New Zealand predicts more than one in three New Zealanders who use the internet daily may have a tablet device by the end of the year.
Mobile devices now account for more than a third of TVNZ’s Ondemand service video streams and are a key part of the growth in video views.
A new interactive experiment based on a music video puts your phone in the director’s chair. Well, it lets you control visual effects, at least.
The Collaborate app is useful for small or big teams working on anything from planning a new business to working out the details of an ad campaign.
The world’s first cardiovascular exercise bike, an aerial robot, a method of controlling insects with sex, a novel bladder cancer detection test and a cardboard pet casket range are among the finalists of this year’s New Zealand Innovators Awards, the annual awards that celebrate the best of Kiwi innovation.
The Edge FM is continuing its growth on social media with the announcement its Twitter account has been given the ever sought after ‘blue tick’. The ‘blue tick’, which verifies The Edge’s Twitter feed as an authentic handle, will deepen the radio station’s relationship with its fans and increase its reach, according to marketing manager Emily Hancox.
The Marketing Association is hunting the year’s best direct marketing campaigns as it opens the annual awards for entries.
We had to wonder recently if Stuff’s website was trying to show us what happens when the honeymoon is over – as its wallpaper promoting a dating site shared the front page with a less romantic story.
The second and third episodes of the Instant Kiwi campaign by DDB and Luscious give a behind the scenes look at how it found the talent for the ads Double Crossword and Texas Hold Em.
This week NZ Lotteries, DDB and Luscious, along with Positively Wellington Tourism, Clemenger BBDO, Touch/Cast and OMD, take centre stage.
Domain name registrar and hoster Go Daddy, with agency Deutsch New York, have put Muscles from Brussels Jean-Claude Van Damme in the most dangerous positions of his career.
Colenso and DDB are the outstanding performers among the 86 finalists in this year’s Effie awards. According to a revised list by CAANZ and TVNZ, Colenso BBDO and DDB have 19 finalists.