The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
The New Zealand Herald now has more than 100,000 likes on its Facebook page. The impressive feat makes NZ Herald the most popular news brand in New Zealand on the social network.
Demand for mobile data in New Zealand has almost doubled for the second year in a row, as the cost of data decreases and the number of smartphones in Kiwi hands increase.
It’s widely agreed that Daniel Day Lewis is the Cliff Curtis of America: an actor with the ability to play a wide range of ethnicities, from Mohican to Irish to old American. But his latest foray into method acting is quite possibly his best yet: Obama.
The Great Phone Wars of the early Teenies have been escalating recently, with Apple fans regularly lining up for the latest toy (as comedian Tom Gleesson said at the Comedy Gala, Apple’s next move will probably be to release a product that doesn’t fit existing plugs so we’ll have to rewire our houses and we’ll still say ‘thanks Apple’) and Samsung making fun of their blinkered devotion in some of its ads. But in this new spot for the Nokia Lumia by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and Roman Coppola, Windows thinks both of the obsessed, bickering factions should take a look at another option.
It’s always interesting to observe how brands have evolved over the years. As this infographic shows, companies like Canon and Mercedes-Benz have refined their iconic logos in fits and starts over the decades, but some are more or less unrecognisable alongside their original incarnations.
At first glance, using old ads for a new campaign seems like an easy option. But the story behind Mitsubishi and Clemenger BBDO’s campaign to celebrate the return of the Mirage proves that theory wrong.
Beer is fragile and precious cargo for many Kiwi blokes and blokesses, so Lion’s beer insurance campaign for its Crafty Beggars range isn’t nearly as absurd as it might sound.
The pet industry is massive. And growing. And at-times completely ridiculous, as evidenced by Purina’s new “cat soufflé”. Yes, that’s right, a cat soufflé.
Behind Nickelodeon cartoons such as The Penguins of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness is a team of animators who just happen to be based out of New Zealand. We look inside Oktobor Animation (formerly Omnilab-owned visual effects house Oktobor) and talk to head of production Rob DiFiglia and managing director Bruce Everett about New Zealand’s blossoming digital creative scene.
New Zealand farmers, transporters and butchers go to great lengths to make the lamb cuts on your dinner table look mouth-watering. It’s anything but easy, as Silver Fern Farms’ new brand campaign from Colenso BBDO shows.
In 2009, bcg2’s James Blackwood came second in the New Zealand Geographic photographer of the year competition. In 2012, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Chris Leskovsek received a highly commended in the landscape category for ‘Te Paki Dunes, Northland’. So who from the image-loving creative realm will it be this year?
Avid Twitter users will no doubt be familiar with the ‘Fail Whale’, a picture that regularly showed up when the service was over-capacity. That has become increasingly rare, however, and Yiying Lu, who designed the first image, has come up with a new one: the Success Loch Ness.
Small independent creative agency ProCreation has won the Super Liquor business in a competitive pitch, beating out rumoured contenders including the incumbent .99, Running with Scissors/Tangible Media and Social Fabric.
Suicide – it’s a difficult topic to base your advertising campaign on, as Hyundai UK has just learned with its commercial finding international condemnation.
The last Massey University ad was the first in New Zealand to be filmed on an iPhone. And its latest campaign, the first television ad shot entirely on Massey’s Albany campus in its 20-year history, once again features vice-chancellor Steve Maharey talking up one of the innovations the university had a hand in: the Hulme Supercar.
Online video is booming. And businesses are seeing dollar signs. Here’s how to avoid getting it wrong.
After last year’s issues, CAANZ gave the Axis Awards a good going over for 2013. And, as well as some changes to the judging and a new Getty Images Creative Exhibition, it’s also created a new event featuring six international speakers.
This week saw the launch of APN Outdoor’s ‘Turning Heads’ campaign and top of the agenda towards getting people to turn heads is the launch of new large format digital billboards in Auckland.
D&AD is renowned as one of the world’s toughest awards shows (hence the brouhaha when Clemenger BBDO took a yellow pencil for Ghost Chips the same night it was denied at Axis). And while New Zealand has further cemented its reputation as a creativity hub and been ranked seventh in the world after the first round of judging, just four campaigns are in line to pick up yellow pencils: Silo Theatre Identity by Alt Group (Branding Schemes/Small Business), ‘Donation Glasses’ by Colenso BBDO for Mars NZ, Pedigree Adoption Drive (Direct Response/TV & Cinema Advertising); ‘Call Girl’ by DraftFCB for Prime Television (Radio Advertising over 30 seconds) and ‘Metamorphosis’ by String Theory for Good Books (Writing for Film Advertising).
Canon New Zealand is kicking off its latest consumer marketing campaign including more than $1 million in TV, print, online, retail and outdoor media.
New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where Red Bull isn’t the number one energy drink, with Frucor’s V taking that honour. But it’s aiming to rectify that—and make more of its burgeoning content business—by appointing Special Group as its creative agency.
Shed 10 on Auckland’s Queens Wharf may be a good century old, but it’s well and truly being modernised, first with a giant solar roof panel and now with a mural courtesy of street artist Askew One. And, not only that, it’s also putting the redeveloped Shed 10 on the block and asking for a naming rights sponsors.
With a tongue in cheek riff on Eastern Bloc sporting stereotypes (and particularly shotputting drug cheat Nadzeya Ostapchuk), Phoenix Juices and Assignment Group are aiming to show that its Organic Good Energy drink offers all the buzz, “but without all the teeth grinding, wall-smashing and three year competition bans.”
Not content with the attention it receives in the trade media after an award win, Special Group has made a habit of paying to get a bit more of it by placing full-page ads in the Herald, making it one of a rare few ad agencies that actually advertise. And it’s done some more showing off after winning Best in Show at the Media Awards alongside Naked/Open for Unitec’s ‘We make the people who make it’ campaign.
There are plenty of creative ways to sell more booze, but not quite as many to convince punters to drink less of it. So, in an attempt to clear up some confusion around what one standard drink means, Y&R and the Tomorrow Project, a social change initiative run by the country’s beer, wine and spirit producers aimed at educating consumers about responsible drinking, have given it its own special glass.
Mergers and acquisitions have been fairly rare throughout These Difficult Times, but the Clemenger Group has made a significant addition to its communications coterie and is hoping to create a formidable advertising force by fusing .99 and direct/CRM/1-to-1 agency justONE.
The X Factor New Zealand, the latest of many popstar search programmes, debuted on New Zealand screens on Sunday to much publicity in the form of TVC campaigns, billboards and online advertising. The ratings coming out in the wake of the first two episodes haven’t blown any ratings records to shreds, but X Factor NZ is providing MediaWorks with a solid opening act.
Monopoly – the game that destroyed a thousand families – is launching a new set based on Auckland. In a fine piece of democratic consultation, the city planners for Monopoly Auckland Edition asked the public for idea suggestions through Facebook and email. As with all things internet, if it can be #hashtag mocked, it will be – as was the case yesterday and today with the #AucklandMonopolyCards hashtag.
Last week we posted a story about TVNZ’s On Demand service hitting the three million streams per month milestone in March. And, in the interests of fairness—and comparison—we asked for MediaWorks’ figures as well. That’s when the fun started.
News Works NZ revamped its newspaper ad of the year awards programme last year, and it’s continued to innovate with the arrival of the Agency League, a points-based scoring system for the newspaper ad of the month award that aims to tap into the competitive nature of creative agencies.
Lynda Brendish wrote a piece about Dove’s Real Beauty campaign celebrating the sentiment of empowerment but criticising the parent company Unilever. Plenty of others have found reasons to criticise, too (for example, featuring traditionally attractive white women and showing women as their own worst enemy rather than the sexist society they live in). But what about the men, you ask? Well, here’s a brilliant parody of the campaign showing how they have a very different problem.
DB Export’s twisted love story, Genesis Energy’s comparative number and a slightly frustrated Dan Carter get a back pat and a bum slap.
The virgins have been sacrificed, the entrails have been sorted through and the creative oracle has spoken in the form of the Axis finalists lists, with Colenso BBDO on top with 57, followed by DDB on 31 and DraftFCB on 28.
To celebrate the passing of the Marriage Equality bill last week, New Zealand candle manufacturer Ecoya has put up a billboard showing two candle wax-covered men embracing with the words “Just Add Equality” beneath.
Online tax refund company MyTax.co.nz has kept its advertising strictly to the radio waves instead of jumping onto the moving pictures with sound bandwagon. This month it’s launched its first TVC campaign highlighting the weird and wonderful jobs some Kiwis have.
Tampons are difficult to advertise without offending some people. The Advertising Standards Authority’s 2012 annual report shows two feminine hygiene products in its top ten most complained about ads list for last year.