YouTube hits 1 billion monthly users milestone
It’s no easy feat to have one out of every seven people on the planet surfing your site for videos of cats and Justin Bieber, but that’s exactly what YouTube’s achieved this month.
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Browsing: News
The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
Twitter turns seven
Twitter turns seven today and releases video to celebrate. Plus how to take a walk down memory lane and find out what your first tweet was.
Mac’s pushes the craft connection, Speight’s looks to the past
There’s been plenty of chat about craft beer recently, with the ‘craft beer you can actually drink’ campaign for Lion’s new Crafty Beggars range—and what some see as its duplicitous brand wank—ruffling a few feathers. Lion-owned Mac’s also sits in the ‘popular craft’ category and it’s also aiming to firm up its association with the term through its Craft Collective promotion.
Switchy business: Roy Morgan shows results of National Bank lolly scramble
The Great Bank Wars of 2012 made for enthralling marketing viewing and, after the National Bank shuffled off, its competitors smelled blood. Now Roy Morgan has provided some figures on just how many Kiwis shifted banks in the past year and where National Bank customers went.
Interactive advertising sees another year of growth during a year of decline for the ad industry
Interactive advertising saw the largest dollar figure growth of all measured categories according to the Advertising Standards Authority’s 2012 annual turnover report.
Resn jumps into motion-controlled development for Leap Motion
Wellington-based digital studio Resn will be one of the first developers in the world to launch on the highly anticipated Leap Motion platform.
Fairfax Australia kicks off paywalls this month
Fifteen dollars a month. That’s what overseas readers will need to pay in order to access stories on The Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites.
Ease vs. overload: the blessing/curse of connection
Digitally connected consumers in New Zealand use wireless and mobile technology to make their lives easier and save time, shows the latest report from Nielsen. But other studies show technology hasn’t made life easier or more fulfilling at a fundamental level. PLUS: an infographic on the state of digital play in New Zealand.
Kiwi band uses Reddit love to promote film
New Zealand band The Naked and Famous uses Reddit to promote new live concert film. What started as a promotion quickly grew into a question and answer session with fans and newcomers alike.
The fantastic digital four
Late last year, Young & Shand’s Ben Young and Daniel Phillips ventured to New York to attend the ad:tech 2012 conference. And here’s what was being talking about on the bleeding edge.
First names, now years: Coke taps into musical memories—UPDATED
Following on from the success of the initial Share a Coke campaign, Coca-Cola has partnered with Universal Music so New Zealanders “can relive these special moments with friends and family by sharing a Coke and a song”.
The attention economy: Paul White’s take on the new era of outdoor advertising
AUT’s Paul White has been challenging assumptions around outdoor advertising.
TV on top of ad spend despite year-on-year shrink—UPDATED
Television is still the top earner in ad land raking in $614 million and accounting for 28.4 percent of all advertising in 2012, according to the Advertising Standards Authority’s annual industry turnover statistics.
Auckland Council halts Powershop’s dancing Mao ad
The image of Chinese revolutionist Mao Tse-tung dancing the infamous Gangnam Style was just too much for the Auckland Council, which has denied Powershop’s latest ‘Same Power Different Attitude’ ad from appearing on its bus stops.
Marmageddon comes to an end, Henry congratulates Kiwis for enduring crisis—UPDATED
Sanitarium and Saatchi & Saatchi made the best of a bad yeast-based situation by creating the Don’t Freak Out campaign and focusing on the brand’s ‘flawsomeness’. And, not surprisingly, it’s also making the most of Marmite’s long-awaited comeback, with a Facebook countdown, a bit of a PR offensive and another rousing speech from the father of the nation, Graham Henry, congratulating Kiwis on getting through these dark days.
The super powers of sponsorship
Product placement is just about as old as time itself (or at least, almost as old as the film industry). But what if some of our favourite superheroes were to be underwritten by the likes of Nike or Adidas? Italian Roberto Santos’ series Sponsored Heroes imagines some possible pairings.
NZ Woman’s Weekly goes back in time for Mirage campaign
Asahi is looking to the future with its latest billboard, but Mitsubishi has been dwelling on the past with its Mirage campaign and NZ Woman’s Weekly subscribers were transported back in time in this week’s issue with a magazine cover from 1985 and an old Mirage ad on the back.
TVCs of the Week: 19 March
Flying with Coke, writhing in cash and playing with money.
Brewed in the future, causing confusion in the present
A couple of years ago Barnes, Catmur & Friends employed the services of some LED lights and a thermometer to rub salt in the wintry wounds of Kiwis and draw attention to the temperature in Fiji. And now, to draw attention to the fact that Asahi has been ‘Brewed in the Future since 1987’, it’s added a digital clock to a billboard in Ponsonby Road that, as Paul Catmur says, has been “causing a wee bit of confusion all around” and keeping revellers on their toes.
Y&R ends drought with Westfield win—UPDATED
DraftFCB resigned the Westfield account at the start of the year and took up the Paper Plus business soon after. And after a competitive pitch, it’s thought Y&R has finally put one in the win column and taken over the account.
BNZ plays the morbid reality card in new Kiwisaver campaign – UPDATED
Cheerfully depressing BNZ Kiwisaver ads tells it like it is, making you ponder the outlook of your retirement years.
From the stage to the streets: Adshel dresses up for WOW
There’s always a whole heap of creativity on display when the amazing outfits competing for the World of Wearable Art Awards hit the stage in Wellington every year. And now there’s some creativity on the streets as well, with Adshel and True joining forces to create a specially built shelter on Ponsonby Road to promote the ‘Off the Wall: Wearable Art Up Close’ exhibition currently featured at the Auckland Museum and drive ticket sales for the 2013 show from 26 September – 6 October.
What do an egg and a Moleskine Photo Book have in common?
Moleskine Photo Books were already classics, but now they’re fast and cool. Once you’ve uploaded your images, MILK Books’ new Autofill tool pre-populates your photo book so you can make it in less time than it takes to boil an egg. Try it now with a 20-page, genuine Moleskine Medium Photo Book for only US$20. Enter BOILANEGG/MOLESKINE when you check out.
GrabOne founder’s new Pet project
Six months on from selling his remaining 25 percent stake in Sella and GrabOne to APN for a cool $4 million, Shane Bradley launches his latest endeavour: Pet.co.nz.
Barfoot & Thompson launches iPad app
Real estate company rubs salt into wound by showing this reporter all the houses he’ll never afford with visual and interactive iPad app.
Get slangy, win One Man, Two Guvnors tickets
One Man, Two Guvnors, which is currently playing at The Civic Theatre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival, has received a host of five star reviews around the world, with The Guardian saying that it was “a triumph of visual and verbal comedy,”, Everything Theatre describing it as “one of the most side-splittingly hilarious productions ever to be staged in London” and StopPress saying “it’s definitely a stage production”. Benevolent taxi media company Taxi Impact has offered up a couple of tickets to the show and even though it’s set in Brighton, the East End is close enough, so give us your best bit of Cockney rhyming slang and you could be the lucky recipient of a couple of $118 Lemony Snickets.
Radio revenue grows 6.5 percent in first two months of 2013
Radio revenue saw an upswing in January and February, with a year-on-year growth of 6.5 percent across the market according to the Radio Broadcasters Association (RBA).
Tangible stalks another niche with new hunting magazine
The launch of a new print product is fairly rare in These Difficult Digital Times, but Tangible Media has just sent a new one into the wild, with NZ Hunting World hitting the shelves today.
I hear voices (in my meeting): Word of Mouth takes its talent to the iPhone
Finding the right voice is a crucial component of many ad campaigns. And Word of Mouth is trying to make that job a little bit easier with the launch of its new iPhone app.
DraftFCB’s trick-turning trickery hits the ORCA sweet spot—UPDATED
Make an ad interesting enough, give something away for free or fool the media into talking about something, and brands can get extra attention for less expense. And DraftFCB’s cheeky stunt to promote the premiere of Prime TV’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl did just that, earning “a free 72 hour ad” for the show and taking February’s ORCA award. Updated with comments from TRB and DraftFCB that show there were a few insiders required to pull off the stunt.
Things: Samsung unveils Galaxy S4 with child actor we all want to punch
It wasn’t as bad as Qualcomm’s Born Mobile debacle at CES, but Samsung really pushed the schmaltz at today’s Galaxy S4 reveal event involving role-playing families, awkward clapping and worst of all – child actors.
RaboDirect and Shine part ways, M&C Saatchi takes up the slack
M&C Saatchi recently lost its biggest client to .99, but it has clawed some business back after taking over from Shine on the RaboDirect account.
New Fairfax campaign hopes to sell advertisers on the power of its storytelling
Stories are at the heart of Fairfax Media New Zealand’s latest trade campaign aimed at selling advertisers on the potential of tagging along with developing news.
Getty calls on Kiwi creatives to give nonprofits a boost with its Creative Grants scheme
Getty Images supports photographers and communications professionals who use their talents to promote positive change in our world. And nonprofits need striking imagery and video to tell their stories effectively and elevate awareness for their cause. So to help do this Getty Images is offering two Creative Grants of US$20,000, which is shared equally between the photographer (or filmmaker) and agency partner to cover costs as they work together to create compelling new imagery for the nonprofit of their choice.
Google’s dual screening research sees VivaKi put its money where the eyes are with big YouTube buy up
When we spoke with Google’s country manager Tony Keusgen last year, he was openly beating the white coat marketing drum and said the New Zealand industry had a long way to go when it came to properly embracing evidence-based marketing. And he seems to have found an ally in that crusade in Vivaki, which has signed up for one of the biggest YouTube inventory deals in the company’s history on the back of a research project that looked at the prevalence of dual screening in New Zealand.
Google Reader is dead, but here are some handy alternatives
Bad news for millions of people (including a few in StopPress office judging by the weeping in the corner) – Google Reader is no longer. The news aggregation and RSS tool is to be axed in July, according to Google.