New Zealand’s largest life insurer Sovereign, which is part of the ASB group of companies, has appointed Carat to manage its media strategy and buying, taking the account from OMD without a pitch.

Coinciding with a few new business wins, recent recognition at the Pharmacy Awards and the promotion of Robin Powell to creative director, BCG2 has expanded its creative department with four new arrivals: Alex Dyer, Anita Young, Matthias May and Matt Watts.

As far as years go in the history books, 1932 wasn’t exactly a winner, after all, it was a time when New Zealand was plunged deep in the murky depths of the Great Depression. But that apparently didn’t mean women had to forgo their love of lace knit jumper, cut pattern services or home craft competitions and on December 8 that year, journalists Otto Williams and Audrey Argall launched New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, a magazine that preached the “gospel of usefulness, cheerfulness and happiness”. Eighty years on, in a more exuberant way it continues to equip women with their weekly fixes of fashion, food, weddings and gossip and to mark the auspicious milestone, it’s released a special birthday collector’s edition.

Wine may be heralded as a sophisticated and premium product, but it seems an increasing number of wine labels are seeking to expand their reach by matching their liquid offering with newfangled and arty presentations, most recently exemplified by Kiwi winery Invivo. The label, founded in 2007 by Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron, has released a limited edition range of bespoke graffiti wine boxes produced by prominent Kiwi and British street artists, in a move to target a younger audience of wine enthusiasts.

Wattie’s general manager of marketing Tim Skellern called the battle of the shelf ‘the next big land grab‘. And in-store media and shopper marketing agency Hypermedia has released some information to prove its worth.

The switch is about to get turned off on TVNZ7 this month, but one of the channel’s best and most popular shows, Media7, has been kept alive after NZ on Air gave it funding and MediaWorks agreed to screen it.

New domains including .app, .blog, .cloud, foo, .lol, .mail and .sucks could soon be part of the fabric of the internet. And today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the governing body of the domain name system, opened up about the nearly 2,000 applications it received for new domain extensions.

Innovation helps drives our economy. And, in the marcomms world, innovation helps to drive effectiveness. But are you getting the recognition you deserve? Sir Ray Avery is calling on enterprising Kiwi minds and organisations to enter the New Zealand Innovators Awards. And who are you to argue with one of our country’s best-known innovators?

Many believe the US$108 billion valuation of Facebook, which started off at US$38 a share and has fallen back to around US$31 a share, was based on “option value”; on the future money-making potential of what Wired writer Steven Johnson feels is becoming a monopoly. The social networking behemoth has certainly been under the pump in the media since the IPO, but research released yesterday about the powerful effect both earned and paid messages have on purchase behaviour offered some welcome good news.

The gamification of marketing and branding is here to stay. According to M2 Research, corporations spent USD$100 million on gamification in 2010, with that figure expected to rise to $2.8 billion by 2016. That’s a serious amount of cash—and a serious amount of fun and entertainment. So if you feel the time is ripe for you and your brand to jump in and explore this new marketing trend, Gamedojo (in partnership with Idealog and NZ Marketing) is putting on The Gamification Lab, which is to be held on two consecutive half-days, 26 June and 3 July.

From 15,000 entries, two of Media Design School’s student short films—Dr Grordborts Presents: The Deadliest Game and Das Tub—have made it into the top 50 for the YouTube Your Film Festival and now the school is calling on Kiwis to help boost the films into the top ten. If that happens, the films will screen at the 2012 Venice Film Festival and a grand jury including director Ridley Scott will decide on the overall winner.

Over the summer, Lipton took a four storey canvas slide to some of the country’s summer hotspots, like Homegrown Wellington, Otago Uni’s O-Week, and Sounds in the Sun. And the digital and social aspects of the sLIPTONslide campaign have earned PHDIQ Yahoo! New Zealand’s 2012 first quarter Digital Strategy Award.

Freeview has just launched a new campaign starring Pio Terei and announced some snazzy new interactive features. And to celebrate the imminent digital switchover, we’ve got a MyFreeview digital TV recorder worth $700 to give away to one lucky StopPresser. The Panasonic DMR 380 has a 250gb hard drive, one touch HD recording from Freeview’s eight day electronic programme guide, twin tuner and live pause. And, if you’re in Auckland, it means you can watch and record 16 TV channels and listen to three radio stations. So tell us about the best free thing you’ve ever received and you could get yourself something else for free. 

The buzz about mobility just keeps getting louder but many clients are still working out what the rapid uptake of the technology means for their business and how they can use it to their advantage. So out-of-home media company Eye is aiming to make things a bit easier for them and get their content onto consumers’ phones with the new technology-agnostic Amplify platform, “the world’s largest mobile enabled digital out-of-home network”. 

According to the latest MYOB Business Monitor, 80 percent of Kiwis use the internet to research products and services, so it’s slightly surprising—especially for many in this sector who are battling with the seemingly unrelenting march of technology on the world of marketing and communications—that only 32 percent of New Zealand businesses have a company website. But Westpac and MYOB are aiming to change that with an initiative called getonline.co.nz, and it’s likely to be one of the last major campaigns created for the bank by the Clemenger Group before it heads across to DDB.

According to Overland’s website, attention to detail and good design is paramount, whether it it be the styling of its ranges or the stores customers visit. And, judging by its latest winter campaign, which was shot by Tony Drayton, features the song ‘Pretty Thing’ by Dylan Dray and has been showing on TV3 and Four for the past few weeks, the same goes for its advertising. 

Jason Jones, former creative services manager for DraftFCB and more recently head of integrated production at Sugar, bought The Collective Force from founder Christina Force a few months back. And with refreshed branding, a new website and a re-energised roster of photographers including Andreas Smetana, Charlie, Chris Lewis, Kieran Scott, Sara Orme, emerging talent Tom Roberton, Charles Howells and Spid, he’s looking “to reclaim its position as New Zealand’s premier photography agency”. 

We wrote about Brother’s plans to promote its naming rights sponsorship of the brrmm brrmms a few weeks back. And the multi-channel campaign went live this week, led by a cool new TVC created by Raydar and SPG/Kaleidoscope that’s about as far away as you could get from the Japanese company’s previous TV efforts and links its technology with rally driving by bringing a print out of a car to life.

Four years after McCann Worldgroup New Zealand re-opened its Auckland office, it has more or less pulled the blinds and locked the door. As a result of the consolidation, its clients will now be serviced from the much larger Australian operation.

We know you marcomms folk like to wine and dine from time to time. And the Lewisham Foundation Awards rewarded the best in the Auckland scene recently, so here’s some food—and drink—for thought if you’re planning to impress.