The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
Les Mills International (LMI) is one of the country’s biggest under-the-radar business success stories, and its fitness products can be found in more than 14,000 gyms in 80 countries. And to help keep in touch with them all—and reach some fairly ambitious goals for growth—it has appointed Contagion as its new global media social media partner, effective immediately.
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.
A total of 225 entries were received across 13 categories for the 2012 edition of the Magazine Awards. And after the judges had their wicked way with them all, they ended up choosing 144 finalists. Some category finalists will be announced at the Gala Awards Dinner on June 28.
A record 34,301 entries from 87 countries have been submitted to the Cannes Lions 59th International Festival of Creativity, an overall increase of 19 percent versus last year. And, after a total of 347 entries from New Zealand across almost all of the 15 categories, the Kiwi contingent will be aiming to improve on its rather slim takings last year when things kick off in ten days.
It’s all go in the local broadcasting world at the moment. Sky’s content deals with ISPs have been put under the microscope, Freeview has started its final push before the digital switchover and announced some impressive technological additions, streaming service Quickflix has given Kiwis another (legal) way to watch, and, as Igloo’s 15-second teaser ad by Sugar shows, the “new kid in town”, with it’s colourful blobby mascots, is getting set to launch after the joint venture between Sky and TVNZ was recently cleared by the ComCom.
Photo: Paul Statham
Wendy Rayner, head of marketing at NZ Lotteries and reigning Marketer of the Year, has resigned after around nine years with the organisation and seven years in the top marketing role.
Kelly Bennett, the founder and managing partner of Eleven PR New Zealand, has been tapped on the shoulder and will lead the expansion of brand activation, experiential and PR services for the TBWA\ network throughout Asia Pacific.
After NZ Lotteries’ big rehash of Instant Kiwi, DDB launched the much-loved, much-awarded and completely OTT ‘It Can All Change in an Instant’ musical number in 2010. And while the humour is still there in the follow-up ‘It Pays to Push your Luck’, they have taken a slightly more complicated approach this time round.
Amateurs regularly seem to think they can foot it with the big boys. Usually they can’t, but technology is helping even things up a bit and Panasonic and Auckland digital shop Tango have launched a cool interactive campaign/social experiment to see if the new Lumix cameras do as they claim and allow anyone to shoot like a pro.
Continuing Tangible Media’s strategy of special issues and brand extensions seen with the likes of NZ Weddings Planner, Everyday Dish and NZ Rugby World’s First XV, next in line is the hunting market.
Who’s it for: Freeview by True and Flying Fish
Why we like it: In the final promotional push before the digital switchover begins in four months, the free-ness of Freeview is being hammered home once again, this time with some great animation and a nostalgic and patriotic …
With customers embracing the internet and social media in ever-increasing numbers (the Banking Ombudsman has just released a new guide for online banking), Canstar has embarked on its first review of the New Zealand online banking market and ASB, a bank renowned for its digital chops and social focus, has been named the best of the lot.
It’s getting to the business end of the digital switchover and there’s just four months to go until the first two regions—the West Coast and Hawke’s Bay—pull the plug on New Zealand’s analogue TV signal. So Freeview has launched a campaign with its new agency True starring Pio Terei that aims to capture the 16 percent of homes still to make the leap to digital–and to convince them to choose the newly pimped out Freeview platform rather than its nearest competitor, the soon-to-launch Sky/TVNZ joint venture Igloo.
According to Nielsen’s Online Retail Report, the number of online shoppers in New Zealand has now reached over 1.6 million (49 percent of the total population aged 18+), an increase of 122,000 on the previous year and more than double since 2004.
After seeing this classic ad for Hudson Toffee Pops as a young chap at some stage in the early ’90s, I, like many of the nation’s children, instantly developed a crippling fear of red couches and watching it now brings back extremely painful memories. That’s not true, but reliable informants have reliably informed us that the rather artistic male lead is an ad man of some repute. So the first person to tell us who it is will get a copy of Martin Lindstrom’s Brandwashed.
Cadbury’s new global brand campaign Joyville got underway with a big TVC about the secret chocolate ecosystem. And the local branch has launched the first New Zealand iteration of that campaign, something Cadbury’s general manager of marketing Iaan Buchanan calls chapter one of a multi-chapter story that will be told this year.
After officially winning the Vodafone account at the end of February, DraftFCB has sent some of its first work into the wild, with one simple retail ad for “the nakedest ever broadband deal” and another slightly more out-there idea—quite literally—for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III.
New Zealand is one of the only markets in the world where Red Bull isn’t the number one energy drink. That title is held by Frucor’s V, and it got there through a combination of savvy NPD and a series of brilliant campaigns. Given what’s come before, it’s always going to be a challenge to raise the bar creatively, but Colenso BBDO and Frucor have given it a good nudge with their latest effort, the V Motion Project.
Shared responsibility is an increasingly important part of the road safety programme, as evidenced most recently with the hugely successful Ghost Chips campaign, which, for the first time, specifically targeted young Maori and used humour to equip them with the tools required to speak up when one of their mates was too drunk to drive. And NZTA, Clemenger BBDO and The Sweet Shop have followed up that pop cultural phenomenon with a new campaign that tries to convince family members to do the same.
Kiwis of all ages are prolific users of social media but, according to a recent Colmar Brunton survey, it’s not just to keep up to date with family and friends. Nearly 60 percent of Kiwis follow at least one brand and over one third (37 percent) say a social media presence makes a brand more appealing to them.
MediaWorks TV has confirmed it will be not be renewing its output deal with CBS and is instead shifting the funds into the creation of local content. And Sky’s free-to-air channel Prime has taken over the rights and signed up for its first ever output deal.
We called it in late April, and now the official word is out: Westpac New Zealand has appointed DDB Group as its sole creative advertising agency.
Newspapers, according to the latest readership and circulation figures, are still holding on and, in some rare cases, adding readers. So why, when the commonly held view is that newspapers are dead—or at least dying—does New Zealand appear to be bucking an international trend?
Auckland-based dairy producer The Collective has embraced social media as its major marketing channel in an effort to better connect with its ‘herd’ and, in many cases, get them to assist with product creation. And that strategy has been vindicated, not just because it is one of the fastest growing companies in New Zealand, but because it was also named as the first and only New Zealand brand to feature in The Social Brands 100 list—”the authoritative ranking of brands leading the way in the social age”—coming in at number 57 ahead of brands like Dell, Groupon and Intel.
We wrote about Colenso’s win of the Tourism Fiji account back in early April, and the island nation has added another Kiwi agency to its roster after Auckland-based full service web agency Sparks Interactive was named as its new website partner.
Who’s it for: Sony by Frontage, Flying Fish and Blockhead
Why we like it: ‘Tis a beautiful piece of film, with New Zealand in a starring role. David Attenborough himself would probably rather stay inside to watch nature than venture into the real world after seeing this …
Sony has a history of making beautiful ads to sell its TVs, with bouncing balls, paint and rabbits all clocking up millions of views on YouTube. And Flying Fish director Luke Savage and local effects house Blockhead have built on that tradition with a brilliant TVC for agency Frontage Inc in Japan to promote the qualities of Sony’s X-reality picture engine.
After the defection of TVNZ’s ex-head of sales and marketing Paul Maher to MediaWorks recently, general manager of media solutions Jeremy O’Brien has taken over half of that role and been announced as the new head of sales.
The NZRU will no doubt be hoping the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup win might put a bit more lead in its commercial pencil to help get through a fairly difficult time for the national sport. And it’s managed to retain five of the team’s major sponsors, with Coca-Cola, Unilever, Sanitarium, Barkers and Bvlgari re-signing as All Blacks sponsors for undisclosed sums.
The magazine sector had some pretty good news to report in the latest round of readership and circulation figures and, given what’s happening internationally, the New Zealand newspaper sector should also be fairly pleased with the results, which show there’s still plenty of life in the old dogs yet.
You can read all about it here, and you can see all about it here.
It’s time to get back to our ABCs. And our Nielsens.
For only the second time, the new magazine circulation methology has spewed its quarterly data, coinciding with the Nielsen Magazine Comparatives Q2 2011 – Q1 2012 readership results.
And the news: it’s all up for most and a …
A handful of Kiwi agencies have made it into the finals of the APMA Star Awards, celebrating the year’s finest promotional and experiential marketing across Australasia.
Apollo Marketing NZ, Loyalty NZ and Below the Line (the only indie Kiwi agency) are among the 31 finalists shortlisted from a pool …
Earlier this month, prime minister John Key recently came out and said he’s not against gay marriage, following on from US president Barack Obama announcing his support for it. And last week the local marriage equality movement forged ahead with a punchy new campaign, known simply as WTF?
The …
Quickflix is hoping to make some big impacts in the New Zealand market as the country’s first TV and movie streaming service and, to help it along, its just launched its Quickflix App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The App allows Quickflix WatchNow subscribers to view unlimited blockbuster movies and television shows instantly, on-demand, from their devices and also provides entertainment for non-subscribers, including access to all the latest movie trailers, as well as free Hollywood entertainment.
To celebrate the launch, Quickflix is giving you the chance to win a year’s subscription to its service (worth $203.88). To win, we want to know which TV show and movie you’d stream to your hearts content, and why. And, because everyone likes to win something, every entry receives a free month’s subscription to Quickflix.
In front of an almost capacity Langham conference centre young MC Oliver Driver had to shout to get attention. That’s becasue the 800-odd media and agency flunkies were riotessly celebrating their efforts last night at the CAANZ Media Awards.
And the big winner? Well it was linked to the halting of interest and inflation rates last year, it forced the electricity industry to drop its pants and it has already won a host of the country’s big awards. And DraftFCB continued its golden run by following up from the last two year’s efforts and taking the Best in Show title for its work on Electricity Authority’s What’s My Number? campaign.