The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
The StopPress scanner is smeared with greasy fingerprints, but it’s not because we’re submitting files to Scanwiches or Cat Scans. It’s because we’re hitting go on the May round of The Glossies. But we need your vote. So get in there and choose your favourite.
IdeaWorks closed its New Zealand doors in 2009 and said goodbye to eight staff and all of its clients, including the big Warehouse Stationery account. But it was officially reborn in March this year with Y&R Group as the new owner. And after a solid campaign to launch the new FCO retail brand in New Zealand, it has also been appointed as creative agency for Beds R Us after a three way pitch.
For many years, Brother has focused on promoting printers, copiers, sewing machines, labellers and other products from its “home and business IT peripherals” range, usually with a host of low-budget TV ads and that well-known tune at the end, ‘Brutttthhhher’. But it’s attempting to come out of the shadows in New Zealand—and, at the same time, showcase the Japanese company’s technological prowess—by signing up as naming rights sponsor of the Brother Rally New Zealand and the Brother International Rally of Whangarei.
Many have been anxiously awaiting the announcement, and it has cometh: digital streaming service Spotify is officially available in New Zealand and Australia, opening up its catalogue of more than 16 million tracks and bringing Spotify’s availability to a grand total of 15 countries. So what’s the deal? And why are brands like Coca-Cola getting involved?
The last time Nike and Wieden + Kennedy got together for a massive advertising push was for the Football World Cup and most would agree the end result, ‘Write the Future’, was one of the best sporting commercials of all time. But it’s taken things up a notch for the launch of the 2012 European Championship with the brilliant and multi-layered My Time is Now.
Entries for the 2012 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards officially closed on Friday. But if you still haven’t got your entry in for whatever reason (laziness, inebriation, unreliable minions etc), all is not lost. You can extend the deadline until this Friday by applying for an extension here and forking over $50.
Who’s it for: Rexona by Naked and Curious.
Why we like it: Depending on your viewpoint, the last Rexona spot that aired around the Rugby World Cup was either overwrought and overly earnest or powerful and beautifully shot. The follow up is fairly earnest as well …
As the biggest lender to the rural sector, the National Bank knows more about how our agrarian warriors tick than most. And while this ad is an oldie that was made by DraftFCB and Robber’s Dog around the same time as the National Bank ‘For the Places you’ll Go’ campaign (we obviously we don’t watch enough Country Calendar and hadn’t seen it before), we reckon it’s a goodie.
NZTA, Clemenger BBDO and The Sweet Shop’s Legend campaign became something of a pop cultural phenomenon when it was released last year, with a couple of lines quickly becoming part of the Kiwi vernacular, t-shirts bearing images of Ghost Chips being worn around the country, and hundreds of parodies, spoof ads and TradeMe auctions referencing the original. And while all those involved in its creation are still smarting a little after the most talked about ad of 2011 went home without any gold at the AXIS awards, it appears there is some justice in the world, because it quite rightly received 11 percent of the vote to win the StopPress/ThinkTV TVC of the Year.
MSN NZ announced a few big changes to its business last year, including the launch of real-time bidding (RTB) system Microsoft Advertising Exchange, something akin to a media stockmarket that allowed advertisers and publishers to buy and sell digital inventory. And the bet seems to have paid off, with MSN reporting significant local uptake of the system and a big recent increase in revenue.
One year after choosing to get rid of one of the world’s biggest brands and replace it with an “entirely Kiwi” identity, Z Energy says its commitment to the Shell-less strategy is already paying dividends and offering it a competitive advantage. And the new brand is tracking very well with New Zealanders.
North & South’s My Space hit TVNZ Heartland’s screens last month. And now ACP and TVNZ have announced another broadcast/print media hybrid with a slightly longer name: Entertaining in Style with The Australian Women’s Weekly.
The Westpac rescue helicopters have saved thousands of lives in New Zealand. But saving those lives doesn’t come cheap (in fact, it costs around $4 million a year to fund a three-crew 24/7 immediate-response team). And despite the ongoing support of principal sponsor Westpac and other partners, the assistance of the public is also crucial to help keep them flying, so this year’s fundraising campaign by .99 aims to remind Kiwis that every donation is valuable regardless of its size, just like the equipment inside each helicopter.
It really is quite amazing how much technology is being packed into our pockets at the moment. And Massey University and Assignment Group’s Wellington office have shown just how far things have come—and how ‘the engine of the new New Zealand’ is changing the lives of people here and around the world—by getting the University’s vice-chancellor Steve Maharey to film its new 30-second commercial on an iPhone, something the Commercial Approvals Bureau has confirmed is a New Zealand first.
A rapidly changing media landscape means it’s not the happiest of financial times for many in the newspaper and magazine publishing sector at the moment, but those issues were briefly forgotten on Friday night as the industry gathered in Auckland to reward the best in the business at the Canon Media Awards. And it was APN, which has recently enlisted the help of Deutsche Bank to conduct an asset review, that again popped the most corks on the night and followed on from its ‘grand slam’ last year by taking out the vast majority of the big awards.
52 awards acknowledging on-air personalities, programming, news and sports reporting, promotions, creativity and production, sales and community involvement were handed out via webcast last week at the 2012 New Zealand Radio Awards, and MediaWorks Radio is claiming victory after nabbing 21 of them, with More FM taking all three station of the year accolades.
The second Engaged Web in New Zealand Report, which saw Intergen assess the five most visited New Zealand websites from ten different sectors to measure their level of customer engagement, has just been released, with the highlights being that 90 percent of websites increased their level of engagement since last year, companies are focusing less on the primary corporate websites, New Zealand’s news and media websites are the most engaging and the shopping and classifieds, and banking and finance sectors have made the biggest improvement.
According to a study commissioned by San Francisco-based advertising agency Heat, advertising and marketing types are pretty unique in their use of social media. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ad types are three times more likely to pay attention to brands on Facebook and Twitter. But—more interestingly—they’re also much more likely to do drugs (26 percent vs three percent of the general public), throw up from excessive drinking (37 percent vs nine percent) and hook up with a colleague (26 percent vs eight percent).
After launching earlier this year, Ogilvy’s shopper marketing division OgilvyAction picked up the NZ Pork account and released a campaign starring Simon Gault. And it has put another sticker on the wall after winning the Griffin’s Foods below-the-line account in a three way competitive pitch thought to have involved Energi and the incumbent Apollo.
Total online advertising spend in New Zealand for Q1 2012 totalled $79 million, up $11 million year-on year. But that figure is down almost $10 million on Q3 2011. And over on TV, total television advertising revenue for the March quarter rose four percent to $125 million, up $4 million on the first quarter of 2011.
Hell’s Pizza Roulette product innovation received a huge amount of national and international PR coverage when it was launched and led to a massive increase in sales, without discounting. And Barnes, Catmur & Friends’ ad to promote it has added to the accolades by winning the April round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.
Avid fans might remember the debut of Shortland St back in 1992. Aside from delectable ’90s fashion and haircuts, it featured a particularly naughty romantic rendezvous between Dr Chris Warner and a lycra-clad aerobics instructor played by Suzy Aitken, and also gave birth to that line now etched in the Kiwi psyche: “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata.” Early signs weren’t too promising, however, and ratings dropped after its launch. But that was two decades ago and as the show edges closer to its 20th anniversary, its popularity seems well assured, with the show consistently capturing over 600,000 viewers in the 5+ market, second only to One News. And with a big promotional push to celebrate the milestone, culminating in a special anniversary feature episode on Monday 21 May, TVNZ is hoping those ratings will soon be shooting upwards.
On March 27 StopPress published a story about a BNZ campaign by its outgoing agency Sugar. A comment ostensibly authored by Jasmine Wilkinson was published under that story that took aim at Sugar, BNZ and other partners. We can confirm that Jasmine was not the author of this comment and that another user posted this comment using Jasmine’s name and email address. The comments were inaccurate and in no way representative of the views of Jasmine nor of StopPress, and were thus removed. We regret that both StopPress and Jasmine were implicated in this malicious use of the blog. We have reviewed the commenting system and will implement a new system in the near future.
As Marshall McLuhan famously said, the medium is the message, “creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived”. Very rarely does the medium get the message across and also have the ability to soak up grease, but OMD’s novel campaign for Fly Buys Visa that will see deep fried goods up and down New Zealand being wrapped in branded paper has managed to do exactly that.
According to a recent Commerce Commission report into the telco industry, the number of broadband connections in New Zealand has more than doubled in the past five years and Telecom has around half of the total residential ISP market. But it’s aiming to increase that, sweeten the deal its for existing customers and get more people streaming by doubling the amount of data for all Total Home broadband packages for no extra charge. And, as the new ‘Why Not?’ campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi shows, that means you can download and share to your heart’s content.
The stain jokes have been flowing freely after an onanistic carpet cleaner got busted busting one out on Target this week. And Cavalier Bremworth, with the help of its agency Federation, hasn’t let the opportunity to promote its carpet stain remover pass it by.
Sky TV and TVNZ’s joint venture, Igloo, has gotten the go-ahead from the Commerce Commission, and looks set to launch next month as planned. But a separate investigation is now underway into Sky’s content contracts with ISPs.
Doggelganger, last year’s Pedigree Adoption Drive campaign by Colenso BBDO, used facial recognition technology to match humans with dogs and ended up winning all kinds of awards. And there’s a technological bent to this year’s campaign, too, with production company Finch developing a system that allows two entirely different films to be screened simultaneously on the same cinema screen with the use of specially designed glasses.
The Block is one of the biggest reality TV shows in the world. In Australia, where the show began, it remains the highest-rated television series of all time, and over 350 episodes have been produced in the UK, USA, Israel, Russia, Romania, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Given New Zealand’s penchant for property, it’s perhaps surprising it’s taken this long to arrive here, but it’s landing soon and MediaWorks is claiming a first for a major New Zealand television series by allowing foundation partners whose brands are integrated into the show the ability to use the stars in commercial campaigns outside the broadcast of the programme.
The debate between those in favour of pre-testing ads and the creative departments who generally oppose it is an ongoing one. But Colmar Brunton has some new ammunition in its fight and is about to launch a new development to its Link pre-testing product that uses facial mapping technology to find out how consumers respond to ads.
Ogilvy’s Adam Barnes and Hywel James have taken out the March/April round of the new ORCA year after judges Karl Fleet (Campaign Palace), Lachlan McPherson (Publicis Mojo), Harriet Crampton (The Radio Network) and Chris Schofield (DDB) chose their KFC ads ‘Poor Old $5’ and ‘Ginga Note’ as the best of the bunch.
Who’s it for: New World by Colenso BBDO/.99 and Finch
Why we like it: A long overdue brand refresh for New World, which has been battered by the big-spending Countdown in recent years. All three ads from the new campaign are bang on in terms of …
When we interviewed Andy Fackrell, DDB’s new executive creative director, in the latest edition of NZ Marketing, he said we could probably expect fewer gags and more visual storytelling to come out of the agency in the next few months. And its impressive campaign to promote the Olympic coverage on Sky, a brand that’s well-renowned for taking a humorous approach to its marketing efforts, ticks both of those boxes.
Y&R NZ has been appointed as the creative agency for Quickflix Australia and New Zealand and will start immediately on developing separate campaigns for both markets. And Quickflix is certainly going to need some help in this market, as it seems to have largely gone under the radar since launching with a call to the government to regulate content rights because they hinder broadband uptake.
After a pitch involving a rumoured list of TBWA\ and the incumbent McCann, it’s thought DDB has managed to get a foot in the door with Coca-Cola after winning the Lift Plus account.
With the seemingly imminent move to a tabloid format on weekdays for The New Zealand Herald, the recent appointment of Deutsche Bank to undertake a strategic review of its media assets in New Zealand (and presumably ready some of them for sale) and the decision to upgrade its stake in GrabOne to 100 percent and buy out Shane Bradley, there are some big things happening at APN at the moment. And while times are pretty tough in the newspaper business, there’s plenty of courage being shown under fire and The New Zealand Herald has been rewarded for its efforts by scoring a hat-trick of wins at the 2012 International Newsmedia Marketing Association.