The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
The Simpsons is celebrating the screening of the 500th show and Special Group is doing a bit of celebrating itself because the newspaper ad to promote the milestone that was filled with famous moments from the show has been awarded the NAB ad of the month.
The Commerce Commission’s 2011 telecommunications annual monitoring report shows competition among telcos is heating up—and consumers, who doubled their consumption of mobile data since last year, are getting better and more diverse deals as a result.
The RadioLive interview and 3 News clip featuring John Banks make for rather comical, cringe-worthy viewing. And, as the anonymous donation saga continues to unfold, the contextual humourists at Saatchi & Saatchi and Tui have jumped on board the Banksy train with a new billboard.
Fresh from its gobbledeegook-heavy global brand relaunch, the local branch of ZenithOptimedia has announced it has won the Puma New Zealand media account from incumbent Lassoo, which will continue to work with the brand in a PR capacity.
For 150 years, New Zealand’s Merino fibre was largely invisible, as it was sold into a world commodity market that was dominated by high-volume producers and then diluted into blends. But in 1995, the growers decided to take a stand and Merino New Zealand was set up. And in 1999, it was awarded the Supreme Marketing Award and Business-to-Business award for lifting the fibre out of the commodity basket and positioning local merino at the highest end of the international market.
The National Business Review is shaking up its online subscription model by offering individual companies and all their staff a flat-rate fee of of $249+GST per quarter to gain access to its online content.
Television viewing in New Zealand is at its highest ever level and television advertising took the top spot off newspapers for the first time ever last year according to the ASA ad revenue figures. So reports of its death appear to be, as the saying goes, greatly exaggerated. Of course, recording technology means interruptive advertising ain’t what it used to be and you can’t just buy attention like you used to, but despite the many digital distractions that are now available to brands and agencies, the power of a good TV ad is still unquestionable, primarily because it is one of the best ways for brands to convey emotion, tell stories and, in most cases, get their messages in front of as many humans as possible.
It’s 1994 and punching your wife was not so much a crime as ‘just a domestic’. Times have changed—kind of. There’s just as much punching these days but at least it’s called what it is: family violence. And a multichannel, multiple partner campaign by The Police which won the Supreme Award and the not-for-profit category at the 1995 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards helped lay the foundations for what it hoped would be a better, safer country.
First they gave the All Blacks a sausage and now Brandspank has brought a new meaning to the term digital marketing with a campaign to launch Sky’s new Android mobile app.
Who’s it for: RaboDirect by Shine and String Theory
Why we like it: It’s a common trick for challenger brands in the banking space to target the big boys, but this spot communicates the savings message and it’s very well made (take a bow, String …
The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a church billboard proclaiming “Jesus Heals Cancer” that was erected by the Equippers’ Church in Napier and an ad for Waikato Draught that linked itself with the Chiefs in a Waikato Times supplement have crossed the line.
In late 2010, FMG shacked up with Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington, embarked on a bit of a brand refresh and ramped up its advertising, both to position itself as risk advice specialists with an in-depth understanding of the unique issues New Zealand farmers face, but also to try and move it further into the mainstream insurance market. And it’s taken a fairly novel, and some might say fairly un-rural approach to attract customers: a YouTube channel that was launched mid last year.
When it comes to comedy, the Kiwi cultural cringe seems to have steadily departed and many of our local humour mongers are now popular drawcards, both on TV and in person. MediaWorks has focused heavily on comedy with its programming on both 3 and Four, and it continues to sponsor and broadcast the New Zealand International Comedy Festival (it is showing last week’s sold-out comedy gala tonight from 8.30pm-10:30pm). To celebrate this year’s edition, it’s put a few of its seductive stars in front of a well-vaselined camera and created some channel idents around the theme ‘Comedy is Sexy’. But if that’s not enough comedy for you, we’ve got a 7 Days VIP Prize Pack to give away, which includes 2 x tickets to 7 Days LIVE at SkyCity Theatre on Thursday 3 May. So tell us a joke and we’ll give the funniest one the booty.
APN launched its weekly street-zine Volume on September 6, 2011 and started competing head-on with Groove Guide and a host of other online outlets. But the tough music/youth/pop culture media market has claimed another victim, because APN has decided to discontinue the print edition after just 33 issues—and on the first day of NZ Music Month.
In a world where political correctness often seems to rule, taboos are plentiful. Thankfully, busting them is still an integral part of good comedy. But there’s still potential for embarrassing social mishaps with every attempt at edgy humour. So, to help provide some guidance as to what is and what isn’t appropriate, the NZ International Comedy Festival gathered together an elite team of stand-up comedians, sit-down mathematicians and Colenso BBDO digital folk to try and solve a riddle that has plagued mankind for centuries: when is it too soon to joke about something?
There’s been a bit of chatter in the media recently about whether MediaWorks will renew its licensing deal with CBS and whether the end is nigh for its flagship current affairs show 60 Minutes. That decision is still up in the air, but what is clear is that 60 Minutes host Mike McRoberts and new arrival Guyon Espiner are involved in a new international current affairs show called Three60 that’s screening on Sunday mornings and is being sponsored by Massey University.
Why, isn’t that Sarah Kennedy, now chief executive of Fonterra retailer RD1? Yes it is, but who is she with?
When it comes to challenger brands in the financial space, the ‘watch out for those big greedy, sneaky banks’ theme is a fairly common one. Kiwibank has been on that buzz since ages ago, NZCU launched its get your bank off your back campaign last year and now RaboDirect and Shine have taken a similar approach with the ‘Greedy Banks’ campaign.
The relative lack of sun—and therefore barbecues—over the summer months hasn’t been ideal for the booze industry (craft beer continues to grow, while the overall beer market is thought to be down around five percent). But as the inside months approach and the rugby season gets into full swing, Tui’s new ‘Halftime Distractions’ spot by Saatchi & Saatchi and The Sweet Shop’s Stuart McDonald (he of Summer Heights High fame) is hoping to ensure the boys will focus on the brown stuff should they be required to provide for the group.
Supporters of publicly-funded media in New Zealand are feeling fairly tormented at present, with the National Government’s apparent ‘nice to have’ stance manifesting itself in a five year funding freeze for Radio New Zealand and the imminent switch-off of TVNZ7. But Nielsen’s Year That Was report, which includes info on New Zealand media trends, has provided more proof of the importance—and popularity—of Radio New Zealand National by showing it was the top ranking radio station in New Zealand in 2011 with a market share of 11.1 percent.
Special Group won a couple of AXIS awards this year for its ‘Most Creative Country on Earth’ awards theme in 2011. And when Colenso BBDO was handed the reins for this year’s awards it ran with the idea of a metal detector and tapped into the rich vein of science-based humour seen in shows like Look Around You. So for those who weren’t there on the night, or for those who were there but were seeing how many breadsticks they could fit in their mouth, here’s the ’70’s-inspired opening sequence.
Ah the past, it’s another country. To celebrate 21 years of the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards—and to reference the fact there are just 21 days to get your entries into this year’s awards—we’ll be trawling through the archive to bring you 21 winners from the past. First up, the Supreme Winner from 1996, ASB’s Robert the Robot. Has it stood the test of time? You be the judge.
Tomorrow sees the launch of the first “broad-appeal” free-to-air TV station in more than a decade in New Zealand. And Choice TV is taking a slightly different approach to its programming by featuring shows based around a different theme each night—and trying to align sponsors with them.
TSB has a stellar record when it comes to customer service and customer satisfaction, and it is, as its advertising says, New Zealand’s most recommended bank. And its latest innovation aims to enhance the banking experience even further with an impressive—and significant—new mobile banking app called {my}bank that was more than one year in the planning, comes complete with Bump technology and employed the branding and design services of Special Group.
POS material for the new campaign
There’s a long history of using animals in advertising, from Saatchi & Saatchi’s geese, to Telecom’s meerkats to Toyota’s Bugger to Cravendale’s Cats with Thumbs and thousands of others inbetween. And Visique and Republik are tapping into that rich vein—and aiming to inject some light-hearted relief into the somewhat clinical New Zealand optometry sector—by launching a new advertising campaign using bespectacled animals to encourage people to look after their eyes.
The MPA has chosen its new board, with Tangible Media’s John Baker replacing Fairfax’s Lynley Belton as chair and ACP’s Paul Dykzeul replacing acting deputy chair Cathy Parker from Adrenalin. And the new heads have some big plans to breathe life into the sector—and, more specifically, promote the unique benefits of the medium to advertisers and eventually increase its share of the revenue pie.
Roy Morgan has a long history of customer satisfaction research, particularly in the banking space. But it’s expanded its reach with its latest initiative in an effort to reward Kiwi brands across 24 sectors that have the best customer satisfaction ratings.
The outdoor sector had a pretty good 2011, not just in terms of the sizeable revenue increase of $13 million over 2010 to reach its highest total yet of $83 million, but also because the industry body OMANZ was given a bit more love. The brand was overhauled, the website was redone, it is hoping to resurrect the Outdoor Awards, and this month it has taken to the streets to spread the outdoor gospel with an out-of-home advertising campaign.
Following on from last week’s story about Fairfax Media halving agency commission, it has sent out a release detailing the changes to its business model and its effect on customers. And it’s also announced some changes to its sponsorship programme by aligning itself with Spikes Asia rather than Cannes Lions.
The IAB recently dropped the Bolly from its awards and renamed them the IABNZ Creative Awards in an effort to bring them in line with other international IAB competitions. And the first winner of the newly modified awards is Special Group, with the Mash-up banner for Four.
The Webby Awards aim to honour general internet awesomeness, and fighting it out for gongs with big global beasts like Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest are local hopes Shift for Tourism New Zealand, Resn for Toyota’s Camry Effect, Xero and DDB/Rapp Tribal for McDonald’s. And they need your votes.
Print and TV are usually fairly uneasy and rather competitive bedfellows. But the once disparate media realms are steadily converging as TV websites embrace print and print titles increasingly embrace video. And TVNZ and ACP’s North & South have converged on each other with a new show based on the long-running My Space section in the magazine that will screen on its patriotic pay TV channel Heartland.
Who’s it for: TVNZ’s Judge the Jury app/website at the AXIS awards by Contagion
Why we like it: There’s almost nothing better than Bad Lip Reading, so this in-housey, piss-takey spoof ad to draw attention to an AXIS gimmick got our vote.
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Media multi-tasking is on the rise in New Zealand, with nearly a third of us consuming multiple forms of media simultaneously according to Nielsen’s Year That Was, a new report exploring the key consumer, retail, media and advertising trends that have shaped New Zealand over the past year.
There was joy, despair, controversy, awkward humour and even a foil-wrapped baked potato that was removed from the host’s pants. So now that you’ve digested and discussed all the winners, here’s your regular helping of visual evidence from AXIS 2012.
12 years ago a bunch of mates who loved good beer got together in a modest brew house and packaging line that was built from scratch in a disused crocodile farm near Fremantle, Western Australia, and created a pale ale. Now Little Creatures is expanding its range in New Zealand with three new brews – Little Creatures Pilsner, Bright Ale and Rogers’ Beer. So tell us what the coolest real-life little creature is (Pistol Shrimp all the way) and we’ll send out a few six packs to the best efforts.