The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
Hot on the heels of the Yellow/Groupy deal and in line with the online acquisition strategies of other major media networks, MediaWorks has entered group buying territory, signing a joint venture agreement with Cudo Australia, Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co. to launch Cudo in New Zealand.
Things seem fairly sedate on the Movings/Shakings front at present, but there are a few noteworthy exceptions, with a Kiwi chap being tapped for higher Unilever honours, TVNZ announcing some new blood for its board and the Semi-Permanent doyenne who’s sailing for waters anew.
Queenstown is the jewel in New Zealand’s tourist crown and, following a successful bid for the exclusive advertising rights at the resort town’s airport, iSite Media is now the proud owner of a fairly hot piece of media property.
Very little of anything seems to get done in New Zealand in January and that rule also tends to apply in the world of advertising, so, aside from Kiwibank’s new ‘we make it easy to change banks’ push and Hyundai’s launch of the i45, it’s fairly slim pickings on the new campaigns front this month, with all the usual DIY, retail and grocery suspects (particularly Countdown on ONE) dominating New Zealand’s holiday screens.
Ninety of Asia Pacific’s most fertile advertising minds have been chosen to select the winners of this year’s AWARD awards. And ten of them will be doing their level best to make sure all the New Zealand entries get higher marks.
Who’s it for: Unitec by Special Group and Film Construction
Why we like it: Filming three students at the start of the school year to promote an academic institution is a particularly brave move, but taking the reality TV approach appeals to the …
When Cannes Lion-winning Curious Film director Darryl Ward was interviewed in the September/October edition of NZ Marketing, he said he’d done the music videos, he’d done the films, he’d done the commercials and now he was keen to reference his love of film and start dabbling in distribution. And the Curious gang have obviously got pretty good taste, because independent film Winter’s Bone, the first film it distributed in Australia and New Zealand, has received four Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress for newcomer Jennifer Lawrence and Best Supporting Actor for John Hawkes.
It’s been four years in the making and now that the winds of economic change seem to be blowing softly, Ian Wishart’s publishing company Howling at the Moon is set to launch ‘Project X’, a “double header” monthly magazine called His/Hers that aims to cater to both sexes.
ACP Media has announced a restructuring plan to split the company’s operations into three publishing divisions, with Paul Dykzeul and newly appointed publishers Fiona Lyon and Lisa Ralph taking the reins.
After three years as the chief executive of CAANZ, Rick Osborne has announced he will be stepping down from the role to take up the job of group general manager, external relations at Fonterra, which is responsible for government relations, trade strategy and regional relations.
Education is all about aspiration; about the promise of knowledge eventually leading to a better lot for the students and their loved ones. And Special Group’s new ‘Change Starts Here’ brand campaign for the Unitec Institute of Technology aims to tap into that—although in a way not seen before in New Zealand.
Vicky Te Puni
I recently read a great article in The Economist about Starbucks’ decision to remove the words ‘Starbucks’ and ‘coffee’ and also the circle around the siren from the logo. As the writer says, there are relatively few brands that are recognised purely by a logo—think Nike, Adidas, Playboy, McDonald’s and Apple. So it’s part of the evolution of a super brand to announce itself as such an integral part of our lives that words are no longer needed. The company now transcends the product itself, which tends to be tied in to the fact that it can now start selling things it wasn’t traditionally associated with. And for Starbucks, this means alcohol and various beverage accessories.
Much like logos, slogans are one of the most accessible parts of the marketing process, which means the general public often feels compelled to pass judgment on them. At StopPress we have an unashamedly unhealthy obsession with town slogans and spend most nights and some weekends devising new ones (for example, Christchurch: Unexpectedly Dangerous). Judging by the response we usually get when we ask our readers to come up with slogans, the marcomms community likes to have a bit of fun with them too. So we got fairly excited when we saw the local Tauranga newspaper had started a campaign to come up with a new slogan for the town in time for the Rugby World Cup, simply because it didn’t have one and obviously felt like it was missing out.
DDB was recently crowned the YoungGuns agency of the year (primarily on the strength of the Sky Arts Channel campaign) and Media Design School is also beaming, with recent Adschool graduates Ed Knowles, frontman of Kiwi band The Checks (wanna see a cool music video?) and Charles Twaddle taking home a Silver Bullet for ‘Reflections’, an ambient outdoor advertising campaign that plays on famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House for HSBC.
The call for entries for the NZ Post advertising tender went out late last year, as it does every three years. But, after a decade as the incumbent, Saatchi & Saatchi has confirmed it won’t be participating in the pitch process.
New Zealand’s (mostly) two horse international awards race between DDB and Colenso has continued apace and this time it’s Colenso in the lead, after it made Advertising Age’s ‘Agency A-List’—”the pick of the top advertising, digital, media, direct and PR agencies around the world”— and was named “international runner up agency of the year”, a spot it shared with Mother (London) and TBWA Hunt Lascaris (Johannesburg). Argentina’s Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi won the category and Wieden + Kennedy took out the agency of the year title.
2010 was a pretty damn good year for Air New Zealand and, whether it was picking fights with magazines, dreaming up the next borderline marketing campaign or collecting one of its many prestigious awards, there was certainly never a dull moment. Having recently snapped up a sizable stake in Virgin Blue, won a Wallpaper Design Award for its snazzy premium economy spaceseats and, after more than four years of design and development, taken delivery of the first big Boeing bird to be fitted with the much-drooled over economy sky couch, dullness has been avoided at the start of 2011 as well. But what about that strange furry Count von Count-esque spokesbeast Rico, we hear you ask. Well, he has been busy travelling the world, offending and delighting in equal measure. And his latest polarising performance for Australia Day, once again created by .99, seems to have continued that trend.
Being ranked 18th best agency in the world last week in the Big Won directory obviously wasn’t enough for DDB New Zealand, because since then it’s gone on to claim the prestigious Young Guns Agency of the Year title, it’s taken out the top spot on the Young Guns creative rankings and it’s also placed as the 28th most awarded agency in the world according to the recently released Gunn Report.
The world is going gaga for social buying sites at the moment: Google was rumoured to have put in an offer of $6 billion for Groupon, Yahoo!7 just purchased Spreets for $40 million, APN has had a fair swag of success with its 50 percent stake in GrabOne and now Yellow has jumped on the bandwagon by snapping up group buying site www.groupy.co.nz.
Who’s it for: Warehouse Stationery by M&C Saatchi and Flying Start
Why we like it: How could you not like an ad that features post-it note balloons, scooters made of briefcases, cardboard buses or sellotape skateboards? It’s fun, it’s cute, it’s crafty and …
There’s no denying that in this digital age, where, as the famous geek saying goes, ‘information wants to be free’, the print media industry has suffered. Many publications have died and some are only just holding on, but others have stuck to their guns, adapted where necessary and managed to maintain their audience—and their advertisers. And North & South, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in March, is one of those publications.
PR and experiential marketing have long been valuable tools for marketers. But are these disciplines gaining prominence in the marketing mix? And if so, how is this affecting more traditional channels? The CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group and the Marketing Association, with the help of online research company Buzz Channel, decided to find out. But they need the help of New Zealand’s marketers.
There’s nothing we love more here at StopPress than making up hilarious fictional band names (eg Quiver and the Groans), laughing at hilarious actual band names or coming up with hilarious lyrics about the wide array of situations in which you get sweaty legs (tennis in jeans, leather seats in Auckland, sex in a sleeping bag, pvc pants on the tube etc). We know the creative power of our readers is immense, and we want to harness it for good rather than evil, so add your own ridiculous fictional band name to the comment wall and you might just get your greasy mitts on one of the hottest tickets in town, because we’ve got one double pass to St. Jerome’s Laneway festival in Auckland’s Aotea Square on 31 January and three double passes to the Wellington event at the Town Hall on 1 February to give away.
… Saatchi & Saatchi brings in a big gun to fill a creative void, Wellywood digital agency Resn takes the piss and, at the same time, enhances its hygiene, Tourism NZ announces some fresh blood and Breeze DJ Kerry Smith leaves to fight a health battle.
In slightly surprising news, New Zealand’s banks are leading the way when it comes to customer service, with one-third of respondents to the Colmar Brunton Distinctive Customer Experiences Survey of 1020 New Zealanders saying they had a particularly good experience when dealing with their bank in the past 12 months. And, in slightly less surprising news, telecommunications companies still have plenty of improving to do, with one in five Kiwi consumers claiming to have had a negative experience when dealing with their telco provider in the same period.
Much like Julie Andrews, the Outdoor Media Association of New Zealand has been seen bursting into song to express its emotions recently after the revenue numbers for 2010 were announced. And fair enough too, because with a year-end total of $62.1 million, gross media revenue for the year was up 7.3 percent over 2009, with the second half of the year delivering a 12.2 percent increase on the same period of 2009.
FOUR, TVWorks’ great mainstream entertainment hope for 2011, launches in February and, with a 15 percent boost in ad revenue since the changes were rung to C4 last year, chief executive Jason Paris is pretty excited about what the year might hold for the network. Much to the relief of those who pleaded with MediaWorks to enlist the services of an agency instead of doing its creative inhouse, Special Group got the nod last year and proceeded to get stuck into the promotional work for the launch. And this is what the talented gang have come up with (yes, that is the real number for the BSA).
PR and communications specialist, past National Party president and general woman-about-town Michelle Boag has been hired to fill the newly created role of executive director at Ogilvy NZ and will take up the role from February.
New Zealand will soon welcome a big new player in the out-of-home sector, with media company Taxi Impact and a range of taxi companies—including the main taxi co-operatives under the Blue Bubble brand—agreeing to start displaying advertising on their vehicles in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The New Zealand television scene is already über-competitive. But, with a range of new initiatives from the broadcasters, a slowly increasing sense of economic optimism and an array of new technology that’s changing the game for everyone, things look set to get even spicier in 2011. In an effort to eat into the more lucrative older demographics that have long been the domain of TVNZ, TV Works is changing its focus slightly and is set to launch its mainstream entertainment channel FOUR very shortly. And it’s a decision chief executive Jason Paris says is already bearing fruit.
Aside from a couple of very well-publicised PR disasters and a host of aggrieved agency folk who seemed mightily pissed off about the halving of their 20 percent commissions, TVNZ had a stellar year in 2010, with solid ratings, steadily increasing ad revenue and an array of impressive innovations—both for viewers and advertisers. It also welcomed new sales director Paul Maher into the fold in August and, while he thinks it will be slow and steady as she goes this year, he’s confident TVNZ can repeat—and maybe even exceed—the performance of 2010.
With a combination of effective, unashamedly jingoistic advertising, a solid product offering and consistently high rates of customer satisfaction, Kiwibank has performed the role of challenger brand brilliantly and given the big boys plenty of grief since it was set up in 2002. Hell, ASB even took aim at it last year in the misguided ‘We’re a Kiwi bank’ campaign and Sam Neill signed on to be the bank’s mascot, so it must be doing something right. Sadhana Raman, Kiwibank’s general manager of brand and marketing communications—and a finalist in last year’s Marketer of the Year awards—goes back in time.
As the cheesy Telecom slogan says, from here we can do anything—including, as Barnes, Catmur & Friends can attest, making weird calendars for Berlin-based bag retailers.
Spark PHDIQ has taken out the third quarter round of the Yahoo!Xtra Digital Strategy Awards for its Unilever Sunsilk Co-creations campaign, which the judges—Yahoo!Xtra’s Laura Maxwell-Hansen, Mohawk Media’s Helen Baxter and guest judge Gavin Pook, Red Bull’s marketing manager—felt succeeded in re-launching the brand through a range of digital channels and firmly established it as an expert in hair care.
Hark! This is the first exciting instalment of Moving/Shakings for 2011, and there have been a few staff profits and losses at the Marketing Association, Insight Creative, The Research Agency, AWARD, MTV and The Pond.
Following the events of the past few years, most media have been busy licking their wounds—and, in many cases, focusing on survival rather than growth. But, after consistently good revenue results and signs that there is more growth to come, the Kiwi digital sector has developed quite the swagger. Liz Fraser, the chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand and head of MSN NZ, opines.