The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
This week on Ads@6, a cool car ad from Lexus; another mascot family hits the screens, this time for The Warehouse; Rhys Darby dangles worms for the 2degrees Xmas push; BP is back (with a robo-dog); Jetstar greys up; and who can resist the Magic of Mantovani?
… as Yellow wins some more awards, the wheels on the Instant Kiwi scratchie bus go round and round, Fresh PR slips into something more comfortable, the University of Auckland School of Business reaches a big milestone with its 40,000th Short Course attendant, TVNZ ups its streaming, TV3 spruces up its website, the crowd goes wild for Microsoft Kinect and Sealegs is endorsed by scientists.
McDonald’s New Zealand has made a key marketing appointment. And it’s a familiar face: ex-Air New Zealander Jules Lloyd, who recently left the airline after an eight year stint.
Despite recent well-publicised difficulties in the retail sector, Newmarket has done a pretty good job of trumpeting its swankiness and array of shopping options. But it now has a suburban rival, after an enthusiastic group of business owners from the High Street District, together with the champions of the Auckland CBD Heart of The City, appointed the Toot Group to ramp up interest in the area with “an exciting new campaign of happenings”.
Bored with your daily ad watching routine? Well, Saatchi & Saatchi and Sanitarium have come up with a solution, making 15 commercials with the same script and setting, but changing three elements in each execution for Light n Tasty’s ‘Every Day Different’ campaign.
It’s been almost 18 months in the making, and yesterday, just down the road from the giant salmon and New Zealand’s longest bridge, Dominion Breweries ferried a group of 150 publicans, internal stakeholders and a few filthy journalists to a farm near Rakaia to launch the newest brew in the Monteith’s range, an ultra-premium, hyper-local, “serious beer” called Single Source that aims to tell the story of what’s inside the bottle and recognise those responsible for creating it.
The innovative entries came from far and wide—even for the first time from Britain—but DraftFCB’s Tony Clewett and the fantastically named Rob Banks had the stand-out with their 3D saw made from mock fifty dollar notes and were awarded Best in Show at this year’s Art of The Envelope Awards.
Back in 1989, the first threads of the World Wide Web were woven at Waikato and Victoria Universities via a router from NASA. And, for an exorbitant $5500 a month, educational institutions in New Zealand could link to the rest of the world. The first 21 years have been chronicled by Down to the Wire, a fascinating archive of our digital history made up of interviews with media experts, techsperts and commentators. And now it’s time to look at the future, launching a competition called 20:20 Foresight that asks all students and graduates aged 17 to 25 to send in their mind-boggling visions of the internet in the year 2020.
The people and businesses of the Garden City have endured trying times this year but they have at least one cause for celebration: Christchurch Casino took home the Air New Zealand supreme award at this year’s Tourism Industry Awards, while Kelly Tarlton’s was recognised for its innovative marketing campaigns and Rhythm and Vines took home the best festival/event tourism award.
It’s a celebration of creativity where the humble envelope is given a chance to shine. And tomorrow night at Deus ex Machina in Auckland, with Kiwi pop star and t-shirt dealer Dave Gibson on MC duties, the winners of the 2010 Art Of The Envelope Awards will be announced. So without further ado, here are some glamour shots of the stellar finalists who are in the running for both booty and bragging points.
Another big departure at Saatchi & Saatchi. And elsewhere some fresh human arrivals at MediaWorks TV, Fairfax Media, DB Breweries and The Pond.
Three good’uns share the gold this week.
Who’s it for: Sky TV by DDB and Prodigy Films
Why we like it: Despite the fact that Rugby World Cup games will be shown on a number of free to air channels after last year’s broadcasting palaver …
The Social Network has been getting rave reviews all around the world (if you want to read a massive, intellectual but quite excellent summary, check out Generation Why? by Zadie Smith). Our crack team of movie experts can confirm that it is indeed a tour de force, a triumph, a gripping social media-related romp—and, after heading along to Val Morgan’s 3D ad showcase last week, we can also confirm that the 3D ads shown before the movie were pretty damn good too. We’ve got a couple of double passes to give away to this rather engrossing tale of mystery, intrigue, skullduggery, powerful nerds and the modern human condition, so put up your most banal Facebook status update on the comment wall and to the most banal will go the spoils.
Thanks to a successful relationship with Canon New Zealand over the past six years, Auckland marketing agency BallantyneTaylor has added another big string to its B2B bow, beating out two Sydney agencies for the Canon Australia business in a joint pitch with Datalicious, which will be providing data collection, analytics and facilitation.
Plenty of back patting and flute chinking ensued at last week’s official opening of Oktobor Animation in Auckland. And fair enough, too, because it’s now New Zealand’s largest purpose-built CG animation studio and it’s already working away on some rather large international projects, including DreamWorks’ Penguins of Madagascar, a spin-off of the massive hit movie Madagascar. No pressure, then.
Both loved and loathed, the New Zealand Truth newspaper prospered throughout the twentieth century and wielded considerable influence at all levels of society. And its colourful warts and all story is now the subject of a book by author and former staffer Redmer Yska called Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People’s Paper.
The Nielsen newspaper readership survey year on year comparative results are black and white and read all over: APN’s NZ Herald and the Herald on Sunday are the only newspapers that have improved their readerships nationally, and Sunday News, Dominion Post and Sunday Star-Times, all published by Fairfax, have each lost readership of 10 percent or more throughout the country.
It’s regularly said that golf and beer go together almost as well as raspberry and coke. And, in keeping with the long-established annual beer marketing tradition, Tui and Saatchi & Saatchi have created a new summer campaign that aims to celebrate legends, kicking things off with a wee gem showing a few lads indulging in a bit of extreme white ball chasing.
The nabbing of a few big contracts has put some wind in the sails of PMP New Zealand, which has announced the future-proofing of its New Zealand operations with a $19.5 million investment in new plant and equipment and a new print and distribution facility.
Not surprisingly, there’s been no shortage of opinions on Droga5’s massive new ASB campaign/rebrand, which went live over the weekend. And we’re giving you even more chances to judge, with the first two TVCs ‘Chance’ and ‘Mint Sauce’, a few press ads/posters that were created by three upcoming Kiwi artists and some online executions.
It hasn’t been an avalanche this time round, but the usual dollop of press releases hit the desk today full of language reminiscent of The Property Press, with virtually every magazine claiming the publishing equivalent of “north facing sun-drenched decks” and “indoor/outdoor flow”. Still, purple prose aside, the latest readership numbers for the mags look pretty good for an industry that has taken a battering over the last couple of years. And this data will be welcome relief to those hoping the good news of three months ago was not an aberration.
Sandy Moore, chief executive of DDB Group New Zealand, has been elected president of CAANZ for a two-year term, taking over from DraftFCB’s Bryan Crawford.
2009 was a bit of a watershed year for cider in New Zealand. And to celebrate, Monteith’s recently launched its new Crushed Pear Cider—which is made entirely from good old fashioned New Zealand pears, not from apples like some of its pear-flavoured competitors—with a rather unique take on comparative advertising and a fake protest outside DB HQ. You’ll be overjoyed to know that we’ve got some of the delectable nectar to give away to parched StopPress readers and because everyone loves sloganic frivolity, we want you to come up with a slogan for Monteith’s Crushed Pear Cider. Add it to the comment wall and the three best efforts will get 12 bottles of the good stuff to sup on contentedly during these warm tropical nights. Extra points for bad pear-related puns.
Hey, look, Masport celebrates in 100th, too much Countdown family, facial topiary embraced for Movember, Wanganui attempts to lure domestic tourists, Unilever continues to make almost every product on the face of the Earth, New Zealand’s taxi companies unite under a blue bubble and kudos directed to the Sovereign ads that play before TV One’s sports news.
Adshel recently moved back to Parnell after spending a few years in a city office. But that’s not all that’s new: as of next week it will also have a new sales manager, with ex-MediaWorks, New Zealand Rugby Union and Oggi man Nick Vile proving to be the standout candidate in the search to find a replacement for Pauline Hanton, who recently announced the arrival of her new shopper marketing offering Hypermedia.
With a collection of interesting characters and adversaries, some fairly intriguing back-stories and plenty of moolah at stake, the move of ASB from its agency of over ten years TBWA\ to Droga5 in June was one of the year’s most captivating stories. Not surprisingly, there’s been plenty of interest around the traps as to what Andrew Stone, Mike O’Sullivan, Jose Alomajan and the team would come up with—and whether the Droga5 mythology was all it was cracked up to be. Well, with a massive refresh of the bank’s brand and a new positioning statement around ‘creating futures’, you can now judge for yourself. But if the responses of the bank’s 5000 staff to the new brand and the confidence the main protagonists have in it are anything to go by, turns out it just might be.
It seemed like a promising start—and it also seemed like a win-win scenario—but the commercial realities have hit home for public bike provider Nextbike and it has been forced to suspend its operations and remove its bikes from the Auckland streets due to a lack of advertising revenue.
The Breast Cancer Research Trust (BCRT) certainly raised awareness with its ‘no big deal’ billboards last year. But it also raised the ire of some of those most affected by the disease. This time, however, the charity that aims to find a cure for the disease by 2018 through funding for innovative research initiatives and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi have taken a more traditional approach to putting breast cancer in the spotlight with an emotive new integrated campaign called ‘1 in 9’.
With Kiwi consumers increasingly heading online to do their buying, Loyalty New Zealand has added another five e-tailers to its Fly Buys e-stores list, which brings the total to 23 after the service was launched late last year.
DDB’s latest campaign for The National Foundation for the Deaf (NFD) has taken a rather unique approach to blokey calendars—and raising funds—by giving Kiwi men what can only be described as a glimpse of muff.
More than 700,000 New Zealanders tuned in to say their final farewell to Outrageous Fortune—and to the much loved West family—last night, with TV3 nabbing a 51.5 percent share in 18-49 demographic and a 24.8 rating for the last ever episode of what was New Zealand’s favourite drama.
In a sordid tale of intrigue, subterfuge, poaching and skullduggery that could be worthy of a cover story in itself, ACP has made an already uber-competitive sector even more competitive by signing up Women’s Weekly editor Sido Kitchin as the new editor of what was not too long ago her avowed enemy, Woman’s Day, and also bringing Weekly’s deputy editor Fiona Fraser into the fold.
The entire PlaceMakers advertising business has gone up for pitch and while no-one will confirm who’s in the running, Ogilvy’s managing director Greg Partington says it certainly won’t be his agency, which has had the account since 2008.
There was an impressive haka, there was cheese (literally and, with Pippa Wetzell and some guy in orange overalls to open proceedings, figuratively), there were 560 RSVPs and there was a solid dose of market leader mentality on display as the national broadcaster launched its New Season 2011 line up for ONE and TV2 last night.
Who’s it for: Interislander by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington and The Sweet Shop.
Why we like it: Take the romance of the ferry, some classic New Zealand summer imagery and a surprisingly uncringeworthy ukelele version of the classic Interislander jingle, and you’ve got yourself an ad that …
Yellow has won plenty of awards for its advertising. But it’s still in dire financial straights and it’s not faring so well against its rather powerful directories adversary Google. One of the big reasons for that is its poor user interface and search platform. But Yellow New Zealand has announced a new partnership with Yahoo!7, one of Australia and New Zealand’s leading online media companies, and will use its digital resources to “power and bring to life Yellow’s search and content experiences”—and, in return, Yahoo users will have access to Yellow pages business data.