The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
It’s represented on the breakfast table in more than half of New Zealand households and it’s been the country’s number one breakfast cereal for over 70 years. And now Weet-Bix has a new, more contemporary communications campaign, courtesy of its new agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
In just one month New Zealanders became marginally less satisfied with their banks, according to the Roy Morgan New Zealand Banking Customer Satisfaction Survey for the month of July. But there are some improved performances to report.
This year’s Effies tagline was ‘the best ad for advertising’. And it was certainly a pretty good advertisement for Colenso BBDO, which won 12 awards and became the only agency to ever win Most Effective Agency of the Year two years in a row, as well as the only agency to win Most Effective Agency of the Year and Best in Show in the same year. It was a close run thing, however, with DraftFCB nipping effectively at its heels with nine.
Colenso’s big new heritage-based push for DB Export goes live today. You can read about the gradual decline of the brand and the rationale behind the campaign to try and reverse it here. And you really should take five minutes to check out the short film that was made by Revolver (and also features the dulcet tones of none other than Colenso’s co-founder and Image Centre Group director Roger MacDonnell) on the DB Export website.
It’s certainly not pretty. But M&C Saatchi’s press ad for Warehouse Stationery obviously has a good personality, because it has been awarded the September Newspaper Ad of the Month award.
NZ Fashion Week has finished for another year. And, away from all the preening, strutting and Blue Steeling on the catwalk, a new Kiwi-conceived social media tool was making a name for itself behind the scenes, with the free iPhone photo app Snapr being employed to stream and geo-tag live photos from the runway straight to the NZFW website.
More than 2300 votes were cast and the team from Interbrand New Zealand has been crowned the winner of the ‘I wrapped it my way’ Mini design competition for its ‘Mend a Broken Heart’ entry.
Auckland creative agency Shine has had a pretty stellar year so far. It nabbed the RaboPlus account in May (and has recently released its first rather well-received campaign for the bank). And, while it’s been working with some of the local Fonterra Brands for a while now, it has been given a few more to play with.
Who’s it for: Lotto ‘Lucky Dog’ by DDB and The Sweet Shop
Why we like it: We laughed, we cried, we cried a little bit more and then we laughed again. The latest Lotto campaign is certainly a big, expensive-looking cinematic journey. And it’s nigh-on impossible …
Part of Paul Henry’s broadcasting appeal is that he usually treads a very thin line. But he well and truly crossed that line yesterday after suggesting to Prime Minister John Key on Breakfast that Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand’s successor should look and sound more like a New Zealander. And TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis has taken action over his comments, suspending Henry without pay until October 18.
Independent Liquor’s marketing manager Adam Maxwell, who won the TVNZ-NZ Marketing marketer of the year title a month or so ago, says the company has doubled its beer business in the last two years. And it intends to repeat that performance. Cue the first ever TV campaign for its Ranfurly beer brand and the release of two new mainstream varieties, Ranfurly Frontier Lager and Ranfurly Station Pale Ale.
The industry is gearing up for its Effie fest on Thursday night. And for those lucky/immensely talented enough to have made it through to the finals, as well as all the other tag alongs present for the festivities, there are plenty of extra-curricular activities on offer from the event sponsors, including the official post-awards shindig that’s being put on by The Radio Bureau (TRB) and New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ slightly mysterious mobile-phone related tomfoolery.
It lasted 196 issues, 18 years, was close to folding on a number of occasions and has been holding on for dear life for a while now. But Real Groove, a publication that long time contributor Gary Steel calls “New Zealand’s only serious music magazine”, couldn’t hold on any longer, so the October issue featuring Leonard Cohen on the cover will be the magazine’s last in its current format. It’s not all doom and gloom, however, because the best of Real Groove is set to move sideways into a pimped out version of its free weekly street press publication The Groove Guide.
It’s the Oscars of the New Zealand design world, where discerning Kiwi designers don their flashest ensembles and rock nervously back and forth as they wait to hear their name called out as one of the winning entries in the Designers Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. And here’s a run down on the work—and the agencies—deemed to be the best in New Zealand’s design business.
DDB NZ has just launched its latest campaign for Lotto. And it’s an epic, expensive looking tale of joy, disaster, loyalty, danger, exotic locations, canine tenacity and heartbreaking betrayal.
Mike Hutcheson, one of the founders of Colenso and executive director of the Image Centre Group, is a well-renowned raconteur, gadabout and occasional oratorical stuntman. But no matter how many times you may have heard his anecdotes, he tells them so well and so humorously that you don’t actually mind hearing them again. And, as his holistic, semi-philosophical presentation on the future—and the past—of television advertising showed, telling stories is what advertising is all about—and, in his opinion, television is still the best way to tell them.
Wammo, Pound & Mash adds some vegetables to its diet. And the All Blacks get tricky in a campaign for the Rugby Channel.
It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘meat pack’: AIM Proximity and TVNZ have teamed up to deliver one of the largest, and almost certainly the meatiest, direct mail campaigns in New Zealand history after sending a packing crate filled with a 60kg hindquarter of Angus beef to the nation’s leading creative directors in an effort to educate ad agencies about the creative ways the Ondemand platform can be used.
More ads than you know what to do with, including a televisual push for the Super City mayoralty from Len Brown.
The unofficial word was out a while back that Dean and Bridget Taylor were heading back to New Zealand with some big plans. And now the official word is out: the couple have taken up the reins as directors of a new outfit called Contagion that will, from October, partner with Vivaki to lead the Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) business won by Razorfish in moderately interesting circumstances back in May.
…new PR accounts, the success of an ex-Telecom employee, an attempt to inspire some enthusiasm for the local body elections, New Zealand’s biggest free concert, digital braaaaiiinnnnns, the dynamic international retail market, MTV keepin’ on truckin’ (kind of), the country’s most popular tech websites and videos of tiny humans.
When Colenso picked up DB’s Export account off Saatchi & Saatchi in July last year, the family of beers was losing relevance and needed a fresh approach. So, to try and reverse the decline, the new coupling went back in time and found the solution sitting right in front of them.
When Pacific Magazines New Zealand handed over the licences for three of its print babies to APN News and Media a few weeks back, the quarterly NZ Weddings magazine was the one remaining orphan. Apparently, it was offered as part of the package, but, presumably because it was a local publication and was an outright purchase rather than a publishing licence, APN chose not to take it on. Tangible Media had no qualms, however, and has added the magazine to its growing specialist stable.
A veritable (slightly delayed due to technical difficulties) banquet of advertisements taken from the gloaming for connoisseurs of fine goods and services to gorge upon.
No sooner has the last staff merry-go-round post gone live than a host of other rotations come to light, including the departure of OMD Auckland’s managing partner Rosanne Robinson, a few big snafflings by the Clemenger gang, TVNZers heading to APN Online, a new NZRU comms gatekeeper and a fresh big cheese for PMP.
TVNZ has announced it will be reducing the January rate card by 11.1 percent from its 2010 rates to reflect the controversial drop in agency commission from 20 percent to 10 percent on 2 January 2011. So, according to mathematical sources who apparently know how to use calculators, that appears to be an overall rate increase of 0.1 percent.
The unfortunately all-too-common combination of a troublesome client and the cool recessionary winds have forced Parnell indie agency Brave New World to shut up shop. But it hopes to go out in a blaze of glory and highlight a serious issue with shelf companies that the agency’s general manager David Brash believes is currently going under the radar of the authorities.
Waikato University marketing professor Harald van Heerde has received a $740,000 Marsden grant to look at the role marketing can play in a recession and whether slashing or increasing marketing budgets is actually the best strategy.
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the movings/shakings of our lives.
Who’s it for: RaboBank by Shine and Assembly.
Why we like it: As the only online specialist savings and investment bank in New Zealand, RaboBank has a relatively unique tale to tell. And that relatively unique tale has been told in a fittingly unique and …
The Nielsen Company has been signed up for another five years as the preferred provider of research services for the print media industry. But all is not as it once was: Derek Lindsay, chairman of the snappily titled Print Media Industry Research Review Group (PMIRRG) and managing director at DraftFCB media calls the new deal a complete relaunch of the consumer insight and print readership research service in New Zealand and he believes the host of new innovations soon to be on offer will prove to be a bit of a fillip for New Zealand’s publishers.
After a successful five-year relationship with Rentokil Initial New Zealand and its appointment to the Australian pest control business 18 months ago, Freeman’s Bay indie Republik has impressed the powers that be enough to be appointed to take care of marketing strategy, creative development and media placement across the entire Asia Pacific region.
Way back in the mists of time, the number of vouchers redeemed by consumers was often seen as an indication of how effective a print ad had been. Since then vouchers have been put inside books, on dockets, in letterboxes and on the internet, each with varying degrees of success. But Auckland company POCKETvouchers claims to be improving the success rate—and efficiency—by sending discount deals to consumers’ mobile phones.
Gladeye and Zed Digital have been handed joint winner accolades for the second quarter round of Yahoo!Xtra’s Digital Strategy Award for the House of Travel’s mixandmatcher Facebook app, a campaign that gained 17,000 Facebook friends, 279,613 entries, half a million wall posts, 50,000 comments and thousands of comments posted directly onto the brand’s page.
A new campaign for Wrigley’s Eclipse mints by Auckland-based Sweet Shop director Sam Holst and DDB Sydney hits Kiwi screens this week. And it taps into that rich, awkward comedic vein that is bad breath—although in a slightly more surreal fashion than most other mint ads.
Colenso BBDO was singled out for praise in the role it played helping BBDO win network of the decade in the YoungGuns International awards and also for helping New Zealand reach second place on the list of top performing countries. And these acknowledgments were obviously well-deserved, because it’s also taken out the YoungGuns agency of the decade honours.