The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
In spite of the breakfast door shutting on TV3’s Sunrise show last week, it seems breakfast shows on the radio spectrum are doing just fine and dandy, if the results of the latest radio survey (available on The Radio Bureau site) are anything to go by.
For this week’s fix of Ads@6, we’re sad to report the absence of two notable days of the week – Friday and Sunday. Come Easter, even days of the week deserve a little time off. But fear not, that still leaves plenty of other days of the week for your commercial fix.
At StopPress, we like nothing more than laughing at the expense of others. We also like laughing at strange publications and were recently alerted to this outstanding magazine.
Call it bad taste, call it bold, call it clever marketing. We’d even call it a little creepy. Nike premiered their latest ad yesterday, on the eve of Tiger’s return to golf after a five month break because of, well, you know what.
Mergers, cabs ‘n’ advertising, promotions and new awards –just another week in the land of communications news then. Here’s your round-up.
In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: Farewell to TV3’s Sunrise and ASB Business The new Age of thrift – why thrift is back with a vengeance Four Discrete Segments – what are the different segments of post-recession consumers?
TV3’s ASB Business and Sunrise have lost the battle to stay alive, with the announcement this morning that both shows have been canned.
It would seem Sam Morgan has come full circle. Having created the runaway success that is Trademe, his very own entrepreneurial gem is auctioning him off.
A Lean Year
The crafty, multidisciplinary creative boffins from Alt Group have nabbed a double whammee in Australia’s CREATIVE magazine Hotshop Awards, with the company crowned design agency of the year and in-house agency of the year. And Wellywood’s digi-gurus Resn also took home a gong for the second year running for best digital and interactive agency.
Much has been much written about the scourge of modern day washing that is the missing sock. It’s the bane of many a life, it is the subject of much conjecture and speculation and it is a mystery that, if Fisher & Paykel’s new Lost Sock campaign is anything to go by, seems likely to remain forever unsolved, because, despite the best efforts of its talented team of designers, engineers and scienticians, the appliance maker has admitted that it is the one thing it hasn’t quite managed to figure out.
Time is running out for young creative and media prodigies to enter the Fairfax Media Young Lions competition, which offers four fresh-faced souls a chance to attend and compete at the Cannes Lions, the largest and most prestigious advertising festival in all the world.
First they claimed Crowded House, now this: an Earth Hour ad for Unilever’s Persil brand that was produced by Sydney boutique agency Naked Communications has won the Newspaper Advertising Bureau’s (NAB) March Newspaper Ad of the Month.
Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our ads@6.
Hark! The iPad hath been released, the feverish purchasing (300,000 on its first day in the US, Apple says) hath begun and the opining, reviewing, analysing and critiquing of one of the world’s most talked about devices is well underway. And, overall, it seems the opining, reviewing, analysing and critiquing of this ‘game changing’ gadget has been very positive.
Who it’s for: Tui Blond by Saatchi & Saatchi.
Why we like it: Tui sticks to what it knows and dishes out a few home truths and cheeky social observations on the Kiwi zeitgeist for April Fools, focusing on the many fools and some of the head-shaking foolishness …
It wouldn’t be an ‘eggxaggeration’ to say that it’s Easter. And with Easter comes new pagan life, and with new pagan life comes news of various industry happenings about things like Cadbury, The Sweet Shop, Pead PR, Hunter, Top Gear magazine, MSN, APN, DB and Cannes.
Following on from two golds in the ‘charity’ and ‘art direction and typography’ categories at the 2010 Axis awards, Colenso BBDO’s animated film of Maurice Gee’s novel Going West, which was produced for The New Zealand Book Council to promote books and reading, has received another nod, this time from the Museum of Art and Design in New York.
It was a sell-out crowd at the Trust Events Centre for the Tua versus Ahunanya stoush last night. The businesspeople drank wine, ate canapes, and cheered for John Key; those in the cheap seats yelled things like ‘Kill his face’, ‘Hit the face’ and ‘permanently disfigure his face’ loudly and aggressively; the scantily-clad promo girls sashayed around the venue texting and being ogled by drunkards; and a particularly special guest came all the way from Miami to get in the ring.
The first phase of Australia’s new brand positioning was revealed yesterday and there’s no sign of any bikini-clad Bingles or shrimps on barbies.
Progressive Auckland church St Matthew-in-the-city has put up its Easter/April Fools billboard, and this one, which features Jesus on the cross saying “Well this sucks. I wonder if they’ll remember anything I said,” appears to be much more palatable to fun-hating prudes and religious zealots than the last innuendo-filled Christmas number.
With all this talk of The Feelers and uninspiring marketing campaigns for the Rugby World Cup, it’s good to see some creative, interesting and slightly more challenging event promotion work from the folks at TBWA\Whybin\Tequila for the big dust-up between David Tua and Friday ‘The Thirteenth’ Ahunanya tonight.
The launch presentation for the ‘first phase’ of the Rugby World Cup has been given, the phrase once in a life-time was used way too often and the rumours were true: The Feelers will be the voice (and, judging by the falsetto in the Jesus Jones song Right Here, Right Now, not a particularly good one) of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Who it’s for: CAANZ Axis awards and the celebration of 30 years of creativity in New Zealand.
Why we like it: Technically, it’s not a TVC. It was a spot that kicked off the CAANZ Axis awards last week. But it’s bloody brilliant and we …
The first phase of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2011’s big international marketing effort will be launched in Auckland today and everyone involved is remaining extremely, disappointingly but impressively tight-lipped about the whole thing.
Yoghurt! MOVE! Birds, fish and Jazz! Barnes, Catmur and even more friends! Adstream, Karma and Freeview! Star Awards!
Some billboards bleed. Some offer diamond earrings. And almost all shout a call to action. But the Fairground Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that was set up and funded by ecostore founder Malcolm Rands to create a healthier, more sustainable world, has taken a different approach to grabbing people’s attention after unveiling what it likes to call the “un-billboard”.
New Zealand maintained its reputation as a direct marketing powerhouse at the 32nd John Caples International Awards in New York late last week, with Colenso and AIM Proximity’s Yellow Treehouse once again in the upper echelons and DraftFCB and TBWA\Whybin\Tequila also claiming some precious metal.
For anyone unfortunate enough not to be at the 30th birthday shindig of the CAANZ Axis awards last night, you can read all about the glitz and glamour here. But why be forced to think and read boring words on a screen when you could instead let two of the exciting videos that were played at the event go inside your brain with the click of a button.
Ads@6, where the name says it all. No pithy comment this week. StopPress has got a hangover.
Fairfax Magazines has purchased Driver magazine and will merge it with New Zealand Autocar from the May issue, after it became clear to John Baker, of former Driver publisher Tangible Media, that the publishing landscape had changed and two magazines devoted to new cars couldn’t be supported, particularly given the large decrease in sales of new cars in recent times.
The Air New Zealanders have done it again, this time brewing up an interesting marketing ploy they like to call the Aviation Design Academy, which is asking customers from New Zealand and around the world to submit their ideas and add a few finishing touches to the offerings in the airline’s new 777-300 aircraft.
You can almost feel the collective hangover after 680 creatively-minded humans gathered together last night at the huge and rather impressive Orams Marine Boat Park to celebrate the 30th birthday of the CAANZ Axis awards, as well as the creativity, ideas and personalities the industry has fostered in that time.
Optimism was in the air at the New Zealand Marketing Association’s Northern Regional Event today, with the general consensus among some of the country’s bravest and ‘upto’ direct marketers being that with the fancy tools now in the box there’s never been a better time to be in the game.
In strange things for sale on TradeMe news, committed Mexi-Dougophiles can bid to get their hands on the authentic and presumably extremely valuable Mexi-Doug Instant Kiwi costume, with the proceeds from the auction going towards WWF’s Earth Hour.
Somewhat surprisingly, for a man who’s the president and chief creative officer of the massive behemoth that is the Time Warner Global Media Group (oh, and he’s also the senior vice president of Time Warner), Mark D’Arcy exudes calm and charm. And, with a silver tongue and a penchant for strange magazines like this, he seems like your quintessential creative director. The strange thing is he’s actually working for a media company and he’s at the forefront of what he sees as a move towards media-led creativity in marketing.
After analysing the visual searches and choices of more than 1.5 million creative professionals around the world and reviewing thousands of tearsheets, commercials and other websites to discover trends, the global creative research team at Getty Images has produced some rather revealing white papers that show how the kinds of imagery used in marketing material in the technology and telecommunications, pharmaceutical and financial sectors has evolved in recent years.