The latest agency news, campaigns and client wins (and losses) making headlines across Aotearoa.
This week in the Ads@6, the Suzuki Swift is apparently still the one. And the ad is definitely still the one that will make you scratch your own eyes out. Protex follows suit with an ear/eye-scratchingly bad jingle of its own. Perhaps John Rowles should think about becoming a consultant following his famous victory in the Great New Zealand Twitter jingle survey recently.
There’s plenty of ambiguity going around when it comes to channel planning. So the time is right to shed some light on what it is – and, equally, what it isn’t.
NZ Lotteries isn’t spilling any beans on how much it paid to get Donald Trump involved with the new Big Wednesday promotion, but David Higgins of Duco, the events company behind the highly successful Tua versus Cameron fight, has intimate knowledge of the magnate in question and believes it probably cost much more than the estimates currently doing the rounds.
In the world of ‘feminine hygiene products’, sometimes known as ‘tampons’, there are certain advertising rules that have, over time, become engrained: weird blue liquid, euphemisms galore, unrealistic happiness, slow motion beach shots, dancing, basically all the things the above video parodies. But ad agency JWT and US tampon company Kotex decided to flout some those rules for a new campaign in an effort to ‘get real’ about ‘that time of the month’. But everyone knows TV isn’t about reality (unless it’s ‘gritty’) and it seems there’s no room for the horrible, disgusting v word on US TV screens.
DDB New Zealand has announced the promotions of two of its senior creatives, with Dave Brady replacing previous head of art and “crafty bastard” Mike Davison and Paul Hankinson taking on the role of head of copy.
Sam Neill is the new face of Kiwibank’s ‘Kiwi Thinking’ campaign. And part of the campaign implores Kiwis to submit their best ideas. Well, at StopPress we like ideas too. So we want you to submit your best ideas to us.
The New Zealand Lotteries commission recently roped in Donald Trump to be the frontman for a Big Wednesday promotion. The winner and a few friends get to live like him for a week (presumably being forced to put squirrels on their heads for veracity’s sake) and, if his busy schedule allows, they’ll even get to meet him (presumably licking the filth from his gold-plated shoes). So, to honour the business magnate, we want you to come up with a catchy new slogan for The Don and his vast portfolio.
The 2010 Seminar Programme at the Cannes Advertising Festival has been announced and more clients than ever are set to take to the stage and dish out their 0.02c, including Yahoo!, Microsoft Advertising, Facebook, MasterCard, Kraft Foods, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hewlett-Packard and Coca-Cola. So, get the company credit card out and pick those brains.
Bill Payne – US angel investor – is in NZ to invest
Sick of your idiot boss? Tired of working the same old, same old? Got a great idea? Bring your marketing or advertising business idea on April 15 and meet an angel investor. And it’s free.
Unless you’re scared of large, uninterrupted blocks of text, why would you read a story about one boring thing, when you could read a story that deals with a whole range of exciting things? That’s right, you wouldn’t. Or would you?
Michael Gregg, chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and advertising director at Trade Me, will be stepping down from both roles in August, swapping acronyms and tech-speak for boating, skiing, fly fishing, the collection of delicious fruits of the sea, the removal of old man’s beard and the long overdue doing up of his bach in Havelock in the Marlborough Sounds.
I’m consistently surprised by how often we use language in ways that undermine our efforts as an industry. It surprises me because communication should be the one thing we nail – clear, precise language that explains exactly what we mean – but actually we’re often pretty bad at it.
You know it was a bad year when an industry organisation comes out and says it’s fairly happy with a significant core revenue decline. But that’s exactly what the papers have done after the release of the Advertising Standards Authority’s New Zealand Advertising Turnover scorecard. Online, however, is sitting pretty as the only sector to notch up an increase.
Independent design and ad agency Strategy has snaffled Ogilvy New Zealand’s recently departed head of planning Michael Prentice. He will take up the role of group strategic director for the Auckland, Christchurch and Sydney offices and will also be general manager of the Christchurch office.
After a stellar 2009 – so good, in fact, that it’s currently on a pitch ban – DraftFCB has taken the 2010 Fairfax AdMedia Agency of the Year award.
Rhys Darby continues to capitalise on his awksome (so awkward it’s awesome) Murray Hewitt-inspired profile in the US, this time as the front man in a big – like NZ$80 million big – campaign for Hewlett Packard called Let’s Do Amazing.
Monocle magazine, a respected mouthpiece in the fields of design, trends, retail, art, pop-culture and politics, has published a list of the world’s 25 best retailers and Takapuna’s The Department Store has taken the number one spot.
The Don (not the delicious Japanese meal, but the funny-haired American business tycoon), is currently gracing a range of New Zealand media channels to promote the New Zealand Lotteries Commission’s latest Big Wednesday prize. And everyone wants to know how much he got paid.
Aside from these, this, and this, StopPress loves nothing more than data. And we’re particularly fond of hard data. Of course, the brilliant thing about data is that it can be used selectively to show how good you are, and how bad other things, like competitors, are. And there’s almost no better example of this than the tit for tatting that is news ratings data in New Zealand.
Who it’s for: Vector (working with Y&R), which is trying to drum up support for fibre optic cabling and get fibre to Auckland doors so users will be able to download illegal movies at speeds 50 times faster than current levels.
Why we like it: Quirky …
Fairfax Media has announced the launch of the 2010 Fairfax Media Cannes Young Lions competition, which will give four of New Zealand’s top advertising talents the chance to compete at this year’s Cannes International Advertising Festival.
Comedian and writer Raybon Kan, who has recently returned to Kiwi shores after a stint in London, is set to dazzle the magazine industry with witty quips in his role as MC at this year’s Magazine Awards.
Some of New Zealand’s top young musos have donned their promotional caps for a tourism campaign that shows off a few of their favourite Kiwi haunts in an effort to entice young Aussies to come for a visit.
A virtual e-cornucopia of comings, goings, changes, movements, postings and various new things compiled to belatedly celebrate the long-awaited departure of summer.
Air New Zealand has kept the novel marketing fires burning with another new – and potentially slightly controversial – social media campaign featuring Dai Henwood that aims to capitalise on the buzz created in January over the new long-haul innovations.
Consider it your Monday morning brand warm-up. And tell your boss it’s solely for the purposes of market research. But try to wrangle 17-minutes to watch Logorama, the film featuring more than 2500 logos that recently took home an Oscar for best animated short.
Eco-friendly Kiwi cleaning brand ecostore has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Duane Reade of New York, which, with more than 250 outlets, is the biggest drugstore chain in city.
There were scones and jam and cream. There were a host of digital natives and possibly even a few digital virgins. There were a few ironic technical glitches. And there were a range of social media truths laid bare and observations made by the five speakers at yesterday’s CAANZ Digital Leadership Group Social Media in Business forum.
So many ads@6, so little time. Sam Neill leaves his Central Otago grapes unattended for a bit and pops up on screen with Raymond for some Kiwibank backpatting, courtesy of endorsements from ‘The Media’, in the ‘Kiwi Thinking’ campaign; NZTA’s new spot laughs in the face of Father Time; and tank enthusiasts rejoice, because the long-awaited Tank Collection is available now.
The latest Nielsen Market Intelligence report shows unequivocally that anyone who reads StopPress will almost instantly become extremely wealthy and is up to four times more likely to be accepted into New Zealand’s nouveau über-riche set. Either that or all of you marcomms and media folk are overpaid.
It was was a double-whammy for Anne Boothroyd and Brigid Alkema from Clemenger BBDO (WGN) at the Grande ORCA awards, with ‘The People’ overwhelmingly agreeing with the judges and picking ‘Sliding Doors’ for the New Zealand Transport Agency as their favourite radio ad.
Do you like fine rum? Do you like delicious food? Do you have a spare $1000? Then read on and your wildest rum, food and money related dreams could come true.
Methven, the New Zealand-owned designer, marketer and exporter of water and energy efficient bathroomware, has won a Red Dot Product Design Award at the 2010 competition in Germany for its Shower Infusions, a system that “transforms a daily shower into a luxurious, mood enhancing spa experience”, as can be seen from the reaction of this showering naked lady.
It’s still 18 months until the Rugby World Cup kicks off, but a massive behemoth of a billboard has already been erected on the corner of Albert Street and Custom Street East in Auckland to mark the auspicious occasion and Heineken New Zealand thinks the rather lovey dovey text (“Turning great rivalries into even greater friendships, since 1873. It’s almost time”) hints at the experience tournament attendees can expect from the beer brand in 2011.
The way Kiwi organisations measure the value of PR-generated media coverage is the subject of a nationwide review being conducted this month by the CAANZ Marcomms committee and the New Zealand Marketing Association (NZMA), with agencies and clients around the country being surveyed in an effort to find out about their use of Advertising Equivalent Values (AVE) and other PR measures.
The latest Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Insight Report shows the total online ad spend in New Zealand for 2009 coming in at $213.89m, a 10 percent increase from 2008 ($193.15m). And, while this could be viewed as modest growth when compared to previous years, Michael Gregg, the IAB chairman, believes it demonstrates marketers’ confidence in online as a medium that delivers results when budgets were being cut on other media.