Reece departs
MediaWorks’ head of integration Melanie Reece has resigned. She has been with the company since 2006 and was instrumental in the creation of the integration department, which grew out of the sales department.
Publicist Rachel Lorimer says her resignation had nothing to do with the receivership or the arrival of Julie Christie (given her heritage, this does seem like an area of the business she would be pretty happy with) and was simply a case of looking for something new and, given The Block NZ and X Factor NZ are crossing over, possibly something slightly less stressful.
Lorimer says these two shows Lorimer are both multi-million dollar shows. And when asked recently how much of a chunk the integration department contributes to the business, Reece said it was higher than TVNZ’s seven percent of total revenue (although that is from a smaller base) and it had 100 percent year-on-year growth.
Lorimer says Reece is certainly not leaving the team in the lurch and she has helped develop a number of senior staff who are capable of running the ship.
She says Reece doesn’t have anything definitive for the next role.
Call me loyal
After five years with Loyalty New Zealand and three years in the role of chief executive, Lance Walker is taking a break from the corporate world and heading to France with his family for something of a sabbatical.
“We’ll be spending six months in Montpellier and after that, who knows,” he says. “It’s pretty exciting. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do nothing for six months, but it’s a good chance to reflect.”
So how’s he done?
“If you look at the non-Fly Buys revenue streams, we’ve been experiencing revenue growth of 40-50 percent over the last four years. So there’s good growth on the services business. For Fly Buys we had a record year for issuance and redemption. And the redemption one is a good one for us because it says people still want to get rewards. It’s a key sign of a scheme’s health. And it’s been interesting, while the competitive landscape has been increasing in terms of other retail schemes, we haven’t seen any impact in terms of Fly Buys at all. It suggests that people are benefitting from loyalty and getting more in totality. They’re adding more.”
A replacement has yet to be named.
- An in-depth interview with Walker will appear in the September/October edition of NZ Marketing.
Triple treat
Senior digital Planner Ian Hulme, senior brand strategist Janisa Parag, and senior business director Paul Wilson have joined the Saatchi & Saatchi team.
“We’re excited to have such great talent join our band of like-minded misfits. They each have a strong individual story of impact, ambition and good heartedness,” says chief executive Nicky Bell. The appointments are a combination of new roles and replacements.
As we mentioned a few weeks back, Paul Wilson, formerly of Colenso BBDO, joined as business director working on Toyota and DB. He has extensive experience on both sides of the Tasman having worked with the likes of BNZ, Westpac, ANZ, State Insurance, Yellow, Lion Breweries, NZ Cricket, Restaurant Brands, Hyundai and Volkswagen.
“Paul’s already made his presence felt very positively on both the DB and Toyota accounts. His depth of experience and natural style are great assets and he has settled into the culture of the agency really well,” says Bell.
Hulme brings more than 20 years industry experience, and will be focusing primarily on ASB and the NZ Defence Force. He is renowned for pushing creative boundaries through use of digital and technology platforms to improve customer experiences. Hulme’s agency experience includes AIM, Rapp/Tribal and DDB, where he has worked on a wide range of brands including Nike, Air New Zealand, Telecom, Vodafone, Harrods, Shell, Visa, Cadbury, Fonterra Brands, Westpac and Volkswagen.
Parag joined recently as a senior brand strategist primarily on Telecom, coming from Y&R where she was national planner. She has worked Air New Zealand, Vodafone, The Warehouse, TVNZ, Yellow, HRV and Westfield and prior to that, she spent 12 years client side in marketing.
“Ian and Janisa offer a rare combination in the New Zealand market: strong specialist strategy skills at a senior level, combined with great energy and values,” says director of strategy, Murray Streets. “They are a perfect fit for our culture, and already hands on with their agency and client teams.”
Great Shakes
Running with Scissors continues to expand with the appointment of Roger Shakes as head of business.
Shakes joins from a general manager position at brand agency Radiation, and brings over 25 years of diverse global experience in advertising, broadcast media and PR. Before Radiation, he ran his own agency in the UK, SKM. It worked with a broad spectrum of clients, including a long partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
“Running with Scissors has been developing great campaigns in recent years.” says Shakes. “It’s a young, ambitious and highly creative agency. Imagination is the driving force behind everything it does … It’s really important that we focus on the areas that will deliver the best outcomes for our clients. The model here is incredibly flexible and we can ensure our attention is applied in exactly the right place. Clients can be confident this team will always deliver imaginative creative with sound commercial focus.”
Andy Mitchell, boss at Running with Scissors, says his appointment comes at an exciting time for the agency.
“Running with Scissors is growing because we’re attracting world class talent. Roger comes to us with skills and experience that will help us to continue to develop our business in New Zealand and overseas [other boss Friday O’Flaherty is currently exploring options to set up an outpost in the UK]. We’re delighted to welcome Roger to the team.”
One with everything
Subway’s head of marketing David Herrick has recently departed the role. He has been replaced by Rob Saunders.
Great outdoors
Natalie Patterson has been appointed as oOh! New Zealand’s first production manager in New Zealand. She will execute and deliver innovative campaigns that extend beyond the advertising panel, and also support the entire production requirements across its Fly, Retail and Study campaigns.
oOh! New Zealand general manager, Cameron Taylor, says advertisers are increasingly looking to stretch the boundaries in order to gain brand awareness and greater interactivity and engagement with consumers.
“Every advertiser is looking for that extra edge for their product,” he says. “However, until now there were considerable challenges in being able to deliver such campaigns in OOH across New Zealand. The appointment of Natalie and our ability to draw on oOh!’s production expertise in Australia gives advertisers the opportunity for their campaign to really stand out.”
Innovative OOH campaigns that extend beyond the panel include TV2’s new Mitre 10 Dream Home season promotion where paint and water appear to spill from retail panels onto the shopping centre floor.
Other campaigns include retail ads for Disney Pixar’s Monsters University, where panels were covered in bright pink fur; Colgate’s 
SlimSoft campaign, which features giant protruding 3D bristles; and Corona’s campaign, created in partnership with agency ZenithOptimedia, which pumped cool air from a large wall panel above escalators at Auckland Airport (the creative features a group of friends enjoying a Corona after a day on the slopes at a mountain bar against a backdrop of snow covered peaks).
“As a core part of Corona’s wider media campaign for winter, the attention grabbing concept is designed to strengthen the association of Corona with winter snow-based activity in addition to being a great choice as a summer time beer.”
