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Annnnnnd action: Y&R pushes play on new Quickflix campaign

There’s been plenty of action at Y&R recently, with Jon Ramage departing and James Hurman cutting short his OE to join executive creative director Josh Moore at the top table alongside non-executive director Ross Goldsack. It also won the the ASX-listed Quickflix business for Australia and New Zealand in March and, with the help of  Finch Productions, it’s just a campaign starring two aspiring actors/film buffs discussing the merits of the streaming service between takes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h53c-CKeqIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZpHj9ny-Zo

Quickflix, “the first and only movie and TV streaming subscription service” in New Zealand, has been already advertising, albeit in a fairly low-budget, salesy kind of way to explain the offer. But even with good advertising, some wonder whether such a service can work in this market and, when it launched in late March, it called on the government to regulate exclusive content rights because they were hindering broadband uptake.

Its complaints appear to have fallen on deaf ears, however. And in a story on the NBR, Sky’s chief executive John Fellet gave it a serve for having unrealistic expectations.

“In every country, every TV provider has exclusive premium content arrangements and every TV provider – and telco for that matter – can bid for that content if they wish to,” he said. “The fact is the rights to the most-watched TV shows in New Zealand sit with TVNZ and MediaWorks exclusively, not Sky, yet Quickflix doesn’t seem to complain about that … When Quickflix head Chris Taylor was CEO of Prime in New Zealand, he did exclusive deals for shows like Top Gear and Weeds. Would he now surrender those to online start-ups? I very much doubt it. Likewise in Australia he holds exclusive rights for HBO content [Sky has the rights in New Zealand, so it’s lacking a bit of enticing TV content here]. I doubt he offered them to channel 7, 9 or 10.”

Even so, it has aggressive growth plans for both countries and it recently announced that Time Warner‐owned HBO had taken a 16 percent stake in the company (Y&R’s Moore says customer numbers will be released once the campaign has been running for a few months). 

Internationally, things are moving in the streaming direction. In the USA, Netflix accounts for nearly 20 percent of internet traffic; in the UK, BBC iPlayer has similar numbers, in France, consumers have a choice of over 50 on-demand and streaming sport, television and movie services delivered over the internet; and all the major local broadcasters, as well as sites like Ziln and publishers like Fairfax with its IPTV offer, are experiencing big increases for On-demand viewing.

Orcon and Slingshot have decided to zero-meter the service so that it doesn’t count towards data allowances, but when Vodafone’s chief executive Russell Stanners was asked whether Quickflix was competition for Sky TV at the Telecommunications and ICT Summit in Auckland recently, he told ComputerWorld: “Saying Quickflix competes with Sky is like saying the corner dairy competes with Countdown.”

TelstraClear’s Alan Freeth said Quickflix wouldn’t ”be successful until Telecom and TelstraClear decide to unmeter it” and he felt TelstraClear’s current contract with Sky TV would prevent that from happening. 

Credits:

Client: Quickflix Australasia

Client contacts: Liz Katsiotis CMO, Chris
Taylor CEO

Agency: Y&R Auckland

Executive Creative Director: Josh Moore

Creative Director: Maria Ward

Creative: Tom Paine, Josh Moore, Maria
Ward

Account Director: Julie Reeves

Head Producer: Christina Hazard

Media Agency:  MEC Auckland

Business Director Media:  Lee Griffiths

TV Buyer:  Tatiana Strudwick

Digital Media Strategist:  Anna Matthews

Production Company: Finch

Director: Alex Roberts

Producer: Roi MacGregor

Executive Producer: Rob Galluzzo

Executive Producer: Cath Anderson

Executive Producer: Karen Bryson

DOP: Aaron Morton

Gaffer: Giles Coburn

Key Grip: Tommy Park

Casting: Catch Casting

Art Director: Pete Sweeney

Wardrobe: Kylee Strathdee

Editor: Alex Roberts

Offline: Finch

Grader: DigiPost

Audio Post: Franklin Road

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