Another day, another massive list of new, exciting things to report.
Mike Pretty has been chosen to take over as vice president of Global Ketchup, Health & Wellness, and Marketing Development for Heinz. He will also lead the Global Tomato Ketchup Taskforce, which definitely takes the prize for the best taskforce of the week.
Pretty has worked at Wattie’s since 1989 and has been director of marketing since 2002.
In non-ketchup related news, Special is in charge of launching Richard Branson’s V Australia long-haul airline to the New Zealand market.
VIP to LA, a billboard, press and ambient campaign started last week, supported by a tactical and ambient campaign in Wellington last weekend that “rode the wave of World Cup fever” to promote the Johannesburg route the airline starts flying in March next year.
Michelle Lee, general manager of marketing for the Virgin Blue Group says the company is amped to be working with Special.
“Their Green Party work was impressive, it was simplistic, stylish and broke the advertising mould in this category. V exciting.”
Also V exciting is news of accounts heading to the provinces.
Hamilton’s King St Advertising won the Agriculture ITO account after a three way pitch. CEO Chris Williams says it’s a good fit for the agency, which is strong in agriculture and education.
“We’ve worked really hard this year, kept our staff numbers and played to our regional, independent strengths,” he says.
Agriculture ITO marketing manager Justin Blakie says he was impressed with King St’s overall approach.
“They also seem like very nice people,” he added, slightly worryingly.
Napier agency Adplus communications won the multi-million dollar media and creative work for furniture retailer Big Save.
Blame the recession and the provincial location, Adplus MD Andy Walker says.
“We have found that in recessionary times clients tend to look around focusing on who can provide greater value for money in terms of media buying and effective creative response.”
In digital land, 3d interactive has embarked on a joint venture with Digital Partners and the 24/7 Girl website.
Digital Partners’ portfolio includes some of New Zealand’s most popular lifestyle websites such as gloss.co.nz; fashioNZ.co.nz and garden-nz.co.nz, all of which are connected via the Fabulous.co.nz portal. And 247girl.co.nz is NZ’s strongest site in the female 15-25 demographic.
3d interactive will act as third party representation to the ad agency world to drive agency sales and monetise these online assets.
A new digital company, Social Ted, is trying to make social media marketing viable for small businesses that do not have the time or the understanding of what is required in terms of budget, timeframes or direction.
According to the press release, the world’s top 100 brands all have some form of presence in the social media marketing realm. And apparently the secret is that they’re doing it on small player budgets.
“Research shows us that although they undoubtedly understand the need to be involved, many marketers simply do not have the time or resources to put together SMM campaigns,” spokesman Simon Soulsby says.
