Every year, StopPress asks players in the local industry for their reflections on the marketing year that was. Here’s what Angelina Farry, managing director of Eleven PR, a division of TBWA Group, has to say.
1. What is your favourite local campaign that isn’t yours The Movember Foundation – A Moment Against Silence. A simple, yet incredibly powerful idea, it flipped a national ritual on its head to get Kiwis to talk about male suicide rates.
2. What is your favourite campaign that is yours
Mr Humfreez for ANZ’s Healthy Homes. We worked with the team at TBWA to raise awareness of this loveable little guy to get Kiwis thinking about what’s makes a home healthy. A cute, woolly, model sheep with hygroscopic horns and a nose painted with thermochromic ink, Mr Humfreez harnesses technology found in nature and is sustainably designed using Canadian wood, New Zealand wool and ink.
His hygroscopic horns absorb moisture and fully unfurl when the relative humidity level exceeds 65 percent, while the thermochromic ink on his nose turns blue when the temperature drops below 18°C – standards set by the World Health Organisation. Mr Humfreez was enrolled at Stonefields School as part of a trial and the kids absolutely loved him, it was great to see how much they learnt about what’s needed to make a home healthy.
3. What is your favourite international campaign
Mastercard Rally Together, which was done by our Eleven Sydney team for the Australian Open. The insight was that tennis is not just about hitting a ball, but the friendships you walk away with. Their idea was simple – Rally Together. They wanted to show how Mastercard could bring communities together to create connections and play tennis so they collaborated with The Happiness Institute on new research. They found that being closer to a neighbour would make 90 percent of Aussies happier, but fear of rejection and feeling awkward was holding them back. To give Aussies a push in the right direction, they broke down the physical barriers that divided neighbours by removing their fences, replacing them with real tennis nets so people could come together to play tennis. It delivered amazing PR results but also had a positive impact on local neighbourhoods.
4. What is your least favourite campaign The recent Peloton exercise bike Christmas ad. It’s wrong on so many levels and so bad their share price dropped. It has however, inspired genius when Ryan Reynolds recruited the lead actress to star in a post-Peloton break up Aviation Gin ad.
5. What is your own biggest success in 2019? Growing TBWA’s Eleven PR by 30 percnt year on year, while at the same successfully growing two small boys.
6. For you, what is the most significant launch/innovation/thing of the year? Lucy Hughes, a 23 year old UK graduate designer who won the James Dyson Award for inventing a bio-plastic made of organic fish waste that would otherwise end up in landfill. The inspiring thing is it has the potential to replace plastic in everyday packaging.
7. What should be un-invented? Plastic.
8. What do you think is the lamest trend? Taking endless selfies while you’re at lunch.
9. What are your best brands? All our brands are
amazing to work with –
Sony PlayStation, ANZ, Asahi and solarcity to name a few.
10. Best stoush for you this year? Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds on Twitter, it’s the bromance that keeps on giving.
11. Who are the Heroes? Catherine Harris for the transformative work she’s done at TBWA NZ. Miriyana Alexander for launching the NZ Herald paywall and delivering funding for quality journalism. Working mums everywhere who manage to do it all, 24/7.
12. Who are the Villains? Unconscious bias in humans and algorithms.
13. What died in 2019? 4G. 5G is going to bring more change than we can comprehend and it will be interesting to see what the changes are and how people adapt.
14. What’s the biggest mistake PR will make in 2020? PR as a discipline needs to evolve and learn daily to keep up with the changing media landscape. We need to continue to push the definition of what PR is and what it can achieve. The biggest mistakes will be made by those who don’t innovate.
15: If there were no laws for 24 hours, what would you do? Get an Aston Martin DB11 and take a James Bond style joy ride.
