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Year in Review: Simon Coley, Karma Cola

Every year, StopPress asks players in the local industry for their reflections on the marketing year that was. Here’s what Simon Coley, co-founder of Karma Cola, has to say.

1. Favourite local campaign that isn’t yours

Anything done by my missus, Jodi Redden, for NZ Tourism. Looks like everything they do is working given there are more people wanting to travel to New Zealand than beds for them to stay here.

  • Check out the StopPress picks of the year here.

2. Favourite campaign that is yours

Our Christmas ‘Angeldevil‘. They’re hard to find and you have to make them yourself with some technology that isn’t included; glue and so, as a campaign, it’s tiny and going against pretty much every trend. But, they’re fun and they look good. You can get your own right here. 

3. Favourite international campaign

Wes Anderson’s short Christmas film for H&M. Gentle, strange and beautiful.

4. Least favourite campaign

The Brexit Bus. We’re selling our drinks in Great Britain ‘cause they are a compassionate, multi-cultural and fair society this phenomena was such a shock I’m still not sure how to respond.  

5. Your own biggest success

Launching our new 250ml cans in Britain. They look amazing thanks to Beck Wheeler, James Stewart, Matt Campbell, us and Special and they are selling like cold drinks.

6. Most significant launch/innovation/thing of the year

Chilli Cola. It had to happen, it tastes as great as it sounds and it was the most fun colab we’ve done without travelling all the way to Africa. And awesome to get to work with our homies Sarah and Otis Frizzel.

7. What should be un-invented?

Facebook’s so called ‘News’ feed. What not call it ‘Stories’ then they can be tall or true.

8. Lamest trend

We had four Pokemon Go characters in our house and I couldn’t get any of them. These days anyone under 16 wins.

9. Best brands

I love what Lonely did with the cast of Girls.

10. Best stoush

There are two. It’s rumoured that Coca-Cola are about to launch a Carma-Cola campaign. Like other four letters words we’re not allowed to use in public it has a ‘c’ in it. And they also bought out a chilli version of L&P. They may be the elephant to our mosquito bite but we’re still flying.

11. Heroes

Taika Waititi.

12. Villains

I’m worried about Kanye West.

13. What died in 2016?

Sadly many of the musicians I grew up listening to that I can still listen to. You know them all. Then there’s journalism but I’m hoping that corpse will be revived and I can recommend a cocktail that will help. Corpse Reviver 2.

14. What’s the biggest mistake marketers will make in 2017?

Not looking up from their screens.

15. Will the robots become sentient and kill us all (asking for a friend)? 

Yes, but by then we’ll be mostly robot ourselves.

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