1. Favourite local campaign that isn’t yours
The Human Rights Commission’s ‘Give Nothing to Racism‘ campaign, featuring 2017 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Taika Waititi. A hugely important message delivered in a creative way.
2. Favourite campaign that is yours
It’s not so much a campaign but a beautiful relationship! We’re very proud of our partnership with Banqer, the financial literacy education app for school kids, that hit 1,000 classrooms or over 30,000 kids in April. We’re now focussing on doubling that by next April, so more kids will reach adulthood knowing how money works, which will be good for all of us.
3. Favourite international campaign
It would have to be Doncaster Council’s Twitter campaign to name their new ice-gritting trucks…the winners were ‘Itsy Gritsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney‘ and ‘David Plowie’. I nearly moved to Doncaster on the spot.
We are DELIGHTED to be able to confirm what our new gritters will be called, following the #DoncasterGrittingWorldCup final!
They will be called:
Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney
And
David Plowie
— Doncaster Council (@MyDoncaster) November 17, 2017
4. Least favourite campaign
Linda from Big Save Furniture and her new toned-down delivery, perched on a sofa placed improbably amongst fragile dune grasses. And we thought the shrieking was annoying!
5. Your own biggest success
Surely the Stoppie Award for Best Ad that’s not An Ad?! Mind Over Money (with Nigel Latta) was a big success for our team, including agencies, producers and TVNZ too.
6. Most significant launch/innovation/thing of the year
The innovative use of MMP to create a government. Who’d a thought?!
7. What should be un-invented?
Google Home. What a waste of time. It acted as a babysitter for maybe 15 minutes max, then misheard a conversation about a doctor, and turned on our TV in a different room and auto-played an AO-rated American cable show about addictions. Totally blew my six-year old’s mind. And scared the tripe out of me.
8. Lamest trend
Fidget spinners. And an honorary mention should go to the fidget spinner servicing kit for the sheer audacity of it all.
9. Best brands
Mercury for reinvention. Fix & Fogg peanut butter makers extraordinaire (and Kiwibank business banking customers) for redefining a tired grocery category – and opening a pop-up store in NYC no less! And Bitcoin for going from the thing no-one had heard of to the thing everyone wants, without stopping at the thing no-one cares about.
10. Best stoush
Don Brash vs Kim Hill on use of Te Reo Maori on RNZ (spoiler alert: he hadn’t read RNZ’s charter). It felt like the sunset of an incredibly quaint view of New Zealand identity.
11. Heroes
Colombian advertising executive Jose Miguel Sokoloff who developed creative advertising and marketing campaigns to help win over Colombians – including FARC rebel fighters – to the cause of ending Colombia’s 52-year civil war. President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia went on to win the 2017 Nobel Peace prize for eventually ending the war with the FARC ceasefire.
12. Villains
Trump. Putin. Kim Jong Un. Comic book villains, the lot of them. But possibly eclipsed – at least briefly – by Roy Moore, the loser of the Alabama special Senate race.
13. What died in 2017?
14. What’s the biggest mistake marketers will make in 2018?
Trying to evaluate all 5,000 global MarTech software providers because procurement teams told them they had to.
15. What’s the most Black Mirror/ sci-fi horror thing likely to happen in the near future?
I think real life started trumping art around 12 months ago…
