NZME is continuing to pull all its strings together with this week’s announcement that it was launching CreateMe, a new division comprising the media company’s core commercial content creators and strategists. And it seems in many ways quite akin to a creative agency. We chat to CreateMe general manager Fiona McLeod about the role she sees the new department playing in the industry.
For innovation to be successful, it needs to solve problems and make life easier. Wayne Pick believes there are three major tech trends doing just that and ushering in ‘the internet of me’ era. And, given the future is where the profit is proven to lie, brands should be paying attention to them.
Historically, Mike Pero Real Estate’s ads have featured the founder talking up its lower commissions or profiled some of its salespeople and properties. And that strategy—and the booming property market—has helped it take off, to the point where it appeared on the 2014 Deloitte Fast50 list with revenue growth of 328 percent. Now it’s trying to get more salespeople to join the family, but it’s gone with something a bit more ‘creative’ this time.
Mimi Gilmour’s restaurant chains Burger Burger and the newly opened Fish Fish have adopted the no-reservations policy increasingly used overseas. But as queues form, she is planning technology to take the agro out of waiting for a table.
SBS bank has introduced Kiwi audiences to a Kiwi couple, Eric and Sandra, who are randomly interrupted by luminescent text featuring messages from the bank.
2degrees is testing the general knowledge of Kiwis through its summer campaign, which requires smartphone users to answer a series of trivia questions in a bid to win perks.
V Energy’s latest campaign sees the company moving beyond guarana-infused beverages into streetwear, with the launch of a new range one-of-kind T-shirts designed by street artist Mr G Hoete.
Colenso BBDO, OMD and DDB have come away as the big category winners at the Campaign Asia Pacific Awards, which have since 1994 been celebrating the standout talent in the industry.
Investment company Infratil Limited has sold its 100 percent stake in iSite Media to QMS for $49 million. StopPress chats to iSite chief executive Wayne Chapman about what this means for the business.
Air New Zealand is once again poking fun at rival airlines with a facebook post jibing airline Jetstar for its claims to be “New Zealand’s most punctual airline”.
Auckland’s Karangahape Road, known to locals simply as K road and formerly the hub of the city of sails’ seedy underbelly, has long been a subject of curiosity and ten short films soon to be released will tell stories inspired by one of New Zealand’s most famous locations.
Dulux has won Colmar Brunton’s Ad impact award for October with its ‘Marker’ campaign, which uses the expertise of the Myth Busters duo to put their new wash and wear paint to the test.
It’s no secret that the Internet and its capabilities to give anyone an audience alongside budget cuts and redundancies have shaken up the industry. So much of a shake in fact that the number of print journalists in New Zealand declined 61 per cent between 2006 and 2013 according to census data. But also worthy of a mention is the rise of PR. A 56 per cent increase between 2006 and 2013 resulted in public relations professionals outnumbering print, television and radio journalists three to one in 2013. So what this mean for the fourth estate?
Banks aren’t generally renowned for the clarity of their language. Some cynics might even argue that they’re intentionally confusing. So it’s commendable that ANZ, which relied on pretty simple messaging and big media spend to let New Zealand know about the ‘merger’ with National Bank, won a few more Plain Language Awards recently. But, in what could be seen as a new strand of Muphry’s Law, where you inevitably make a mistake when criticising someone’s writing, it’s certainly not commendable to promote a post on Facebook with so many basic errors in it. Or is it a bad joke about reading like a ten-year-old that just made them look a bit thick?
It’s been a rocky year for German carmaker Volkswagen, with data from CNN money showing that global car sales fell 5.3 percent in October after news of the emissions scandal broke. But have these shockwaves stretched across the world to also affect sales in the local market?
Following on from our recent report on TVNZ and MediaWorks’ use of short-form content, we now look at how NZME and Fairfax (and a few international publishers) are using short videos to make major news stories accessible to more people.
Web Series Channel founder unfazed by arrival of watchme, sees big difference between the two platforms.
Mitre 10 and other home improvement brands like Bunnings have similar offerings, and most consumers would be happy to visit one or the other. Mitre 10 knew it needed to get an edge over its competitors so it got digging for ideas and pulled the Mitre 10 Gardening Club out of the ground.
While the word personalisation is now bandied about media lunches with increasing regularity, it’s something that those in direct marketing have been focusing on for years—which is part of the reason why this is a space they’ve excelled at over the years. In this context, the Direct Marketing Awards have become a significant indication of which agencies excel in this area, which combines numbers and creativity.This year, JustOne/.99 lead the pack with a total of 21 nominations between them, followed by Colenso BBDO/Proximity on 19, FCB with 11, Young & Shand on eight.
Saatchi & Saatchi has unveiled the latest Toyota Hilux campaign featuring a cast of poetic animals that can’t help but be drawn to the Hilux, even if it results in them ending up on the dinner plate. And yes, the spot is as mad as the premise sounds.
It’s a Christmas miracle. An Auckland man came back from the dead this week after Housing New Zealand reported him dead.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
In New Zealand, as around the world, the amount of time spent watching linear TV is on the wane. So how have the five major free-to-air channels performed this year? And, with ondemand services continuing to grow (and with Fox following in the footsteps of cable networks HBO and FX and moving away from overnight ratings as industry currency in the US) is the current ratings system an accurate reflection of performance?
The first day night test match in history, to be played with a pink ball instead of the usual red, begins today and Australian opener David Warner is likely to be a major threat to Kiwi hopes. But how good is he in the dark?
Dropit hopes punters and retailers will say yes to ‘no reserve’ and sign up to take part in reverse auctions. Last week, Dropit soft-launched its auction website where items have no reserve price. However, this is a good thing for the punter because the longer the auction lasts, the cheaper the item becomes. We chat to the company’s chief executive and marketing manager Peter Howell about how this all works.
During the press conference announcing the deal and their new Auckland to Los Angeles route, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and American Airlines chief executive Doug Parker were both very complimentary of Air New Zealand, heaping praise on the quality of the service offered. And the team at Air New Zealand was clearly watching these proceedings with interest, because not long thereafter the airline released an auto-tune mashup, via creative agency True, in which the pair of executives are shown seemingly pointing out the quality of the Kiwi airline’s service.
It’s not easy to get past all the tech gobbledygook and make customers understand the benefits of the cloud. But Microsoft has done it by asking a simple question: what would your office do with the extra space if you could get rid of your server room?
To celebrate the impending release of the latest movie in the franchise, the Google has launched a pair of quirky digital activations that will almost certainly appeal to fans across the world.
A new public health campaign is asking young people to creatively and anonymously condemn those who smoke by sending images through Snapchat.
