Not surprisingly, given the local rags were pretty much dominated by rugby in recent weeks—in both an editorial and advertising sense—three rugby-themed ads from Prime, Specsavers and Barkers were given a celebratory bum pat by the judges of the October round of the Newspaper Ad of the Month Awards.
With the advent of automated buying, there’s a growing consensus that marketing communications need to be short and snappy. But after walking in on four young creatives huddled around a laptop, DDB chief creative officer Damon Stapleton learnt that longer form storytelling is far from dead.
A longtime staple of Korean television, eSports is set to hit Kiwi television sets with Sky announcing that launch of a pop-up channel on 19 December to screen the inaugural My Republic NZGC eSports Tournament live.
It’s readily accepted that content is king. However when it comes to the question of what typeface that content should be in, the debate between client and designer can often be surprisingly subjective, writes Brian Slade.
It’s not Christmas without carols, trees and ads. And while New Zealand retail brands aren’t going as large as those in the UK, whose Christmas campaigns tend to be looked forward to and often clock up views in the millions, there are signs that things might be heading in a more emotional direction here too.
The digital divide between generations is something that will presumably always be with us (and will be presumably always be equal parts entertaining and frustrating for the young folk who have to teach the oldies how to use new technology). But Vodafone reckons its tech ninjas can help. And its TV spot featuring a grandfather who is taught how to communicate with his grandson has taken out Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award for September.
Research from Nielsen shows that approximately 25 percent of unique online visitors to the Stuff website and 29 percent to the NZ Herald in the month of October came from readers located outside New Zealand. So are advertisers aware of the high proportion of international visitors and are they taking it into account when purchasing ads on these news sites? And also, how are publishers monetising their international audiences?
We’ve created an extremely prestigious, potentially quite scandalous list*. Don’t tell us you’re not on it.
Earlier this year, Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi enlisted the services of comedian Dai Henwood to star in an entertaining campaign for its Genuine Parts business that played on the Japanese brand’s high levels of trust—and on the fear we all have of being ripped off by automotive cowboys. In the clips, Henwood did an Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence and played a dodgy-yet-loaded business owner Frank, a boganic secretary Sherl and a salty tow truck driver Trev. And now he’s back for another round where he again shows his acting versatility by adding an uptight businessman, a disinterested student and even a mum and her beautiful baby to his repertoire.
While some believe giving gambling money to worthy causes is a prime example of robbing Peter to pay Paul, Lotto NZ is trumpeting the positive aspects of that arrangement in a new campaign fronted by comedian and RNZ afternoon host Jesse Mulligan.
A strong creative period across the industry sees Rebel Sport, Jaguar, Daikin, the Earthquake Commission and Skinny share a crowded podium this week.
While the profligate days of very long lunches and company credit card-funded excess are seemingly—and for some, unfortunately—well behind us, there’s no doubt that many of those in the persuasive arts still engage a fair bit of corporate hospitality. Colenso BBDO’s ex-chief executive Nick Garrett, who recently took on a job at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne after five and a bit years in the role, was certainly in that category. So what better way to honour his legacy than with a visual reminder of one of his favourite haunts, SPQR in Ponsonby.
When a bunch of Jaguar Facebook fans signed up for a “virtual reality” ride at the Big Boys Toys expo in Auckland earlier this month, they didn’t expect to get the real deal. But when they watched the video after the event, they realised they’d been duped. And, much like Y&R NZ’s trick campaign for Land Rover earlier this year, it caught a fair bit of attention.
“Data journalism is absolutely critical to our future,” said NZME managing editor Shayne Currie when speaking to StopPress about the restructure of NZME’s news teams. As part of the shift to a more digital-centric publishing operation, Currie said NZME would be investing more into data journalism in the near future. And this seems to have now come to fruition with the launch of Insights, a website dedicated to the Herald’s data journalism.
Wellington-based online video storage company Wipster has announced the end of limits to storage capacity at a price of $15 per month, so StopPress asked a few Wellington-based videographers what they thought of the move.
While the numbers competing in the Auckland Marathon were down significantly this year due to the clash with the Rugby World Cup final, ASB had a foot in both camps as a sponsor of the All Blacks and the event. So it couldn’t really lose. And its clever ‘Run down Your Rate’ campaign was the latest in a series of impressive sponsorship activations from the bank and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
Rebel Sport has kicked off its summer promotional push, with a brand campaign by Ogilvy & Mather that calls on Kiwis to take advantage of the warmer weather by getting outside and breaking a sweat. PLUS: Red Bull tries to get its brand messaging into consumers ears through Pandora.
New Zealand menswear retailer I Love Ugly has juxtaposed kids with the older generation in a striking new campaign showing that the appeal of its range extends across age groups.
MediaWorks’ decision this week to review 3D was, much like in the case of Campbell Live, met with a unanimous groan across the industry, as another sign that journalism isn’t commercially viable. But this isn’t entirely true. Current affairs reporting has a future, but the way it’s presented might need to change.
Garage Project, a Wellington-based craft brewery, has taken the number one ranking on this year’s Deloitte Fast 50 with a three year growth rate of 664%.
Canadian agency John St has developed a reputation for skewering the latest marketing trends with its parody videos. So far it’s taken aim at click farming, real-time marketing, fear-inducing experiential and the internet’s undying love of cats. And now it’s released another gem showing how it can co-opt the idea of female empowerment that brands like Dove and Always have tapped into and prey on female insecurities to help sell more stuff.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Trampers can now traverse New Zealand from the comfort of their living rooms, beds or wherever they plug in their computers after the country’s Great Walks were added to Google’s Street View.
As we approach the end of the year, the young up-and-comers who have been honing their creative skills at various ad schools set out on their quest to find gainful employment by showing off their handiwork. And the first of them was held last night when ten people graduated from the 12-week AWARD School course. Feast your eyes on some of the best scamps.
This week, Bauer launched the latest addition to its revamped digital arsenal in the shape of the new Women’s Weekly website. So we chatted to the media company’s head of digital Michael Fuyala about how the rollout of the new digital properties is going, what he expects for the latest title and which advertisers have already been attracted to the various online properties.
While we generally prefer to write about good advertising campaigns here at StopPress, we’re happy to give the bad ones a prod from time to time, whether it’s for blatant rugby bandwagon jumping or cringey beach cricket. So here are a few that have got our goats recently.
The modern radio audience has become divided, with streaming services and websites flooding onto the market. The Edge knew it needed to keep up, so it made its audience an offer it couldn’t refuse.
Spanning two wars and a bit of rugby in between, Dave Gallagher’s story, which is presented on a Steinlager ad alongside vintage photos and props, makes for compelling reading—and it comes as little surprise that the judging panel for the Newspaper Ad of the Month singled it out as the standout creative in September.
When people look back on the great heatpump wars of the noughties and 2010s/teenies/tenties/tenners, they will presumably think of rugby players on walls, cricket players cracking dad jokes on couches or slightly sinister bald men. Daikin farewelled Dan Carter as an ambassador earlier this year but attempted to maintain the humour in its follow up effort. But now it has switched its approach and, in a new Australasian brand campaign via Sugar & Partners and Robber’s Dog, is focusing on emotions rather than technology.
At the recent CAANZ session ‘Who’s buying? The future of content commercialisation in NZ’, several industry commentators weighed in on whether content marketing is nothing more than an annoyance. Here’s a rundown of what Metro’s Simon Wilson, The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive, MediaWorks’ Alana O’Neill, Fairfax’s Ellen Read and former Herald editor-in-chief Tim Murphy had to say.