For the upcoming Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, Vodafone is following in the footsteps of the Coachella organisers by enabling those not in attendance to experience the event through Snapchat. And the telco hopes this will get the event to reach thousands of Kiwis beyond the 8,500 capacity of the venue.
As a still-nascent format, digital video can be a confusing realm for brands to navigate. So is it all it’s cracked up to be? And if it is, then what? Facebook video or YouTube? Long form or short form? DIY or through a publisher? Pre-roll or standalone? Fortunately, Lynda Brendish has done some of the legwork for you.
You may not have noticed, but the Rugby World Cup final looms on Sunday morning. And still the brands attempt to squeeze blood from the rugby stone. And this week’s winner of The Big Game, a prestigious award dished out by StopPress to the best example of desperate euphemism usage from non-sponsors hoping to ride the attention train, goes to Mr Whippy for its glorious pun-based treat.
Steinlager’s campaign to support the All Blacks during their attempted retention of the Rugby World Cup focused on the similarities between this quest and the 1905 Originals Tour, where the first team to be known as the All Blacks travelled six weeks by boat and won 34 out of 35 games. And ahead of the final on Sunday morning, DDB New Zealand has released some new print ads focusing on three remarkable stories from that journey.
If a new campaign from Durex is anything to go by, then men and women don’t really view sex all that differently. When separated into two gender groups, the responses from both men and women on whether they would engage in a one-night stand were almost unanimously affirmative. But there was one question on which they differed in opinion.
The University of Auckland has launched a campaign via JWT all about ‘achieving the amazing’, which takes the clever approach of using science to do just that, literally. Here’s a rundown on the effort.
Typically, finding a surprise in your food is a Very Bad Thing and whether it’s a mouse in a loaf, a cockroach in a Big Mac, or a wasp in a block of chocolate, media outlets take great pleasure in heaping shame on those responsible when it happens. But to promote its new range of real fish, Sealord has embraced that and given unsuspecting shoppers a bit of a fright in the frozen food aisle.
Sanitarium, Mastercard and Safekids perform a victory dance this week.
This month Idealog magazine published its 60th edition. A decade in publishing is an achievement worth celebrating—especially this decade—but co-founder Vincent Heeringa knows things need to keep changing if it’s to last another ten. Here’s his manifesto for the next ten years—and he believes the rules also apply to media in general.
BurgerFuel currently has 82 stores strewn across six countries, and there isn’t a single agency lucky enough to officially call it a full-time client. Damien Venuto sits down with the company’s marketing manager Alexis Lam to find out why he keeps most of the work in-house.
With the introduction of new technology the world has become increasingly fast-paced and in almost every industry there are demands to do more with less. A natural by-product of this ‘time scarcity’ is that we have to cram more into our days, something working parents feel particularly acutely. For some, it’s got to the point where there isn’t even enough time to stop and eat. And this modern condition is what Sanitarium is attempting to cash in on with its new breakfast biscuit product Weet-Bix Go.
In conjunction with News Works, the Up Country series talks with some of New Zealand’s top regional newspaper editors about the performance of their titles in print and online, the role local news plays in regional communities, where they see the industry going and why advertisers should stick with them. Here’s what Jonathan MacKenzie, Waikato editor-in-chief for Fairfax, had to say.
A few weeks back we ran a ‘How regional are you?’ quiz in an effort to show that there is a risk those in the marcomms sector can fall into an urban echo chamber (as last year’s Nielsen survey showed) and forget about the important role the regions play in the Kiwi economy—and the important role newspapers still play in those regions (who’s going to argue with Warren Buffett and WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell?). The average score was 70 percent, but just seven percent of all the respondents got all the questions right, so you’ve still got some work to do, city slickers. Reckon you can beat that? Then put your regional knowledge to the test and take the second quiz below. All those who complete it will go into the draw to win another two night Air New Zealand Deluxe Mystery Break for two somewhere in New Zealand*.
We’ve already seen Dan Carter get a surprise (and possibly even shed a tear or two) when MasterCard brought a few members of his schoolboy team across to England for the Rugby World Cup. Now he’s the one doing the surprising.
NZME has officially announced the launch of a new women’s lifestyle magazine called Spy, which will be inserted into the Herald on Sunday every week from 25 October. The media company has pitched the move as an attempt to fill in the market left by New Idea after the publishing partnership between Pacific Magazines and NZME came to an end. And while NZME has said the publication will be covering much more than just celebrity news, it will see former co-workers Simich and Glucina going head to head for scoops in this space.
Kathmandu has released a new ad promoting its summer wares in the stunning location of Indonesia’s Mt Rinjani, where members of the Kathmandu Summit Club endured a five-day mission ascending the volcano for the shoot.
Another day, another step towards assured glory for the All Blacks, and another few attempts to squeeze some more blood out of the rugby stone. And this week’s winner of The Big Game, a prestigious award dished out by StopPress to the best example of desperate euphemism usage from non-sponsors hoping to ride the attention train, goes to Cadbury for its classy Photoshopping. PLUS: rugby fever from Beats by Dre and Barkers.
TNS presented the results from its Connected Life 2015 survey on Friday. And, speaking at the event, Jacqueline Smart, head of planning at JWT, said brands had developed an unhealthy obsession with getting customers to participate in marketing campaigns. PLUS: TNS’ Ian Wentworth on how to get consumers to spend more and The Warehouse’s Craig Jordan on why the lines between ecommerce and retail don’t exist anymore.
Safekids Aotearoa, in partnership with ACC and the Starship Foundation, has released a new campaign via bcg2 and Mediacom, with the aim of preventing Kiwi children from being hit by cars on driveways through methods as simple as having a key ring with a safety message and your child’s picture on it.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
It’s no secret Spark is on a mission to transform its business and as part of that it’s transforming its agency model, with Shine confirmed as a key strategic partner and, as widely expected, Clemenger Group rounding out its previous wins after Colenso BBDO was appointed as its above-the-line brand agency.
Testo and Schick are currently running ads loaded with sexual innuendo, but this isn’t the first time it’s happened and it certainly won’t be the last. Here’s a rundown of some cheeky ads we spotted online.
Landing a major deal is never easy. But turning that deal into a viable business opportunity can often prove more difficult than winning it in the first place. Fortunately, Westpac excelled in both these regards which was why it won the Financial and Banking categories.
Following on from our last round-up, no-one seems to have been able to avoid the excitement over the recent arrival of Back to the Future’s date. News broadcasters talked to people with DeLoreans and discussed what the film got right. And, as cultural parasites, brands tired to get a piece of the action too. Herewith, a few more examples.
In the lead up to Halloween, Cadbury has quirky video that positions humans (or at least their disembodied hands) as the villains. The short clip shows a solitary chocolate block walking through a Halloween-themed world, all the while stalked by a great big human hand. And then, as the hand snatches the block, the clip orchestrates a classic horror film twist ending and shows a host of chocolate blocks watching a film at the big screen.
Lemon & Paeroa has launched a new Snapchat campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi, urging fans to add it on the platform and submit trickshots as part of its ‘Trickshot Challenge’.
In a bid to persuade Finns that vanilla ice cream isn’t the most boring flavour available, Stockholm-based creative agency Perfect Fools recruited none other than 90s rapper Vanilla Ice to appear in a somewhat bizarre campaign for Consumo. But rather than flying the rapper to Finland and having him appear in person, the agency instead just video called him through the internet. What follows after this is a strange video in which a quartet of Finns engage in a range of games with the rapper.
Speaking at the TNS Connected Life conference, Air New Zealand’s senior social media manager Cassie Roma advised brands to take the bait if the online community is urging them to have a bit of fun. The moral of this story, says Roma, is that if somebody is begging you to be sassy with them, be sassy.
Brands have been acting fast and loose in their application of the hashtag ‘ad’ rule, with only some using it sporadically at best. So, StopPress asks a few people in the industry whether this rule is still relevant or whether it might be time for an update.
The New Zealand Innovators Awards 2015 were held last night, showcasing the best innovative products, services, people and companies. Here’s a rundown of our favourite marketing and tech-geared winners.