Having worked at TBWA\ from 2005 to 2010 alongside David Walden, Michael Goldthorpe was asked to share a few words about his mentor and friend at last night’s Effie Awards, which fell on the same day as Devo’s unsurprisingly well-attended and colourful funeral. And he decided to let Devo’s words, which serve as the introduction to a book that will be available to buy soon, do most of the talking.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. More FM was one of the few brands to increase its audience in the recent T2 radio survey. And network programme director Christian Boston says its dual strategy is paying dividends.
The New Zealand Captioning Working Group has released a campaign via The Business called ‘Bad lip reading’ featuring a humorous clip of overdubbed rugby players to raise awareness of how hard it can be for deaf people to lip read when watching TV or on demand content. At the core of the campaign is an online petition requesting support to legislate captioning on the country’s screens.
To keep the wheels at Trade turning 24 hours a day isn’t easy. It takes approximately 500 staff members across a range of disciplines to make sure that late-night browsers, whose minds are riding a wave of pinot, are able to click the ‘buy now’ button when they encounter some completely unnecessary—but undeniably awesome—bronze fighting rooster statuettes*. So, for its new staff recruitment video, Trade Me takes viewers on a tour through the business, showcasing the various roles that potential employees could take on by joining the company.
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. Next up, Andrew Austin, editor of Hawke’s Bay Today.
As the attendees took their seats at the Langham, the table occupied by Colenso BBDO employees carried the most expectation, with the agency’s 24 shortlistings across categories making it the leader among the nominees. And Colenso BBDO didn’t leave disappointed. The Clemenger-owned agency consistently picked up metal throughout the night, and was eventually declared the most effective agency in New Zealand for 2015. The other big winners on the night were Clemenger BBDO, FCB and JWT.
Industry happenings at KPEX, Bauer Media, Robber’s Dog, Little Giant Design, QMS, IHG and AHL.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And the newest kid on the block, Magic, has got off to a good start, attracting a good number of loaded oldies in its first few months and performing well in the regions. We talked to Ian Avery about the birth of the new brand.
Following the news that Volkswagen New Zealand was set to part ways with its agency of around two years, Colenso BBDO, and the recent discovery of dodgy software that cheated on emissions tests, FCB New Zealand has been handed the creative business—and been given a pretty big challenge to help the brand win back people’s trust.
Radio New Zealand is taking the unusual step of going to its audience for suggestions for the redesign of its new website, something it says it’s never done before. So does the strategy make sense? Or should it be focusing on user behaviour? PLUS: Te Papa’s similar approach.
Following on John Oliver’s founding of Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, Adam&EveDDB has now also launched its own religious organisation, dedicated entirely to worshipping the advertising of the agency.
In a joint statement released earlier today, Fairfax Media, MediaWorks, NZME and TVNZ announced the launch of a new local advertising exchange service called the Kiwi Premium Advertising Exchange (KPEX), which will provide advertisers access to premium advertising inventory across each of the publishers’ online properties. So will this give the local players the scale to compete with Facebook and Google’s respective ad exchanges?
Fans of the ’80s cult classic The Neverending Story know that you should never mess with a boy riding a white dragon that looks like a dog. And they also know that the main character Bastian had to use his dreams and imagination to save Fantasia. Swedish NGO Reach for Change is riffing on that idea by creating a website that showcases the dreams—and sleeping patterns—of people from around the world.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And while The Edge dropped listeners in the latest survey, just like most of the other stations, it still has the biggest audience in all the land and it’s betting big on the multiplatform approach. We had a yarn with Rodger Clamp about how it all comes together.
Footlocker has harnessed the power of social media and NBA player James Harden by getting fans to submit personal requests for Harden via Twitter in a campaign called ‘Play my Tweet’. The best ones will be printed on a basketball and Harden has to shoot hoops with the ‘requests’. If he makes the shot, he’s safe but if he misses he will need to carry it out.
Ahead of the upcoming CAANZ PresCom event on the commercialisation of content, The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive gives his $0.02 on the matter and says that while there are some prickly ethical issues to deal with, brand-funded content offers a glimmer of hope for the craft of journalism and can work in everyone’s favour when done well.
As home automation makes its way to the mainstream, a system that lets you answer your doorbell on your smartphone or tablet is now available in New Zealand. And the company bringing it in believes it will help stop burglaries and remove courier-based frustrations.
Opt-in ad serving platform Postr has teamed up Skinny Mobile to create a new android app called Skinny Collect, which allows Skinny customers to earn free data or minutes in return for allowing ads on their lock screen. It’s taken off pretty well and in the first fifteen minutes after launching it had a download per second. We spoke to Postr CEO Milan Reinartz to find out more on the new app and Postr’s partnership with Skinny.
Ad industry award nights are, by their very nature, self-congratulatory. But CAANZ has added a charitable element to tonight’s Effie celebrations, with two Vespas featuring designs from Dick Frizzell and Trelise Cooper going up for auction to raise funds for Breast Cancer Cure. So whether you want a more stylish commute, or you feel the need to increase the cool factor in your agency office with a piece of mechanical art, the bids will be for a good cause.
In addition to performing a cameo on TVNZ show Reno Rumble and taking over the Herald homepage with an interactive ad, Kevin and Donna also made an appearance in Sunday magazine as part of an execution that saw the Valspar brand integrated across numerous pages. UPDATE: see the Valspar chameleon interrupt Reno Rumble.
There has been a lot of talk and hype about virtual reality in recent times. And just in the past month we’ve had a few sets of cardboard virtual reality goggles sent to the office from PR companies, which shows it’s very much in the public consciousness. One brand, which jumped onto the VR trend early in a marketing capacity, is Contiki. We had a chat to Contiki’s global CEO Casper Urhammer to find out more about the travel brand’s use of it. PLUS: with the amount of research and development going into virtual reality, is it better to wait?
Brand Machine is ushering in a new era of local marketing with some slick new technology. Managing director Andrew Mitchell talks with NZ Marketing about the journey so far.
As part of a content partnership with MediaWorks, we’ve asked a few of the company’s programme directors about the performance of their brands, the state of radio and the importance of digital channels. And, despite a dearth of good, new rock music and the encroaching mainstream appeal of hip hop and electronic music, The Rock is still luring plenty of listeners, says Brad King.
Airline JetBlue has encouraged a bit of petty theft in a recent campaign where its ad posters urged passers-by to take their ads ‘literally, literally’.
Following on from its last campaign ‘It’s a trap’ where Truth pointed out that social smoking is still smoking, it is again effectively pointing out the obvious that if people continue to buy cigarettes, tobacco companies continue to roll in the money.
Peer-to-peer lending site Harmoney launched last year in the Kiwi market with an ambigram as its logo and a quirky cartoon TVC by Barnes, Catmur & Friends that compared conventional loan agencies to sharks. However, this launch identity—and the creative approach that accompanied it—is history now, as Harmoney has changed both its creative direction and its logo in a new ad campaign, which makes the company look more like a conventional loan company than an industry-disrupting startup.
Bouquets for Hyundai, Tip Top, Paspaley, Bay Audiology and Valspar this week.
While the news has been filled with reactions to the flag, our newly designed bank notes seem to have taken a back seat. They aren’t cheap either, at a ‘mere’ $80 million, and if we are looking at shedding the shackles of the monarchy in the form of the Union Jack, should the Queen be departing our bank notes too? And what about core design principles. Do our notes stack up to the aesthetics of those from other nations? We talk to designer Brian Slade, creative director for Insight Creative for a commentary on another facet of New Zealand’s branding, our currency.
Every year, in the lead up to summer, the major ice cream brands operating across the nation, release new flavours in a bid to attract consumers that search for respite from the heat in the shape of frozen dairy products. And for this year’s edition of the frozen aisle battle, Fonterra-owned Tip Top has added a new contender into the mix by launching the Top Notch range of premium ice creams.