Lotto Powerball’s poignant tale about a boy’s relationship with his father has pulled at the heartstrings of enough Kiwis to earn the spot Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact award for last month.
Many of us have experienced late night/early morning sports games, either first hand or by association: the blue light flooding in from under the bedroom door, the sound of a crowd cheering, an enthusiastic commentator, and finally, the more familiar yell of a relative or friend who pretends the television screen is some kind portal by where the little men or women running on the field can hear them. Though these sounds should be obnoxious to anyone trying to sleep, much like heavy rain on a tin roof they are weirdly soothing. Sky TV has channelled this nocturnal nature of dedicated sports fans with its latest ads, made with DDB and Robber’s Dog, which promote its round the clock sports coverage of the upcoming Rugby World Cup 2015, and the lengths fans go to, to make sure they’re supporting their team.
Research by the US Wine Society has shown the single biggest thing you can do to help people enjoy wine is to tell them it’s expensive. And while we like to believe we’re rational creatures, a huge number of our decisions are made unconsciously. So, as our understanding of the way the brain works improves, Ben Fahy looks at whether marketers and agencies are effectively making use of this knowledge.
As the host of Seven Sharp, a columnist on the Herald, a talkback presenter on Newstalk ZB and a generous giver of opinions, Mike Hosking has reached saturation levels across Kiwi media channels. And the frazzle-haired media machine has in the last week extended his brand’s reach across social media, with his likes on the official Mike Hosking page increasing by 90,000 in the space of a few days. So what exactly drove all this engagement?
As visitors flocked to an exhibition, which displayed over-sized sculptures of hyper-real human beings, one boy looking downcast on the street was barely noticed, but this quickly changed.
Auckland street artist Paul Walsh has achieved internet fame after his transformation of the city’s utility boxes.
Half-a-dozen Kiwi Property shopping centres will soon be getting massive state-of-the-art digital screens, reminiscent of Times Square in New York. Not only that, selected centres will also be getting interactive, touch screen panels. The screens, called Evoke screens, can play high definition, full-motion video.
Idealog’s Jonathan Cotton on our oft-misplaced enthusiasm when overhyped technology doesn’t deliver what it promised and why from now on he’ll be taking the next big technology launch with a grain of salt.
At a time when new technology is increasingly presented as the answer to every problem, Damon Stapleton argues that we still need innovators and creatives to think up solutions for the problems caused by the technology we often revere.
I was once gifted a cell phone by my Dad when I was about eight or nine around the year 2000. The phone was nothing special, it was what people would call a “brick” by today’s standards (though in saying that phones are now bigger than they ever were). It was given to me because my Dad was paranoid about my safety and wanted to stay in contact with me. I hardly ever used the phone. The games on it were crap, it was in an ugly case and its functionality was limited (though my friends thought it was pretty cool). Now every eight-year-old their dog seems to own some sophisticated piece of tech. Whether it be a smartphone or a tablet of some variety. And according to a New Generations survey kids have an annual spending power of $257 million and are more tech-savvy than ever.
Australian lifestyle brand Urban List is expanding into the Auckland market and is looking to establish partnerships with businesses on this side of the ditch. The website, which was first launched in 2011 and provides content on dining, shopping, health and beauty, has grown quickly in the Australian market, attracting a following of 1.2 million unique visitors per month across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
The annual New Zealand Best Awards celebrate excellence in graphic, spatial, product and interactive design. Here’s a few of our favourite finalists from the ‘Interactive – moving images’ category from the likes of Waxeye, Assembly, Media Design School, Powershop and Locales.
Pandora recently announced it’s planning to launch a sponsored listening product that will enable brands to give listeners an hour of ad-free streaming through the service. The initiative, which is already live in the US, is set to launch in the local market in the second quarter of 2015, giving local advertisers another means by which to access users on the platform.
There seems to be a month for everything now: Dry July, Movember, the Feb Fast and as of this year, Junk Free June. And perhaps there’s a reason for that, maybe they’re successful fundraisers because Kiwis like a challenge, and a month doesn’t seem like such a long time to kick the booze, not shave your dirty tache or hold back on the snacks (at least on paper). Whatever the allure is, it seems to work and as results have shown social-media campaign Junk Free June was a huge success raising well over its media spend and attracting thousands of social media followers and daily hits on its website. Here’s a rundown on the campaign.
Cancer Society created a mobile donor engagement campaign via Chemistry Interaction, which connected Kiwis with a series of touching video thank you messages from Cancer Society staff and volunteers in celebration of Daffodil Day next Friday. It also created limited edition ‘Cups of Hope’ with St Pierre’s Sushi, where a donation from each cup went to the society. A TV campaign is also running, with creative by Whybin\TBWA and Waitemata Films illustrating how most of us have some sort of connection to cancer.
We’ve all had that moment, as we tell our friends about a great song we’ve heard, plug in our phones/laptops into some sort of speaker system, push play on our Spotify as we stare at them with a look of anticipation and glee on our faces (like above photo) while we wait for the song to start, but it doesn’t.
This week, AdRoll’s Ben Sharp looks at why creativity is integral to an effective programmatic marketing strategy.
StopPress understands that the creative partnership between Volkswagen and Colenso BBDO has unravelled, with sources close to the business revealing that the car brand last week cancelled its contract with the agency.
‘Don’t work with animals or kids’ is a common principle thrown around advertising. However, Ziploc has conflated the core pillars of this piece of advice to produce an ad series that features animals serving as the beastly representations of an unruly children.
The battle of the big outdoor players has continued, with APN Outdoor adding 113 more panels to its arsenal after acquiring New Zealand-based billboard business Roadside Attractions from Twisted World Limited for $6.5 million.
For those die-hard Space Jam fans, a few of your favourite characters have returned to star in a new Jordan shoes commercial.
Often hardcore sports fans act if they are part of the team they are supporting. This definitely seems to be the case of football fans. When discussing how the team performed the word “we” is thrown around a lot. “We really stuck it to them this time”, “We sure came out on top in that last game”, “We caned those guys”. You get the picture. Rexona’s new ad attempts to channel this collective consciousness showing that while game day preparation for an All Black will differ significantly to that of a fan, many of their movements are similar, illustrating how ‘we’ (fans and players) move together. PLUS following on from our last round up, here’s the 411 on what a few other brands are up to around RWC 2015 including: Airbnb, Jockey, Vogel’s, Land Rover and Steinlager.
Since the heady days of 2013, when Uber and Airbnb started blossoming (or spreading like weeds) around the globe and raising millions of dollars in funding, ambitious app designers have been looking for problems that could be solved by combining smartphones and financial incentives.
Red Bull is often presented as one of the best examples of content marketing, largely due to the effective way in which it has associated its brand with extreme sports events. Big wave surfing, motocross, BMX racing and sky-diving are just some of the sporting codes that have featured the Red Bull logo over the years. And now, Red Bull is collaborating with another person who dabbles in the extreme—but this time it doesn’t involve sport in any way.
Trade Me, State, Air New Zealand, Rexona and Anchor take a victory lap this week.
Can you buy loyalty? Brands across the world are spending billions of dollars trying to find out. But TRA’s Andrew Lewis says most companies are probably going about it the wrong way.
The best art is often laced with subversion and provocation. And the same rules often apply to the best advertising. Now those two things have been combined with Saatchi & Saatchi’s campaign to promote the recently re-opened Govett-Brewster art gallery in New Plymouth.
Whether it’s Google and Luxottica, Spotify and Uber or Whittaker’s and Lewis Road Creamery, strategic partnerships and co-branding initiatives can be a good way to breathe some new life into both parties, increase distribution and, if you’re lucky, add some joy to the lives of consumers. And Kiwi fashion label I Love Ugly’s collaboration with global accessories brand Jansport is already paying dividends.
After nearly a century, Anchor milk has jumped back aboard the All Blacks bandwagon, partnering up with the team just before it heads into World Cup territory.
Scoop publisher and editor Alastair Thompson on the disruption of online news advertising and Scoop’s subsequent steps to sustain its platform through the introduction of an ethical paywall, dubbed ‘Operation Chrysalis’.