Nielsen and the ABC have recently released their respective breakdown of the readership and circulation figures. As has come to be expected, the downward decline has continued for the weekly publications, with each of the publications surveyed in this category suffering year-on-year dips in readership. However, there was also good news for some of the publications included within the survey.
We’ve had Vegemite and Cadbury, and L&P and Whittaker’s. And now we’ve got Red Bull and the Vodafone Warriors, with the pair coming together to produce a specially-designed Red Bull can.
We humans like to think we’re rational creatures. But we’re not, says Paul Catmur. And marketers need to remember that.
Social media marketing agency Socialites released its ‘SnapAuckland’ compilation today as part of its revolt against Snapchat’s ‘Auckland Life’, which it says failed to do the city justice. News of Socialite’s endeavor to remedy the situation and Aucklanders’ disgruntled reaction to Snapchat’s previous attempt blew up, with Snapchat Miami catching wind of the story and pushing word out through its own channels.
Rebel Sport has released the latest iteration of its winter campaign via Ogilvy & Mather which features a mysterious graffiti artist bringing a sports club’s motto to life at its clubhouse.
The Health Promotion Agency for alcohol and pregnancy and FCB have released a campaign called ‘Don’t know? Don’t drink’ produced by Flying Fish, highlighting the fact that there is no known safe amount and no known safe time to drink alcohol during pregnancy.
McDonald’s seems to be a little obsessed with sauce at the moment. Following on from the spot featuring a man dancing underneath a downpour of McRib sauce, McDonald’s is now trumpeting the potential of Big Mac sauce to make everything better.
Kleenex has released a TVC via Ogilvy & Mather called the “We’re behind bums” manifesto featuring comedian Madeleine Sami spinning an impassioned rhyme about our forgotten behinds.
Amid some major changes in the radio industry as NZME and MediaWorks embarked on their new multi-platform strategies, Gill Stewart stepped down as general manager of The Radio Bureau in February after around ten years in the role. And she’s now stepped up to the position of chief executive of the Marketing Association, replacing Michael Pryor.
For the first time Stuff.co.nz has overtaken Trade Me in audience numbers, reaching a new record of 1,849,000 further increasing its audience over rival news sites like NZHerald and Yahoo. The news comes off the back of recent changes in Fairfax’s editorial strategy which has seen roles disestablished and reshuffled as well as a clear overall drive to towards the digital.
A few years ago, Michelle Pratt and Nikki Prendergast were sourcing toys for their New Shoots early childhood centres. And they realised they had no way of knowing where the products came from – or if children made them. So they created an accreditation system and charity foundation Child Labor Free (CLF) to help businesses show consumers that their supply chains are free from child labour and, after two years and with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi, it launched last week and it already has New Zealand Fashion Week on board as a partner, with fashion brands such as Hailwood, Kate Sylvester, Nom*D, Ruby and Stolen Girlfriends Club piloting the scheme.
“Yeah gidday!” was the signature conversation starter from Maureen Tahere of MT Communications, the well-loved and respected Wellington media treasure who sadly passed away on Sunday May 31.
When it came to developing its latest campaign, Biocoop decided to deliver a campaign that brought life to the core tenets on which the company is built. And the way it achieved this is a remarkable story.
Running an ad agency is hard work. And it can get extremely complicated. But we’re here to help. So here are the economics of an agency drawn by a drunk man on a napkin.
Television has had quite the facelift over the past few years. Reality television has taken over the episodic drama, with its cheap production cost and malleable format, which viewers can easily tune into without any kind of backstory. What else is changing is our current affairs shows, the days of the solo renegade hosting style of John Campbell and Paul Holmes seems to be over as a softer format with multiple hosts is nudging its way in. With all these changes we thought we’d do a bit of an overview of the top shows on telly to see how they’re performing amongst this difficult and ever-changing media climate.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Whether you’re a copywriter, a journalist, a press release peddler, a social media guru or a ‘content producer’, it’s worth paying a visit to departing Metro editor Simon Wilson’s school for people who can’t write good. Here’s what he’s learned about the mysterious art of writing over the years.
HSBC has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent years, with the LIBOR scandal, fines for its role in assisting tax evasion, supposed media manipulation in the Telegraph and a recent proposal to lay off up to 50,000 staff around the world. It’s still making truckloads of cash, of course (although profit was down 17 percent to a mere $18.7bn in 2014) and it’s also making good ads, with a beauty from Grey London that, like Mad Men, uses the humble elevator as a storytelling device and plays up the emotional side of owning a business.
Blunt – the Kiwi makers of “The World’s Best umbrellas” – have paired up with Tile, the location-tracking device from Silicon Valley, to produce the first “unlosable umbrella”. Does this mean it’s less cursing and frustration on a rainy day, or just another thing that’s wirelessly tethering you? PLUS: a look at how geo-location technology straddles the line between being useful and a little creepy.
Industry happenings at Metro, Colenso BBDO, NZME, NBR, Showcase Workshop, 3rdeye Recruitment, Font and Naked Recruitment.
The latest issue of Home magazine features a powerful campaign that shows a multi-page profile on what at first appears to be just another affluent home. However, on closer inspection, it quickly becomes clear that something is amiss. Blood stains are on a stairwell, chairs have been knocked over, ceramic pieces lie shattered on the floor and tables have been smashed.
Last year, as part of the Herald Advertising Challenge, NZME asked agencies to come up with a big media idea for a client that used its assets in an interesting way. FCB Media came out on top with Sony’s Sideline Challenge, a campaign that saw the Herald relinquish editorial control to a handful of passionate photography readers and publish weekend sporting highlights captured on the Sony a6000 DSLR camera (it went on to win three Axis Awards and four golds in the Beacons this year). Since then, the many media strands of the company have come together, so this year it has renamed the competition the NZME Ad Challenge—and the deadline has been extended by a week.
StopPress revealed a few weeks back that Whybin\TBWA’s executive creative director Dave King was departing (along with Jodi Willocks, who moved to Assignment) and it’s been announced he’s heading back to Australia to join Innocean Australia in the newly created role of executive creative director. Now chief executive Todd McLeay has confirmed that TBWA\ Melbourne creative director Andy Lish has stepped in to the breach in Auckland.
TSB has released a new commercial via Special Group promoting its Connect Plus everyday account which uses an adorable miniature gardener to pull on viewers’ heartstrings.
Just over 17 years ago, Remix magazine founder Tim Phin published the first edition of his magazine. At only 24 pages, this early iteration would today be dwarfed by the 300-page behemoth that causes an unstable table at Atomic Coffee to lean to one side as Damien Venuto sits down to chat with Phin.
One of NZTA’s recent campaigns, ‘Numbers’, focused on how your speed can impact—perhaps quite literally—on others and it’s released an extension to that campaign called ‘Community Speedo’ that shows bringing speeds down is a collective effort.
Given the extent of the ad-blocking problem, The Guardian recently took a novel approach to addressing the issue. Instead of following the German example of taking ad blocker software providers to court, the UK publisher has reached out to its readers with a strong moral message.
As Snapchat has nudged its way into the advertising world over the past year, businesses have made use of the tool to reach out to a younger audience. One of these businesses is ASB Bank, which has seen huge success through its use of Snapchat to reach tertiary students, and ASB general manager of marketing Shane Evans says it plans to keep using it.
Accenture recently showed that 87 percent of individuals watch TV with their devices within arm’s reach, meaning that a smartphone can quickly become a medium by which to escape the advertising that punctuates a television show. Add to this the fact that Google’s recent Consumer Barometer report showed that 72 percent of Kiwis own a smartphone and that almost a quarter of the population now access the internet more often via a smartphone than any other device and it becomes clear that smartphones are a place where brands should be. This is not to say that television, which continues to reach 92 percent of the population, should be abandoned as an advertising channel, but that it should rather be used in conjunction with other available channels. Snakk Media has just launched a way for Kiwi advertisers to do this.
For those Kiwi gamers who play GTAV and just wish they could feel more at home by seeing familiar New Zealand advertising … and gangs, well this might just be the opportunity.