Yesterday, at the Radio Rewired conference hosted in Auckland, the industry announced that Colenso BBDO’s ‘K9FM’ campaign for Pedigree had won the Grande Orca for 2015. And the creative team at Colenso received additional good news overnight in that the campaign has also picked up a coveted black pencil at the D&AD Awards (it also won a yellow pencil).
News from Fairfax, Tourism New Zealand, Marketo, Film Construction, TVNZ, Colenso BBDO, Exposure, Pure SEO and Countdown.
Kurt Vonnegut is now seen as a counter-culture icon. But before that he worked in PR for General Electric before he hit the big time. And he can teach people in this industry something, says Kelly Bennett.
At a time when radio is being disrupted by digital technology, one thing that has remained consistent is the importance of the personalities that produce the content on a daily basis. The executives across both commercial networks have on numerous occasions posited the local voices behind the microphones as key point of difference that traditional radio still has over its digital counterparts. And at last night’s New Zealand Radio Awards, the industry commended those who have over the last year kept the airwaves alive with their voices, quirky promos and, increasingly, video clips. StopPress looks at who won what on the night. PLUS: see a gallery of snapshots from the night.
MediaWorks is revisiting the West household with an Outrageous Fortune prequel called Westside, which follows the infamous Grandpa back in his hey day. In the lead up to the series MediaWorks has released all seasons of Outrageous Fortune online for free online to get fans excited, and in terms of streaming numbers it seems to be successfully rekindling interest.
Misplaced golf balls, unbalanced dominos, a fraction of a hair’s width short of hitting the basket – all the pitfalls of creating a Rube Goldberg Machine. They’re whimsical contraptions designed to complete the simplest tasks in the most complicated way possible, and one Kiwi’s made art out of it.
Facebook has become a hugely important traffic source for many publishers. And last week Facebook announced the launch of a new feature called Instant Articles, which allows users to view articles from other websites (particularly enhancing mobile experience) without leaving the site. This is hoped to make for a faster loading time, more data about what users like to consume and therefore an enhanced overall user experience. And there are also benefits for the publishers. It’s very early days for the scheme, but we thought we’d find out a bit about the initiative and whether New Zealand’s main media outfits are keen on the idea.
Ad-blocking software company Adblock Plus claims that its software has already been downloaded over 300 million times across the world, and WARC wrote a story last year showing five percent of all internet users used the technology (in the US, 41 percent of 18-29 year olds claimed to use adblock software). This means that millions of ads served throughout the world on desktops and laptops do not reach their desired targets. Now the German company has announced that it is currently trialling an update of its ad-blocking software that enables Android users to block ads on their smartphones. So what’s the industry doing about it?
Not quite two years ago, Ben Young, co-founder of Young & Shand, packed his bags and headed to New York to fill what he saw as a gap in the market for analytics around native advertising. Now its measurement tool Nudge has been given a major boost after entering a licensing agreement with one of the world’s leading native advertising software companies, Sharethrough.
Today, MediaWorks announced via a story published on 3News that John Campbell would be leaving Campbell Live and that the show would be replaced by an alternative current affairs programme in the 7pm slot. The new show is expected to start within the next six to eight weeks and will run Monday to Thursday, with a yet-to-be-announced entertainment show running on Friday evenings.
The fact that over 100 million web users across the world have already downloaded ad blockers to combat the annoyance of online ads stands as evidence of how much they annoy people. So rather than simply conceptualising another ad destined to irritate users, BBDO teamed up with Post-it to develop a campaign that uses digital technology to change banner ads into sticky notes and to-do lists.
This year, Red Nose Day will be hitting American shores via an NBC television event set to feature Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jodie Foster, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Patrick Harris, Coldplay and others. And to announce the impending event, Coldplay and NBC have released a few teasers on YouTube featuring snippets from Game of Thrones: The Musical, an elaborate project developed by the British band with the help from stars of the TV show.
YouTube has been celebrating its tenth birthday this month by going through a letter a day and while the vast majority of viewing is still done on the main screen, there’s no doubt the video sharing has become a powerful cultural force since the first video featuring co-founder Jawed Karim at the zoo was uploaded. It’s also become a powerful marketing force, with four of the most-watched videos of last year made by brands and 16 million hours of ads watched. As such, YouTube has chosen the 20 greatest brand moments in its history and it’s asking people to vote for their favourite ad. PLUS: the tale of Old Spice.
The Register’s own Elly Strang donned one of the first sets of Samsung Gear virtual reality goggles to appear on our shores. This is what she saw when she headed along for a sneak preview at Noel Leeming.
Education New Zealand has released a new campaign to raise the country’s profile as a great study destination through an online competition where international students may enter for the chance to have a friend or family member flown over for a 10-day study adventure.
DDB’s Maker unit has created a bizarre online film that seemingly marries Dirty Dancing with Stephen King’s Carrie to announce the return of the McRib—and all the sauce that comes with it.
Real estate is regularly in the news, especially given the massive price increases in Auckland. But real estate conferences generally aren’t. That changed today because while the real Harcourts conference was going on at Sky City, its #harcourtsconference hashtag was hijacked by a range of Twitter users (led by Guy Williams) who all took their frustrations out on Australia’s third most dishonest profession. Here are some of the best.
Often when we travel abroad we tend to bring back some kind of gift or souveneir for our loved ones (for those who have children it is often unquestionably expected) but the ones who miss out tend to be our faithful canine companions, who are often first to the door. Colenso BBDO and My Dog channel this idea in a new campaign called ‘The one who misses you most’ which allowed travelers to purchase a bit of a treat for their dogs on the way home.
Speaking at the second IdealogLive event of 2015, Spark Ventures chief executive will discuss the thinking behind what he refers to as the smallest but “grooviest” part of the telco.
As advertisers continue to shift more of their ad spend online, they are looking for ways to ensure their messaging reaches the desired target audiences in the swirling mass of zeroes and ones that make up the interwebs. And given that there are more places to advertise than ever before and that audiences seamlessly shift from local to international sites, this has led the the growing popularity of programmatic ad-buying platforms. Over the last few years programmatic platform provider TubeMogul has been tracking the growth of programmatic ad buying, and the company has recently released its first quarter statistics for Australia and New Zealand.
Advertising awards are very important. We know this because there are a lot of them and agencies spend a fortune entering them. Almost all of this money is wasted, says Paul Catmur, so here are some are some insider tips for those wishing to improve their odds.
Following on from his previous column on jargon in programmatic, Adroll managing director for New Zealand and Australia Ben Sharp looks at how marketers can use segmentation to better target consumers.
Now in its tenth year, the Documentary Edge Festival kicks off in Auckland next week and in Wellington in early June. As per usual, the festival offers a range of audio-visual delights from here and around the world to whet creative appetites. So suggest a topic in the comments that deserves a documentary—such as the untold story of how long pies spend in the warmer at the dairy, the secret history of prime ministers and ponytails or a sordid expose on the media industry’s descent into click-fuelled madness—and we’ll give the best effort two tickets to a screening of their choice.
Sadly, hair doesn’t just reappear on bald heads, but in this clever campaign called ‘The Hair Giveback’ for Regain it does, albeit in photo-form. The agency behind the campaign, Grey Advertising Bangladesh, sneakily collected photos of the baldies who headed into a local shop to have their passport pictures taken and then digitally added a full and naturalistic crop of hair to the images whilst secretly filming the whole shenanigan.
Last night, an average of 333,000 Kiwis tuned in to watch Beau Monga crowned as the winner of the second season of The X Factor NZ. And although this was well below the 446,000 viewers that tuned in for the last finale in 2013, MediaWorks spokesperson Rachel Lorimer saw some positives in the numbers.
While Sky was incorporated in 1987, its social channels were drawing attention to its 25th birthday yesterday. The remotes have changed a lot in that time, as has the broader media market, and while it still counts over half of the country’s 1.6 million households as subscribers and raked in record profits last year, there’s no doubt the competition has ramped up significantly in recent years. So, in honour of this milestone, here’s a story we wrote last year about Sky’s fruitful relationship with its long-serving agency DDB.
The Kiwi landscape stars this week as Godfrey Hirst, Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand take centre stage.
Dancing with the Stars, the show that seems to be made up of Shortland Street actors, radio presenters and politicians and is renowned for its second series where Rodney Hide dropped his partner during his cha-cha-cha performance is back again this year after a six-year hiatus and MediaWorks has whipped out some convincing projection (pun intended) techniques to get us interested.
The 2015 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards are ready to be collected. So if you feel you’ve performed heroic feats of marketing over the past year, take a leaf out of Kevin Bowler’s book, submit an entry before the deadline of 5pm Friday and you could also be Mighty Marketing material.
The ageing process is an area of fascination for many (as evidenced by a recent Getty Images campaign showing the ravages of time on four celebrities). And Y&R found some success with its last reunion campaign for Land Rover. So in a powerful illustration of the fact that that crashes don’t just cost lives, they can take futures, road safety charity Brake, Y&R NZ and Weta Digital brought some joy to five grieving families by showing what young crash victims would look like if they hadn’t been taken early.