New Zealand menswear brand Hallensteins captured a fair bit of attention with its last ad, which was shot on the Bonneville Salt flats in Utah and featured motocross star Carey Hart. And it’s headed overseas once again for another impressive spot to coincide with the launch of its winter collection, this time teaming up with The Script lead singer Danny O’Donoghue and heading to Cuba.
It’s no secret that the fans are integral to the success of any modern sports team. If bums don’t fill the seats, then profits dwindle. If sponsors don’t have an audience, then they won’t tag their names onto the shirts. And if there are no voices being screamed hoarse in the stadium, then a home advantage really makes no difference at all. So, in its first campaign for the Vodafone Warriors since taking over the account, Special Group has teamed up with production company 8com to produce a new spot that puts the fans at the centre of the team.
Storage company National Mini Storage has for quite some time now been borrowing the comedic talents of Leigh Hart to convince Kiwis that storage might be a viable solution to their clutter. And in a new, completely ridiculous spot, the bald funny man advises that house-selling Kiwis with weirder interests might benefit from storing a few of their more unsightly items away.
379 entries across 75 categories have made it through to the finals of the Axis Awards, with FCB leading the way on 54, followed by Colenso BBDO with 49 and DDB with 47. Special Group has 31 finalists and Saatchi & Saatchi rounded out the top five with 26 finalists.
Whenever Photoshop is in the news, it’s generally because of doctored images, whether it’s models or celebrities promoting unattainable body image, grievous errors or duplicitous signs. But doctoring images has also played a positive role in society, as evidenced by this great spot for Adobe by Goodby Silverstein to celebrate the omnipresent software’s 25th anniversary.
oOh! media has further embraced the digital age by expanding its network of retail digital assets across New Zealand after securing long-term contracts with key shopping centres. Updated with some thoughts from oOh! Media chief executive Brendon Cook.
Advertising agency netplus is sharing the love with its clients—past, present and future—by resurrecting the cultural phenomenon that was the mix tape. The agency embarked on a Valentine’s mission to cosy up to its clients by launching a website called ‘mixplus’, a digital interface where clients the agency loves, clients its lost and clients it wants can select different mix tapes after which the appropriate ’80s tunes (sourced via SoundCloud) sing out from the computer.
Since Legacy launched its first campaign in the United States in 2000, it has contributed to dropping down smoking rates from 23 percent to the historic low of eight percent. However, this isn’t quite enough. The organisation wants to “Finish It,” and is encouraging this generation of teens to be the one that ends teen smoking for good. To do this, the organisation has launched a quirky new campaign that plays on the fact that smoking is actually a major turn off to many teens that inhabit the world of Tinder.
In a visual, social and increasingly electronic age, GIFs have become an important cultural force. Last year, Crispin Porter + Bogusky started a new award called the .GIFYs that aimed to acknowledge some of the best examples of the art form. And it’s back for a second year with some entertaining finalists.
2014 was Android’s biggest ever year, with one billion handsets shipped around the world (Apple shipped 193 million and made more on app purchases). It has a big focus on growing that number and getting its phones into developing markets. So, it’s done the logical thing and embraced the power of animals in advertising as part of its ‘Be together. Not the same’ campaign.
Television and movie producers—and advertisers—are always looking for new and interesting ways to incorporate modern technology into their storytelling techniques. Here are a few interesting examples.
According to TubeMogul, New Zealand’s programmatic video advertising market grew nearly three-fold the fourth quarter of 2014, with video ads available for real-time buying jumping 210 percent to 260 million auctions, from 90 million in the third quarter.
We live in social times. And it’s easier than ever to share information with fellow humans. It’s also easier than ever to get stuck in a Google/Wikipedia/YouTube/hyperlink rabbit hole and end up with 42 tabs open on your browser. So Kiwi start-up Twingl is trying to make it easier to share knowledge—and to see the journey people take to get there—with a clever Chrome extension called Trailblazer.
The IAB has just released its latest quarterly update and it shows another sizeable rise in digital ad spend in New Zealand. Standard Media Index (SMI), which calculates ad spending trends based on the data from media agencies, also shows a steady rise. And its breakdown of the category shows the key growth areas in digital.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand (IABNZ) has released the Q4 figures for 2014 and, somewhat unsurprisingly, the results again showed growth in the channel. In Q4, advertising revenue in the digital channel reached $168 million, marking a 32 percent increase from the figure posted a year ago, bringing the full-year total to $589 million. And while there was good news across the board, this wasn’t the case for display advertising, which slipped from the figures posted in 2013.
Online users have long suffered from social media messaging overload. But Kiwis have wizened up to the power of the mute button at their disposal, says Katie Byrne.
Brands are constantly looking for innovative ways to reach their audiences, and one of the best ways appears to be through mobile-accessed websites and apps, seeing as many of us are linked to our phones almost constantly. Mobile advertising sales agency 4th Screen Advertising has released four new mobile ad formats, which aim to make the ad consumption experience a bit more enjoyable, requiring user-participation.
Kiwi-owned travel management company Orbit Corporate travel has launched a new mobile app, which aims to alleviate the stress of business travel, enabling travellers to save time and have secure access to all itinerary details with real-time notifications of any changes to booking.
New Zealand’s primary ambulance service, charity organisation St John has teamed up with Colenso BBDO and Thick as Thieves film company for its latest ‘Here for Life’ campaign, which celebrates the treasured moments a mother and daughter share, that they would not have otherwise, if St John wasn’t there to help.
Wendy’s has tapped into technology developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the promotion of the return of the Big Kahuna burger. In a new spot developed by Image Centre-owned ad agency &Some, several Warriors players are shown playing music by tapping the ingredients, which usually go into the product. This bizarre occurence is only possible because of the MaKey MaKey technology, which allows users to turn everyday objects into touchpads for playing music.
Whether it’s the objectification of women (and, to a lesser degree, men) or the representation of male dunces incapable of doing the simplest of tasks, much has been written about the role of gender stereotypes in advertising. And now NZ Pork’s latest campaign, which aims to get men back into the kitchen, cook some pig and give their ‘missuses’ a break, has earned the ire of some for taking things back to the ’50s.
We already had Life Direct’s sloth and Speight’s ginger bear, and now the AA has introduced a pair of yellow sheep—via a life insurance spot by Rainger & Rolfe—to the growing catalgoue of animals in Kiwi advertising.
In a new section that explores the media consumption habits of reasonably well-known New Zealand humans, Guy Williams, regular 7 Days panelist, co-host of The Edge Drive Show and serial offender on Jono and Ben at Ten, explains his fondness for podcasts, social media, sport and big natural boobs.
Telco network 2degrees has again teamed up with Special Group for its latest ad campaign pushing its ‘Pay Monthly’ plans, one of the first ads that doesn’t feature quirky New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby.
With Sky’s Neon video-on-demand product having launched, Stoppress talks to the designers about developing a streaming service people actually wanted to use
Earlier this month, Colenso BBDO and Michael Hill waved the Kiwi flag at the Super Bowl via a pair of striking spots that featured the faces…
Last year the big free-to-air ratings battle was between The Block NZ and MKR NZ. This year it’s X-Factor NZ and Our First Home. And, early on in the piece, it’s a tight tussle, with the first episode of the second season of MediaWorks’ talent show charting slightly bigger ratings than TVNZ’s new reno-reality show. PLUS: TVNZ’s Our First Home game extends the show to the second screen.
Land Rover, 2degrees, Westpac, Wendy’s and Eclipse tickle our advertising fancies this week.
There was a fair bit of love for Westpac and DDB’s tale of a comically paranoid man on StopPress last week. And it’s followed that up with another fairly mad ad introducing Captain Destructo, a mad scientist/Kiwi dad/aspiring supervillain called Steve with grand plans—and, of course, the need for some financial assistance.
