As Santa is to kids, so is the John Lewis Christmas ad to the creative community. And once again it has slid down the collective chimney and landed with an emotional, animal-related thud.
As we wrote last week, the classic endorsement approach in New Zealand seems to be bunging a rugby player (or even a coach) on your ad. But Invivo’s strategy is at the other end of the spectrum, with international talk show host and self-proclaimed he-devil Graham Norton called on to help create—and now help promote—a very special wine.
Colenso BBDO and DDB continued their award-winning streaks by each picking up a pair of gongs at this year’s edition of Mashable’s annual awards show, the Mashies.
Internationally, McDonald’s recent financial results were well down on the same time last year, and it’s trying a range of things to counter the decline, including offering customised burgers. In New Zealand, sales figures weren’t available for this year, but the arrival of Georgie Pie helped lift performance in 2013. And it’s aiming to continue that growth by offering McCafe coffee via drive-thru.
Since starting out in Wellington in 2004, Resn has risen to being a world-leading digital agency with one office in the capital, one in Amsterdam, and the majority of its clients in the United States. The agency has been recognised time and time again by the Favorite Website Awards, and last week completely cracked it by becoming the distinguished 23rd member of the FWA Hall of Fame. So what does managing director Rik Campbell think of all the hype?
As recently as the 1990s it would’ve been difficult to imagine a catalogue of oddly numbered lists turning into one of new media’s biggest success stories. But now, as we find ourselves neck deep in the zeros and ones of the digital age, the question ‘Have you seen that BuzzFeed list on …?’ has become a phrase as familiar—and commonly used—as ‘Google it’ or ‘there’s an app for that’. Andy Wiedlin, BuzzFeed’s chief revenue officer, is someone who has first-hand experience of BuzzFeed’s journey from being a quirky idea to a pop culture phenomenon.
Pickling enthusiasts will be pleased to find that the new Google Calendar app for Android embraces this niche hobby.
Recruitment campaigns for the New Zealand Defence Force usually focus on patriotic duty or the diversity of experiences on offer. But for its latest push, it’s focusing on fitness and, with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi and Roam Creative, it has created an app called Force Fit that lets potential recruits ensure they’re fit enough to pull on a uniform.
Planned obsolescence and apparel manufacturers go together like chimichurri and steak, with small changes to jerseys requiring true fans to buy new ones regularly. But, at a launch event in London ahead of its northern tour, Adidas claims to have made some big changes to the fancy new hi-tech All Blacks jersey by getting rid of the white collar, adding gun-metal grey lettering and, after player feedback, making two versions: one for the forwards and one for the backs.
To spare online shoppers the chore of scouring through scores of deals featuring massages, fairy lights and costume jewellery in the lead up to Christmas, GrabOne has launched the Giftinator, an online tool that allows users to narrow their searches to find gifts that match their interests. As New Zealand’s biggest daily deal providers, GrabOne publishes over 1,700 deals a week, which means that there might be more than 1,600 offers available on the site at any given time. And while choice is a good thing, it can be frustrating for time-pressed gift-buyers to scour through everything available to find what they want. By launching the Giftinator, GrabOne now enables customers to streamline their search for gifts in terms who the gift is for, the amount they’re willing to spend, and the age group and interests of the recipient. PLUS: we look at some of the risks that come with brands recommending items.
After shifting its business from Saatchi & Saatchi to Ogilvy & Mather, Sealord has added another new name to its new agency group—and bolstered its presence in the growing Aussie market—by appointing The White Agency as its trans-Tasman digital agency.
Two years ago, after a trip to Wellington Zoo, Chris Smith and Ezel Kokcu founded STQRY, a “storytelling mobile experience company”. The story goes that the pair was reading about pelicans at the zoo and wanted to know more, sparking the idea of an app where people could garner more of an experience from an object. This idea was pitched to the zoo, which picked up immediately. Soon thereafter, Gareth Morgan also threw its weight behind the company. Now, STQRY has 17 staff, and the company’s young founders have set their sights on a range new projects. So, StopPress sat down with the pair to find out where they’re headed next.
A Baltimore based woman used crowdfunding to pay for her expensive late night Uber ride. PLUS other crowdfunding oddities.
Aldi Mobile pulls together a trio of the worst employees ever to illustrate that consumers tend to be different.
At end of June, upon lifting lid of Lightbox, the Spark subsidiary’s head of programming and local content Maria Mahony told StopPress that she was in talks with local film distributors to secure a deal to screen several local shows. Shortly after Lightbox’s announcements, Quickflix sent out a release saying that it had snapped up pair of local shows, which Lightbox was thought to have been interested in, and this seemingly spoiled the party for the newcomer. Then, when Lightbox later revealed its lineup there was a clear Kiwi-shaped hole in its programming, leading to questions as to whether the subscription video on demand (SVOD) provider would in fact be adding any local shows to its lineup. However, these questions have now been answered by today’s announcement that Lightbox has added no less than 19 local shows to its catalogue. UPDATE: Quickflix ups its local game with seven more shows.
With the rise social media, the way marketers think about experiential marketing has changed. Not long ago, the term experiential was used as a synonym for on-site promotion and often annoyingly manifested itself as a brand lurking about a car park, shopping aisle or public venue. The fact that consumers can now publish their responses instantly to massive audiences means that brands need to be more strategic about how they incorporate experiential marketing. The experience that they offer needs to be something worth talking about. So, as part of its sponsorship partnership with the Armageddon event, V Energy brought in Colenso BBDO and Beryl to create an experience that fans would be willing to share.
Given the insight that Kiwi worker down their tools at 3.29 every Friday, at this time on 12 September FCB created a radio roadblock by playing Mitre 10’s ‘Bring on the Weekend’ song across six stations. And this creative—if somewhat unconventional approach—has now resulted in the agency winning an Orca award for the month of September.
Auckland Airport is inviting ‘full-service’ agencies or agency groups to register their interest to be its lead advertising agency partner.
2015 will mark the 35th anniversary of the Axis Awards, and to commemorate this milestone CAANZ will be showcasing some of the work that has been awarded over the course of that period. But, as has always been the case, this year’s edition will be about awarding the best work produced over the course of the last year. And to do that as effectively as possible, CAANZ has introduced a few changes to the awards categories for this year’s event.
The bar for long-form advertising on YouTube has been raised by the ambitious projects several major brands over the last few years. Guinness, Chipotle, Johnnie Walker and Chanel No 5 have all commissioned the development of creative projects that seemingly conflate the disparate worlds of advertising and entertainment. And recently, when Honda released a series of teasers for its upcoming campaign, it seemed as though the online community would be treated to another online advert posing as a short story. But, what we got was something quite different.
Dulux New Zealand has just launched a new TVC and it’s a toe-tapping, hand-clapping wee number. The 30-second ad, developed by Clemenger BBDO and shot by Finch, centres on a catchy tune and features a wide range of home-dwellers (even babies) changing up their décor with a clap of the hands.
Consumer New Zealand is calling for door-to-door salesman to be locked out in a new campaign released earlier this week. The consumer watchdog’s chief executive Sue Chetwin says the organisation often gets complaints about the “hard-sell and exploitative sales tactics” the doorknockers use. To counter against this problem, the organisation is distributing free “Do not knock” stickers to protect consumers from unwanted intrusion.
Right in time for the gambling rush that annually coincides with the Melbourne Cup, TAB has launched a new campaign via Sugar & Partners that features a group of friends seated on a flying rollercoaster. And while this might sound like an aptly terrifying metaphor to accompany the ups and downs of gambling, the characters depicted in the 45-second ad seem to enjoy the trackless journey through the sky.
There will be plenty from the marketing community gearing up for the Melbourne Cup today and, with a couple of Kiwi options, the TAB is aiming to get the locals to lay down a few more bets this year. But founder and chief executive of NZ Tax Refunds NZ Cilla Hegarty has managed to combine marketing and horses in a very different manner: racing a branded thoroughbred/”fast-moving advertising billboard” called Gottagetmywoohoo.
Every year, multiple sclerosis awareness week sees hundreds of bucket-shakers hitting the streets to raise funds for those who suffer from this debilitating disease. But this year, MS Auckland wanted to raise more money and more awareness than ever before. So indie agency Hunch came up with a way of illustrating the disease’s effects—and raising some cash—by shacking up with Hell Pizza and sending out a few deliveries to unsuspecting recipients.
Damon Stapleton notes that unhappiness levels in the industry seem higher than usual, and he thinks this might have something to do with the lack of courage among agencies these days. So where did that courage go, and how can it be brought back?
After eight-and-a-half years at FCB Media—and “too long to remember working in media agencies”—managing director Derek Lindsay has decided he’s achieved all he can with the agency and is off to seek out new challenges.
Last year, FCB introduced the line ‘No More Beersies’ to the Kiwi vernacular via its ‘Say Yeah, Nah’ campaign for the Health Promotion Agency (HPA), and it became a ubiquitous catchphrase in weekly conversations. Now, just over a year later, the agency has carried the beersies line into a follow-on campaign that borrows from the tropes of beer advertising to reinvent the humble glass of water. In each of the clips, the pouring of a glass of water is accompanied by the stereotypically deep voice of a beer advert narrator, who over 30 tongue-in-cheek seconds draws attention to the crisp goodness of a simple glass of H2O. PLUS: we look at whether the ‘Say Yeah, Nah’ campaign was effective.
No doubt the bed makers were happy to see Arianna Huffington extolling the virtues of sleep, lambasting the burn-out culture of the corporate world and promoting the idea of nap rooms at work during her recent visit to New Zealand. And here are a few recent efforts to get Kiwis buying a new rest station from a vampirical Sleepyhead, a rugby-loving Slumberzone and a design-savvy Sealy.
