Finding the right agency partners is essential to all clients and it can be the difference between adding millions to your bottom line. But Sovereign’s Ben Rose believes most marketers employ a process that has become outdated, does not give the best result and costs both them and the parties involved significantly in time and money.
Samsung has been giving Apple uppercuts for a few years now with its The Next Best Thing is Already here campaign, and it has taken the attacks up a notch after the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with a series of ads calling bollocks on the ‘innovation’ of its main mobile competitor (it doesn’t seem to have made too much difference, as Apple’s sales were still off the charts, although glitches with the operating system and bendy phones may have hindered that). And now the local arm of the Korean electronics behemoth is getting in on the act, running a print ad in some of the weekend papers showing a list of features from the soon-to-be-released Galaxy Note 4 that Apple should be taking note of for its next release.
DDB New Zealand has had a few good account wins recently, including Icebreaker and the Auckland Council. And it did pretty well at Spikes Asia over the weekend too, winning enough trophies to be placed second in the agency of the year category behind Dentsu Tokyo.
In May, New Zealand Post and its subsidiary Kiwibank announced that they would merge their media accounts and appoint a single agency to take care of the media side of the business. This announcement came with the consequence that at least one of the long-time account holders for the respective businesses—Ikon (Kiwibank) and Starcom (NZ Post)—would lose its account. And now, after a pitching process, Kiwibank’s head of marketing communications and content Regan Savage has confirmed that OMD has won the account, leaving both incumbents’ ledgers a little barer.
After losing the BMW account earlier this year, FCB Media has successfully orchestrated a switcheroo and landed itself behind the driver’s seat of not one but four automotive brands by winning the European Motor Distributors (EMD) media account after a pitching process, which involved two separate media briefs.
Just when you thought there was no such thing as an ad hung off the homoerotic relationship between a giant ear and a single overgrown German headphone, along comes Sennheiser.
Foodstuffs obviously isn’t conducting too many drug tests on the staff in its marketing team, because after New World and Colenso BBDO went full gonzo for their two latest brand ads, it’s launched another mad spot promoting its sponsorship of netball that shows it would do ‘almost’ anything to show their love of the sport.
Our weekly collection of good things, funny things, weird things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Industry happenings at DB Breweries, Dynamo, Coca-Cola Amatil, BrandWorld, The Sweet Shop, Jericho, Kiwa, Data Insight, and Touchtech.
Almost 300 people from the magazine and media industry ventured to the Auckland War Memorial Museum last night to celebrate the best writers, designers, photographers, editors, sales folk and titles in New Zealand. And it was one of the country’s most popular mags, Bauer Media’s Woman’s Day, that left with the biggest haul.
Since taking over as the chief executive of APN New Zealand in May, Jane Hastings has been pulling together the discrete threads that make up the conglomerate in an effort to create a seamless entity that can be used to deliver commercial partners’ messages across all the available media properties. And all new things require a name, so for this reason APN sent out a release this morning saying that its print, radio, digital and e-commerce brands will from now on be unified under the moniker NZME (pronounced ‘en zed me’), which stands for New Zealand Media and Entertainment.
Oreo’s new ad looks at a novel new way of using the iconic cookie: to make sweet, sweet music.
Rapper, producer and sound-based entrepreneur Andre ‘Dr Dre’ Young has just been named by Forbes as the 2014 Hip-Hop Cash King. And it’s the sale of Beats Electronic to Apple that put him in the top spot. PLUS: Beats by Dre’s celebrity-heavy advertising.
While Google messes about with a self-driving car, BMW is bringing the digital world to the driver in its newly released Connected Drive system. Already available in many parts of the globe, the onboard internet and SOS service comes standard with all new beemers in New Zealand, with optional subscriber services such as a 24/7 concierge phone service and a series of apps for integrating the car with your phone and home computer. But, um, why? Many of the features, such as GPS navigation, phone, internet and digital radio are available on all smart phones. So are AA, tow trucks and ambulances. So why not just bluetooth your brick and flick on the hands free?
Volvo Trucks and its agency Forsman & Bodenfors had the world eating out of their hands last year after Epic Splits and a few other entertaining live tests showed how easy the trucks were to drive—and how B2B didn’t necessarily have to mean boring to boring. And, to show off its new i-Shift dual clutch technology, it’s continued that trend with a complicated stunt on the Italian Riviera featuring a rather confused-looking valet who gets a big shock during his first night on the job.
Parks and Recreation’s Rob Lowe has used a new pair of BBDO-created TVCs for DirecTV to illustrate that his acting skills extend beyond the remit of portraying an emotionally disconnected health fanatic. In fact, he is more than capable of playing two very different versions of himself in the same ad.
After more than ten years away from the silver screen, Contact Energy is back with a series of playful TVCs that aim to tackle the messier side of family life and show how the company is changing.
Hitting the big 4-0 is generally met with mixed emotions, with some celebrating the fact that they’ve made it that far and others feeling a sense of impending dread as their elderly body and mind shows signs of falling apart. Resn’s big 4-0 is all positive, but it’s not age-based, it’s the number of times the Wellington digital agency has won the FWA site of the day award.
Buying of ad inventory has traditionally been an esoteric art typified by Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and a continuous stream of back and forth communications. This approach created various touch points that collectively sapped the resources of media companies and slowed down the entire process. However, the emergence of programmatic buying has over the last few years expedited the process by centralising communications through innovative software solutions. One of the companies that has successfully provided such services across the Australasian market over the last few years is Adslot, but the company’s business director Stacey Perillo believes that programmatic buying in the digital space has not been quite as effective as it could’ve been. So, in an effort to streamline the process, the company has made some key changes to its offering.
Plenty of people with kids—and many without—greatly enjoyed the brutal honesty of Adam Mansbach’s best-selling children’s book Go The Fuck to Sleep (and Samuel L Jackson’s audio book rendition). Now he’s written a follow up based another major parental frustration called You have to Fucking Eat.
Back in 1994, a “punk zine” called Vice was launched in Montreal. 20 years later it has offices in over 30 countries and it has expanded into a global youth-focused media company that runs a range of magazines and websites, a music label, a film-making arm, a TV show, a news outfit and an ad agency. And, because it has been able to attract the tough to reach millennial market, brands are increasingly looking for some of its magic dust. We chat with Melbourne-based director Myki Slonim about Vice Media’s strategy, how brands can get past young people’s sophisticated bullshit detectors and how the company is faring in this part of the world.
Back in July another sugary treat was ushered onto Kiwi shelves, with the arrival of Sour Patch, a range of sour lollies that have been available in the US since the late 1970s. As with most candy brands, the marketing has been geared at younger consumers, and for this reason Sour Patch has partnered with creative agency Young & Shand, media agency Carat and PR agency Beat Communications to develop a digitally powered campaign that aims to appeal to Generation Z (those born in the mid or late 1990s).
Over the last couple of days, some dedicated Apple fans have discovered a little-known feature of the new iPhone 6 Plus and they are not too happy about it.
After a five month pitch process, DDB and Spark PHD have been named as lead creative and media agencies for Auckland Council, beating out .99 and the incumbent Ogilvy & Mather. But Council has yet to decide which agencies will be handling its digital and arts and culture accounts.
In a new TVC, which appears to borrow from the long run scene in Forest Gump, a dishevelled and impressively bearded James Rolleston is depicted walking with a smartphone in hand while watching online video clips, before an on-screen notification informs him that he has reached the end of the internet. As with several of Vodafone’s recent campaigns, this ad again draws attention to the fact that Vodafone’s major point of difference lies in the extent and reach of its 4G network. But how much longer will Vodafone be able to rely on 4G as a point of difference?
The tendency of diners to take snapshots of their meals has become almost ritualistic in its frequency. It has become the pre-meal prayer of the digital age, an unwritten rule that no food will be touched until the formality of prerequisite photography has been completed. And although this does little more than annoy those who go to restaurants for food rather than photo shoots, one Auckland restaurant is experimenting with the concept in an effort to drive online engagement. As part of its birthday celebration, Miss Clawdy is offering (ends after Sep 28), every diner a free cupcake when they show proof of an Instagram post of its birthday cupcake (check out our other Miss Clawdy article).
“The average human goes from 0 to 60 in less than two billion seconds,” says the narrator in the new BMW spot via Ogilvy’s Gurgaon branch in India. And during the 44 seconds of the ad, this premise is visually represented through a series of photographs and short video clips showing the progression of a person moving from youth to old age in only a few seconds, and tying in perfectly to the ‘Don’t postpone joy’ positioning of the new campaign.
Ever felt the urge to go for a casual skydive, snowboard, mountain bike, bungee and jet boat ride all in under an hour? Did you know that this was even possible? Well, a new video from Tourism New Zealand confirms it most definitely is.
A glut of goodness this week from New World, Contact, Samsung, Vodafone, Spark and Rebel Sport.
Following on from ANZ’s move into publishing with BlueNotes, BNZ, RaboDirect and Westpac have now made their own forays into the content marketing landscape. But the approach that each bank has taken differs not only in terms of the content being covered but also in terms of who produces the material for publishing. We take a look at what each bank is doing in this space.