The country’s most innovative companies are due to be celebrated next month at the New Zealand Innovators Awards. And a number of businesses from the marketing, media and digital realms will be gunning for a prize.
APN Outdoor recently commissioned research consultancy Millward Brown to undertake what has been called the “largest outdoor media study” of its kind in the Australasian market. Millward Brown found that outdoor and television advertising were the best performers in terms of ad recall, with 82 percent of respondents saying they recalled seeing ads in these channels.
After more than 170 preliminary judges and 60 category judges pored over the entries for the 2014 Effie Awards, 113 of them have made the finalist list, with FCB New Zealand topping the charts on 23, Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand on 18, DDB and Saatchi & Saatchi on 11 and Ogilvy & Mather on ten.
Politics is generally a pretty serious realm and this has been a pretty serious election. Dirty Politics. Moments of Truth. Colin Craig’s face. But over the years, parties like McGillicuddy Serious (best policies: mandatory homosexuality for 33 percent of the population and setting up a Frivolous Fraud Office to investigate any fraud deemed too silly for the Serious Fraud Office) and the Bill and Ben Party (best policy: “no policies, no promises, no disappointment”) have tried to see the funny side. Ben Uffindell, founder of satirical website The Civilian, added his name to that list for this election and, to the chagrin of many, The Civilian Party was given around $30,000 to spend on election advertising, which it’s used some of on a TV ad to promote its desire to declare independence from Hamilton.
An outgunned rooster, committed skaters and a big sporting supporter take the prize this week.
After a competitive pitch, Lion has decided to shift its digital business away from its agency of over seven years, Digital Arts Network, and hand it to Young & Shand, with its pitch partner Tailor taking care of .net web development.
Uncle Bully was one of Cliff Curtis’s first major screen parts and is a role he is still teased about 20 years later. But it means he isn’t teased for the Tip Top stunner he starred in four years before Once Were Warriors came along.
If John Key wanted to add a phrase under his newly redesigned New Zealand flag, ‘punching above our weight’ would have to be a front-runner. The…
Fonterra Brands has teamed up with Colenso BBDO and TVNZ Blacksand to give Facebook fans the thrill of seeing themselves on an actual TV ad, while consuming lots of Kapiti icecream, with the help of some new technology from TVNZ.
After almost four years as managing director of Clemenger BBDO in Wellington, Andrew Holt has accepted the equivalent role at Clemenger BBDO Sydney, with Livia Esterhazy shifting from her role as managing partner at Assignment Group to replace him.
Frucor has well and truly proven its marketing chops with V, the country’s biggest energy drink brand—and one of the most progressive and ballsy advertisers. But with one in every two beverages sold in New Zealand being a soft drink, the future of the company required it to be credible in that space. Frucor is the bottler for the PepsiCo brands like Pepsi and Mountain Dew, and it’s been on a mission to win the hearts and minds of younger consumers for a few years now, so following up the multi-award-winning Skate Pinball and Beyond the Wall campaigns, it’s continued to target that market, releasing a series of nicely shot videos as part of the ‘to get to easy you have to go through hard’ campaign.
Plenty of Kiwis have Icebreaker products in their drawers, and, as the brand has gradually expanded outside of New Zealand’s borders, so do an increasing number of foreign folk. And now the pioneering apparel brand has decided to partner with DDB New Zealand to help gets its woolly gear on more of them.
As part of our series dedicated to celebrating good work and inspiring a bit more generosity—with the help of the One Percent Collective—Aisha Daji Punga, Frucor’s commercial development director and the recent winner of the marketer of the year title at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards, looks at a few brands and agencies doing good, including Tip Top.
Nike is rightfully renowned as one of the world’s most innovative companies, and its approach to marketing those innovations is similarly creative. The company kicked off in 1964 and it released its first swoosh-enabled shoe in 1971 and since then it has released a huge array of footwear. So, as part of its Genealogy of Innovation campaign, 200 pairs have been brought together in a two minute film that charts “seven, game-changing eras”: Genesis, Reformation, Golden Age, Enlightenment, Rennaissance, Transformation and Revolution.
While the rest of the world is intent on trying to come to grips with what the digital world offers, Ikea seems satisfied in sticking with the comfort of the conventional. This was seen recently when the high-end furniture company re-imagined its annual catalogue as a state-of-the art bookbook. But working in a conventional channel doesn’t always imply simplicity. Recently, in an effort to celebrate the opening of its 30th store in France, Ikea constructed a nine-metre-high climbing wall in Clermont-Ferrand.
Back in 2010, Mintel’s Michael Oliver charted the rise of middle-aged men wearing lycra and their big impact on the cycling market (the BBC covered the emerging trend of the MAMIL soon after). Since then, it’s become a fairly widely used term, often disparagingly, and there are plenty of Kiwi chaps who appear to have swapped the flashy sportscar for the flashy roadbike—or at least added to it—as part of the obligatory mid life crisis. Now, in a continuation of ASB and Saatchi & Saatchi’s latest campaign that focuses on the type of conversations the bank believes New Zealanders actually have about money, it’s combined cycling with another one of the nation’s loves: property.
Following on from its short film featuring Jude Law earlier this year, Johnnie Walker is now experimenting with a range of other mediums to tell its story, including live theatrical performances and strategic event sponsorships.
In 2009, the national director of Family First NZ Bob McCoskrie labelled a St Matthew in the City billboard “insensitive and objectionable to many people”. And despite continued condemnation from the more puritanical ranks of society, the church has continued to invite controversy by launching a range of follow-on advertisements, a quirky e-campaign and a reference to a campaign from the underworld-loving Hell Pizza. And now, in a move that aims to make the public complicit in its billboard controversy, the Auckland church is hosting a competition that requires Kiwis to design a billboard to promote the The Kensington Swan season of Jesus Christ Superstar, which plays at the Q Theatre from 30 October.
Mitre 10 has been trying to convince Kiwis that DIY is in their DNA for a few years now, and, following on from the clever ‘Easy As’ campaign, which aimed to inspire Kiwis to pick up the tools by teaching them a few DIY tricks on YouTube, it released a new campaign that hopes to further enhance the store’s position as a Mecca for the nation’s weekend warriors.
Incremental innovation might actually be hindering, not helping growth, says Andrew Lewis. So brands need to start acting like entrepreneurs if they want to find those breakthrough insights.
Axis gongs, client wins and the quality of campaigns usually define competition in the creative advertising industry. But every year, for one night, none of that matters, as the agencies take to the stage and vie for the greatest honour of them all: the Battle of the Ad Bands (BOTAB) title. This year was no different. A total of 550 fans converged at the Kings Arms to watch the madness unfold as Pegasus and The Job Numbers (Colenso BBDO), The Gypsy Thieves (DDB), The OG Villains (Ogilvy & Mather), The Expendables 5 (Sugar & Partners and String Theory), Foote Cone (FCB), Dooya (WhybinTBWA/DAN), Building 7 (Flying Fish) and The Chased (OMD) took a moment away from their day jobs to slap the bass in front of three judges.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Vodafone and True have brought together two passionate groups the telco sponsors – the Vodafone Warriors and the Crescendo Trust of Aotearoa – to create a new anthem for the Warriors.
Lurpak butter is a brand that has perfected the art of food porn with a range of mouthwatering recent ads. And Marks & Spencer, no stranger to the art itself, has continued that fine tradition with its latest campaign, ‘Adventures in Imagination’, by RKCR/Y&R. Plus: some other glorious food ads.
Much has been written, said and trolled about the value of awards to creative agencies. And while the industry is still divided between those who choose to enter the slew of international competitions and those who shun them, it’s difficult to overlook how successfully Colenso BBDO has represented Kiwi creativity on the international awards circuit over the course of the last year. And now, with an award that shows the cumulative value of all this success, the agency on College Hill has been named as the world’s smartest creative agency in new rankings released by Warc.
The next big battleground for the major tech players seems to be the home. Google has its eyes on that prize with the purchase of Nest, companies like GE and Cisco are betting big on the internet of things and, closer to home, Spark’s Digilife offer is gunning for the early adopters. And Samsung is also hoping to capitalise on this evolution, with a clever experiential activation called Home Smart Home set to launch in Auckland soon that aims to show how some of its products can fit into the homes of the future—and help make life easier.
In 2010, Number One Shoes dropped the word ‘warehouse’ from its name in an effort to shift the brand from being associated with large storage facilities. And now, in a continuation of this move away from all things utilitarian, the chain is revamping its stores to create an improved shopping experience for those that walk through the doors. The Albany store, located in the Westfield shopping centre on Auckland’s North Shore, was the first store to be relaunched, and the shop at St Luke’s will follow suit next month. And to draw attention to the changes, Number One Shoes has launched a quirky series of campaigns via PR agency Starseed.
After almost two years as global head of strategy for PHD’s Unilever business in London, Guy Cousins is set to return to New Zealand to take up the chief marketing officer role with Lotto NZ. He replaces Val Green, who held the role of general manager of marketing for almost two years before departing in May.
Sports sponsorships are pretty big business in New Zealand, with an IMR report from 2013 estimating the value of 257 different sponsorship deals at NZ$182 million. Not surprisingly, rugby is the biggest drawcard in this country, with “Adidas paying in the region of US$25 million per year and AIG, the shirt sponsor, US$12.4 million” for their All Blacks deals. Ford has been the team’s vehicle sponsor for many years, and it also backs cricket and hockey, so, to try and win a few more hearts and minds, it’s released a new ad thanking Kiwi parents and supporters—and showing that it’s ‘the driving force behind New Zealand sport’.
Samsung has successfully take the fight directly to Apple—and the fans willing to line up for their new toys—with The Next Big Thing is Already Here campaign. And after Apple launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, as well as the Apple Watch this week, it’s continued the ribbing with a series of ads that show a couple of ‘geniuses’ discussing the new ‘innovations’.