It doesn’t take much to get a scolding on social media these days and the masses always smell blood when whoopsies like the AFR’s major front page gaffe, or the Herald’s mistaken identity (and mixed up movie quotes) are spotted. And here’s another (small) one from Stuff on a story about Dunedin.
References to the rapid growth of online and mobile ad spend in the industry have been so ubiquitous in recent months that they’ve become something of a media cliché. And with this growth in revenue has come an inevitable attempt on the part of online media owners to get a piece of this burgeoning pie. And nowhere is this more evident than in the online radio market, which, despite its relative infancy in the local market, is starting to catch the attention of Kiwi advertisers due to its resonance with the mobile-hungry youth market. So, given that there have been some interesting moves made by the major players, StopPress decided to take a look at what they’re doing to get in on the action.
British fashion and lifestyle magazine i-D has launched its online presence in New Zealand at i-D.co and it’s tapping into a few tricks of its parent company Vice to appeal to the beautiful people—and to get brands involved.
In an effort to be the first to jump on a hot new story, more and more media outlets are failing to do one of the most necessary tasks: fact checking.
The appetite for content marketing is growing rapidly, with much of it happening in the digital space. Many brands have invested in their own content marketing teams and platforms. Publishers like Fairfax, APN and Tangible Media all have their own content marketing teams working on both digital and print. And agencies of all stripes are also trying to make hay while the sun shines by filling up the variety of channels consumers now use. Now Brendan Jarvis and Ron Sneddon have joined the fray with Story, a standalone business that has a “laser-like focus” on digital content marketing.
Microsoft Surface New Zealand is jumping aboard the street art wagon, collaborating with FCB and renowned Kiwi street artists BMD to produce a bromance-y video showing the creative possibilities of the Surface Pro 3. The video kicks off a “purely social” campaign to be rolled out over the coming three months.
The changes are coming thick and fast at APN NZ under new chief executive Jane Hastings, with a new exec team announced this week, a more integrated sales approach across its media portfolio and some clever new products like ShopViva. And now the Business Herald is getting in on the action, with more tools, more content and more interactivity added to the website in an effort to deliver “more relevant digital news to New Zealanders”.
Following on from last week’s announcement that Yahoo had updated its website with features that allow for greater personalisation, MSN has now similarly given its homepage a facelift. And althought the website has not yet been officially released, Kiwis can catch a glimpse of the changes by visiting the preview site. StopPress takes a look at what the update will offer users and advertisers in the near future.
The hair is being groomed and the guitars are being tuned for tonight’s Beatles-themed Battle of the Ad Bands at the Kings Arms, and while the winner of the last two year’s events, Barnes, Catmur & Friends’ Friends Electric, is out of the running this year (all the members are thought to be pursuing solo projects after a huge falling out, with Daniel Barnes going through his Sting phase and focusing on the lute), it’s an opportune moment to show off the saucy full-length music video the band made as part of its prize from its win in 2012.
New research shows international retailers are chipping away at New Zealand shoppers’ consumer spend, but Kiwi companies finding a way to effectively harness the power of online retailing could add another $34 billion to the economy. And online events like the upcoming Click Monday are doing their bit to get Kiwis spending on local sites.
Comparative advertising is fairly rare, perhaps because brands don’t want to be perceived as being negative or due to the potential for legal action from competitors. And comparative advertising that references an ad from a competitor is rarer still. But VW and Colenso BBDO have done just that in a cheeky print execution that aims to spell out the reasons why the Amarok is a better option than the Hilux.
Last Sunday once again marked the annual time of year when Kiwis are unified in an attempt to assuage some of the guilt associated with pretty much commandeering the word relaxation from the vocabularies of the nation’s fathers. And it does after all make sense, because once children enter the world, men’s lives change: sleeping in late becomes virtually impossible, prized possessions become ad-hoc teething soothers and monthly bills start to stretch in a way that defies all the rules of physics. So here’s a rundown of various brands that decided to tap into this shared guilt in the hope of extracting a few coins.
You can’t underestimate the power of the All Blacks when it comes to sponsorships. And it’s even better if you can get them half naked, as Jockey did recently as part of a successful activation for New Zealand Fashion Week.
Since its launch only two years ago, Wellington-based tech start-up Showcase Workshop has grown quickly, picking up major Kiwi clients such as Spark, NZTE, Z Energy and The Warehouse, and now the company is expanding into Europe after winning a new client in Vodafone UK.
Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook took to the stage this morning in Cupertino to launch the iPhone 6 (and its larger brother the iPhone 6 Plus) and the Apple Watch. It’s put a selection of videos from the launch on its YouTube channel, including a cool (and slightly controversial) clip about Perspective, Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake showcasing the new phones, a lengthy explainer from lead designer Jonny Ive and a clip featuring U2.
Once again, the Apple acolytes are frothing at the mouth over the announcement of the new Apple Watch and iPhone 6 (the Oatmeal sums up what owning an Apple product is like quite well). But we prefer this wearable Apple ‘tech’.
As Adweek points out, the product as aphrodisiac has a long history in advertising, and especially when it comes to male grooming products aimed at younger men. Unlike Axe/Lynx, however, Old Spice has largely avoided the obvious gag of women being unable to resist the lure of scented man, and, if it has used it, it’s at least added in some absurdity. Its latest campaign does feature plenty of hot babes falling into a deep swoon over the lead male character, but, as per usual, there’s a slight difference. And, in the latest spot, the newest Old Spice mascot unwisely decides to go for a soak in the tub.
Bikers, robots and solitary actors star for Hallenstein Brothers, ASB and Noel Leeming in this week’s edition.
With the prospect of an IPO on the horizon that would potentially see 60 percent of APN New Zealand’s media assets carved out, a number of new senior humans have joined the organisation to “drive collaboration benefits across the group and fulfill a bold new vision to fully engage Kiwis anywhere, anytime with the content they love”.
It’s fair to say the last major campaign launched by ASB didn’t go as well as planned, with the shouty, bearded frontman Brian Blessed being sent back to Blighty a bit earlier than expected. The bank’s Succeed On tagline remained, however, and, after being in a bit of a holding pattern as far as its comms were concerned, ASB has now returned with a new campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi that aims to show how New Zealanders really talk about money—and the ASB products and services that might be able to help them deal with it.
Greenpeace has been left in the awkward position of inadvertently distributing the photography of Alain Marfat-Renodier, a man who was involved in the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand. This situation comes about after it was revealed that one of Marfat’s photographs taken of a variety of animals around a Namibian watering hole was included in the not-for-profit organisation’s annual calendar (image credit: Stuff).
The name ‘Teahupo’o’, which was given to the Tahitian surfbreak widely considered one of the heaviest in the world, roughly translates to English as ‘to sever the head’ or ‘place of skulls’—and for good reason. Since 2000, there have been five recorded surfer deaths, and countless others have been dragged across the razor sharp reef that lies under just a few feet of water. And despite the risks involved, Visa sent surfer Kolohe Andino into the barrel armed with a mobile phone and a Go Pro camera in an effort to show viewers how easy it is to order pizza through its mobile platform.
This is truer than ever in 2014, with fresh innovations like Edge TV, ZM TV and iHeart Radio continuing to create new touch points between brands…
Given that most of us are ill-equipped to taste the intricacies that go into a sip of wine, US-based Union Wine Company has decided to mock the wine snobs that turn their noses up at anything that doesn’t come out of the finest bottle. Over the course of four spots, a variety of characters share their largely vacuous insights, littered with sommelier vernacular, on the drink they are holding. Although some of the spots do tend to be a bit long-winded, they serve as a great reminder as to why we should always be suspicious in the company of people who use the words ‘notes’ or ‘tones’ to describe anything other than music.
Eschewing cliches of elderly figures trying to hear their grandchildren, One Plus One and Augusto have used two New Zealand music legends to produce content marketing cinematography that demonstrates hearing aids.
Changes at Davy & Chapman, Heinz, Qrious, Running with Scissors, Snakk, Pead PR and GrabOne.
Noel Leeming has invested roughly $5 million into revamping its offering in a move that will see the company’s 77 stores emblazoned with a new logo and reconfigured to reflect some key changes. To announce the repositioning of the brand in the market, Noel Leeming has released a series of three TVCs that have come as a pleasant addition to a category that is usually inundated with shouty advertising focused on sales and products.
Design, said Apple founder Steve Jobs, is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Or, put in a commercial context, whether it helps a company make money. And the Best Design Awards’ ‘Best effect’ category, whose finalists were announced this week, celebrates design that has produced a measurable effect on the success of an organisation or product, whether it be productivity, staff engagement, sales growth, bottom line or customer experience.
Old, fat, black, female, gay, disabled. Coming to a marketing campaign (quite) near you. And if the guys from Getty Images are right, your customers will love the diversity.
The ‘Beer Census’ ad created by Barnes, Catmur & Friends for Boundary Road Brewery has picked up the Newspaper Ad of the Month for August as part of News Works’ Agency League competition.