Earlier this week, the 2014 Global Effie Effectiveness Index results were released and, for the third time in a row, Colenso BBDO has been listed as one of the top 10 most effective agencies in the world. The results also came with good news for Barnes, Catmur and Friends, which finished fourth in the world among independent agencies and first in the Asia Pacific region.
There has been a crazy number of brands trying to associate themselves with the World Cup in any way possible. What is awesome to see is brands using social media to jump on all things World Cup related as soon as they happen and put their own, brand related spin on them.
Last year, Hallenstein Brothers partnered with Ekocycle, to produce a range of suits made entirely out of recycled plastic bottles. Now, the Coca-Cola environmental initiative is being taken a step further thanks to Cube, a small-scale 3D printer that transforms plastic Coke bottles into a range of different items. In a short video uploaded onto YouTube earlier this month, Ekocycle co-founder and ambassador will.i.am delivers a short presentation on some of the items that the 3D printer can be used to make.
FCB has made a new TVC for Air New Zealand that takes a complex topic – that four different types of domestic flight tickets are always available – and turns it into a smoothly transitioning story, literally.
In a new way of engaging sports fans, the Foxtel Alert Shirt lets wearers feel the footy game as its being played, creating fluttery movements when players are nervous, and a feeling of impact when they’re struck. Does this mean we’ll soon be able to feel Luis Suarez’s bite for ourselves?
Ever since Telecom was legally precluded from using the ShowmeTV name, the industry has been curious as to what moniker would be introduced as a replacement. Since that debacle three months ago, Telecom’s digital ventures (TDV) unit has been very cagey about releasing any further information about its online TV offering. But now that all has been revealed, we sat down with head of programming and local content Maria Mahony to find out more about what Lightbox offers.
Theres an app for everything these days. From one that tells you the best time to go for a pee during a movie to an app that prevents embarrassing drunk dials, it’s amazing that we don’t have an app that reminds us to blink. Now, adding to the list of ridiculous apps, theres one that sells public parking spots.
WordPress has become synonymous with blogging and online writing. And while there’s no guarantee of the quality of the content released via the interface, Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg has effectively democratised online publishing, making it possible for everyone from the emo teen to the food-loving grandmother to share their thoughts online. The tech entrepreneur recently stopped off in New Zealand, and Idealog sat down to with him to find out a little more about what makes him tick.
With the emergence of channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, the role of the traditional media agency is being challenged, changing and by some predicted to crumble completely. ZenithOptimedia’s business director Alex Lawson questions whether we still need a media agencies when everything can go out digitally and for free.
Since the World Cup kicked off on 13 June, TVNZ has clocked up over 230,000 streams of the content available via its online hub dedicated to the event. And, according to Jason Foden, the broadcaster’s general manager of on-demand, this level of engagement matches that which TVNZ had during the preliminary rounds of the America’s Cup.
Saatchi & Saatchi NZ’s communications director sat down for a chat with Tom Eslinger, Saatchi Worldwide’s director of digital and social, author of “Mobile Magic” and inaugural jury president of the mobile lions at Cannes.
Telecom has revealed its new online TV serviceLightbox, offering a 30 day trial followed by a $15 per 30-day charge on signup.
TRN has announced the launch of a new Auckland-based radio station and the extension of the ZM radio brand onto TV in the same week that MediaWorks is set to unveil the Edge TV. We chatted to chief content officer Dean Buchanan about these moves. PLUS: Radio Sport relegated to AM and TRN crashes The Edge TV launch party.
Fourteen years ago, Jai Waite dove into a wave in Greece and hit a sandbar, becoming paralysed from the chest down with only limited function in his arms and hands. Now, as production editor at Attitude Pictures, he’s won a prestigious Apollo award for his documentary “Jimmy Wants a Job” – and it was edited using his knuckles.
Here’s a wrap of the Grand Prix and gold winners in the Cannes 2014 film category.
Tell Nielsen the truth about your scandalous agency lifestyle. Nielsen even has a drinkable offering in return for your time (‘you” being advertising folk) and your secrets. There are ten cases of wine (six bottles in each) to be won for those who fill in a survey to help Nielsen ‘understand agency life’. Everyone who completes it will receive a short report from Nielsen about the findings.
T-Mobile has joined with DDB Tribal to introduce us to Spanish entrepreneur Jose and his ‘wi-fi’ dogs, who assist holiday makers in searching for wi-fi. The dogs are trained to sniff out frequencies from the nearest router and can be rented by the hour. Or we could just go with T-mobile’s travel plan.
The ubiquity of Che Guevara’s face on the bodies of people across the world stands as testament to the fact that there’s something inexplicably appealing about being associated with a revolutionary cause. Add to this the fact that the spirit of Guy Fawkes has been resurrected as the face of the online anti-totalitarian movement, and it becomes quite evident that people still believe some battles are worth fighting for. Using this revolutionary drive as a premise, Replay Jeans has released a new spot via 180Amsterdam that places its consumers as the revolutionaries fighting against the faceless totalitarian regime bent on destroying the earth.
Kath Dewar, managing director of marketing agency Good Sense, shares her not-so-rosy views on pester power in the light of Countdown’s hugely successful Heroes Dreamworks campaign.
By the time the curtain was drawn on the 2014 Cannes Festival of Creativity, a total of 1143 lions had been distributed to the finest examples of advertising to have been published throughout the world over the course of the last year. And of these gongs, 25 will be making their way back to New Zealand in the laps of Kiwi winners.
Kiwi life assurance company Sovereign has appointed JWT as its creative agency and has extended its commercial partnership with the Dentsu Aegis Network for other comms purposes, including media, PR and social.
ZenithOptimedia (ZO) has released its June 2014 Global Ad Expenditure Forecast, and it predicts that over the next two years the online channel will overtake TV as the medium where advertisers spend the most money. In addition to this, the report also analyses of how the Kiwi market is likely to compare internationally.
When Jono Sorenson left advertising agency Carat in March to become a sales director at Diverse Media, he signed up there for only three days a week – because the rest of his time he now devotes to muesli.
He and fellow muesli-fan/fiancé Lucy Leckie have launched The Muesli Hub – “a platform to build your own muesli online and have it delivered to your door”. They want to inspire people to re-prioritise breakfast.
It’s winter and for some people in New Zealand that means a trip to the hospital for injections or even open heart surgery, because of rheumatic fever.
GSL Promotus is behind a national Health Promotion Agency campaign to let more people know that strep throats, if left untreated, can develop into rheumatic fever in at-risk populations. The campaign involves six different TVCs, a multitude of radio ads (in English, te reo Maori, Samoan and Tongan), online videos and banners, and Adshel posters.
In an effort to dissuade potential smokers from picking up that first cigarette, the Health Promotion Agency has launched a new campaign via GSL Promotus that gives a tongue-in-cheek depiction of exactly how ugly a relationship with cancer sticks can be.
Paul Catmur, the managing partner of Barnes, Catmur & Friends, shares his views on life, advertising and the parallels between the FIFA World Cup and Game of Thrones.
Two of New Zealand’s four shortlisted entries picked up gongs in the film category at Cannes, with Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Mistakes’ winning a gold lion and DDB’s ‘Be the Artist’ winning a bronze.
Over the weekend, Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Blazed’ campaign (produced by Curious Film) for the NZTA won a pair of golds and a silver in the Film craft category at Cannes.
With all the inane questions, like farming and ‘brain teasers’ posted on social media, many brands seem to think their customers are absolute morons. But as ASB’s well-awarded Like Loan showed, social media can occasionally serve a useful commercial purpose, with all the likes the app received giving the bank the details of almost 18,000 potential customers and delivering a solid business result. That campaign was a bespoke app, but a similar philosophy applies to Kiwi social auction company BuddyBid, which is currently raising some cash to take the idea overseas.
