Remember the slightly creepy corporate robot ad in 2011 for Visa Paywave? It almost made cash look cool. But in April this year the marketing changed tack with a sepia-coloured, quirky fantasy world made of skate bowls and skater girls and boys. It made contactless Paywave cards look so smooth the ad took out the Colmar Brunton Ad Impact Award for April.
Moves and shakes at Telecom, MediaWorks, Augusto, Pitango, Lassoo, Boyd PR and L’Oréal.
For a large number of Kiwis, settling in for some couch time on Friday night is a weekly ritual. And MediaWorks is aiming to draw attention to the return of 7 Days and Jono & Ben at 10 this Friday with some online content and other fun and games.
Tux, TVNZ and Greenpeace raise their bats and ackowledge the crowd this week.
In an effort to share the festivities with the Kiwis and expats who aren’t fortunate enough to be in Brazil for the World Cup, TVNZ’s Blacksand has set up an ad-hoc carnival in Auckland. Placing the seemingly innocuous duo of a mini-goal and a football alongside a ‘kick me’ sign, the Blacksand team waited out of sight, with their cameras ready, for any passersby to take the bait. Those who did kick the ball into the net were then caught off gaurd by an impromptu carnival made up of football players, samba dancers, capoeira performers and fans from all over the world.
As Jetstar’s last campaign cleverly showed, ‘no-one likes delays, but everyone loves free flights’. And it’s continued down that road to celebrate five years of flying in New Zealand by creating a game of international Pass the Parcel.
There’s a fair bit of excitement over Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s What We do in the Shadows, which opens on June 19. And Wellington, a renowned film-friendly city, is getting behind it with a vampirical addition to its ‘blown away’ sign. PLUS: ‘The vampire’s guide to Vellington’.
Following on from last year’s elaborate faux real estate campaign for Agent Anna’s first season, TVNZ’s in-house agency Blacksand has again tapped into the fake reality theme for the promotion of the dramedy’s second season. Shot in an actual rental home, the stunt features Robyn Malcolm in character as klutzy Anna Kingston showing real visitors—and potential tenants—around a home, which has been set up with a variety of booby traps that result in some awkward interactions.
After a competitive pitch, Post Creative has been brought on to ‘engineer influence’ for the Green Party’s upcoming election campaign. PLUS: which agencies are working with the other major parties?
On 12 May, Radio New Zealand’s chief executive Paul Thompson delivered a speech at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference held in Glasgow—and his thoughts on the industry stood in stark contrast to the optimism that has been voiced by the respective PR teams of the commercial stations. From the first line of the speech, which is currently available on the Radio New Zealand website, it’s clear that Thompson is bracing himself for a significant challenge in the role that he only stepped into nine months ago.
After around 18 years of fusing art with commerce, events and media company Madant has morphed into Uno Loco. And with clients increasingly looking to create experiences, not just ads, and with events companies increasingly dabbling in other areas, the planets appear to be in alignment for this successful yet under-the-radar business.
In an effort to encourage Kiwi men to open up, Men’s Health Week (which runs from 9 to 15 June) was launched late last night via a cheeky marketing campaign by M&C Saatchi. The ‘Speak Up’ campaign will see a series of speech bubbles being attached to existing advertisements in the Auckland CBD, Karangahape Road, Newmarket, Grey Lynn and Ponsonby—all areas that have been pinpointed as areas of concern.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Today’s consumers are fickle. It’s becoming harder to find loyal customers who won’t jump ship at the sight of a sweeter deal. They demand more for less, and are more willing than ever to shop around rather than sticking with a ‘preferred’ brand or provider. The telco industry knows this better than most. And you can find out how some of the country’s biggest players are dealing with it, differentiating themselves and inspiring customer loyalty and at the MA’s next Knowledge Bites event on Tuesday.
In the age of vines and five-second films, the 15 minutes of a YouTube-hosted documentary seems like a veritable viewing mountain. So, in an effort to keep the decreasing attention spans of its growing digital audience interested, APN’s online publishing team has penned a one-off partnership with filmmakers Loading Docs to host a series of ten three-minute documentaries on the NZ Herald website.
In a world where celebrity weddings tend to get more attention than serious environmental issues, it’s getting harder to avoid the curse of MEGO (my eyes glaze over). That means drawing attention to those issues often requires a more creative approach, which is exactly what Greenpeace has done ahead of World Oceans day through a collaboration with the creators of popular online video series Beached Az. PLUS: Sealord’s augmented reality experience pushes a very different message.
The billboard seems to be a growing darling of marketing and this year, for the first time ever, outdoor entries at the Cannes Lions overtook the number of press submissions (5660 outdoor entries vs. 5007 press entries). And while the majority are still static and passive, some of the more progressive outdoor executions aim to inspire more interactivity, both in real life and, increasingly, online. And Saatchi & Saatchi has gone down this road, setting a manuka billboard on fire to launch Sealord’s new hot-smoked salmon.
Last year, Clemenger Group headhunted ApolloNation’s Troy Fuller and invited him into Colenso’s offices on College Hill to develop the group’s shopper marketing expertise. His expertise resulted in quick momentum and now, only a year later, it has officially unveiled Clemenger Shop as the latest addition to the group.
Michael Pryor, currently general manager strategy and business performance at IAG New Zealand, has been appointed as the chief executive of the Marketing Association, replacing Sue McCarty, who announced her departure in February after six years at the helm.
A Dog’s Show lives on as a Kiwi classic, and it was recently referenced by Ford and JWT in a quirky Fieldays-related spot. And now Assignment Group and Adam Stevens of Robber’s Dog have done the same, with a 60 second ad that shows a humble house dog being inspired by his rural canine forebears and fuelled by a bellyful of Tux to achieve the seemingly impossible: herding cats.
A ball hasn’t even been kicked yet, but this year’s World Cup has already served up a fair amount of entertainment in terms of the ads that have come from major corporates. While Nike, Adidas and Puma have in the past been the trifecta of good sports advertising, other brands are also starting to intrude on this space by producing ads that are comparable if not better than those produced by the sports juggernauts.
Earlier this week StopPress published a story on the Q1 readership and circulation statistics for the nation’s newspapers. While the circulation figures sourced from ABC’s website and the majority of the readership figures were all accurate, the readership figures attributed to some of the provincial papers served up a series of anomalies that didn’t seem to correlate with statistics from previous surveys.
After choosing DDB to take over from FCB as its creative agency late last year, BMW has completed its line-up, with Rapp taking over from Twenty as its CRM agency and Dynamo, which had been working with the company on a short-term contract, being appointed as the media partner.
McDonald’s seems to have taken a leaf out of Dude Perfect’s book with their latest ad. To highlight their association with the 2014 FIFA World Cup the golden arches has made a video featuring some pretty amazing trick shots. Whether they are all real is still yet to be seen.
Sky has given its ‘come with us’ microsite a facelift by introducing an interactive browsing feature that takes the visitor on a short promotional journey through the programming currently on offer to subscribers. PLUS: The broadcaster has also announced a partnership with Boston-based, text-streaming company Spritz, which recently unveiled technology that allows viewers to read text on screens one word at a time without having to move from word to word or around the page.
Google recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Rubik’s cube with a special doodle that allowed users to a play with a digital version of the popular toy. And now, following on from the success of this initiative, the website has launched a video that uses the Rubik’s code as a premise to inspire innovation among the youth.
Is the thought of knowing who your neighbours are, sharing fruit with them, discussing neighbourhood crime and having a street barbie rather retro? Well, those golden times of safe, strong neighbourhoods could be coming back if new private website, neighbourly.co.nz, has anything to do with it.
Back in 2005, Cyber Monday kicked off the US and has become the biggest single online shopping day in the country (and possibly helped reduce the numbers of tramplings, brawls and taserings on Black Friday); in China, Singles Day is now the biggest online shopping day of the year worldwide; and a number of other countries have replicated these events. New Zealand has been a little late to this e-commerce party, but, following on from the success of its inaugural Click Madness event last year, The Warehouse Group is set to kick off another one on Friday 13 June.
Former Wall Street security analyst, venture capitalist and all-round data genius Mary Meeker recently published her 2014 internet trends presentation on the KPCB website. Comprising 164 slides of dense data, the voluminous analysis of the industry provides an interesting cross-section of the major trends taking shape this year.
Coca-Cola-owned Powerade has introduced a new app and updated its website in an effort to encourage Kiwis to lead healthier lifestyles. Rather than focusing on the Powerade product range, the new website instead provides users with a performance hub where they can set fitness goals, receive training programmes, track their performance and map runs. These digital upgrades coincide with the release of the sports drink’s ‘Performance is everything’ campaign, which was recently activated via an Ogilvy-created TVC that features All Blacks Liam Messam, Beauden Barrett and Julian Savea battling on a rugby field through a heavy downpour.