A data-driven marketing approach is becoming an ever more obvious business need. But tackling the challenge in your own organisation can seem daunting. Ubiquity’s Nathalie Morris shows us how to get started.
When Coke comes to you and says “we want to do something with a drone” it better be awesome. Ogilvy & Mather Singapore did not disappoint with a clever little collaboration with a non-profit, the Singapore Kindness Movement recently titled “Happiness from the skies”.
The digital world is moving at lightning speed, so by the time you’ve launched your redesigned website, it’s almost out of date. But that hasn’t stopped the LA Times from unveiling a completely reinvented site that is “as bold and compelling as our journalism and as fast moving as the world you live in”.
The Designers Institute has a fresh website, which puts the spotlight on organisation members. The simplified homepage, with ‘760 Designers’ in large type, links to a member directory, while a pared back menu has information about the institute, its events, sponsors, awards and business resources.
Trickery, bribery and other methods of incentivisation are all important aspects of good parenting (our favourite is the Christmas extortion, often starting around the middle of the year, in which parents threaten a no-show from Santa if they don’t behave). And, like a paper version of ‘Roses by You’, Hallmark and Naked have embraced those principles in Australia to promote its Hallmark Card Matchmaker service by luring a bunch of unsuspecting teens to an American Authors concert and then forcing them to write a heartfelt message to their mothers in order to get in.
It is truly amazing what advertisers can do with outdoor. Voyages-sncf.com recent campaign shows that there is still plenty of life in the world’s oldest advertising medium.
Jordan Belfort is, as The Independent wrote, “among the most infamous crooked businessmen in recent history”. And, as Martin Scorcese’s movie The Wolf of Wall St showed, he was also one of the most debauched. But after serving time following his 2004 conviction for defrauding clients out of more than $200 million, he claims to have seen the error of his ways and has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker specialising in sales techniques. Jenene Crossan dances with the Wolf.
It’s been a big month for the Kiwi comedy scene, with the International Comedy Festival running room 24 April to 18 May and Seven Days recently celebrating its 150th episode. And throughout this period, MediaWorks has gotten behind the talent on its various shows via a series of promotional pushes. Central to TV3’s campaign are a collection of idents that have been released as part of the ‘Your home of comedy’ campaign that is currently running on the channel.
Apple recently filed a patent for a holographic display, leading to much speculation about the technology being included in future models. And Mike Ko, who has created a whole heap of very cool animations for very big companies, has tried to visualise that.
Mass production still rules the world when it comes to making things. But the rise of 3D printing is seen by some as the third industrial revolution and the combination of digital data-collection and personalised printing has allowed some creative businesses and agencies to add some uniqueness to their products. Now, just in time for Mother’s Day, Cadbury and Young & Shand have embraced that shift and dipped their toes in the e-commerce waters with an online gifting platform called ‘Roses by You’.
APN is centralising management of its radio, publishing and digital business interests in New Zealand with the appointment of Jane Hastings in a redefined chief executive officer role. Previously, the Kiwi arm of APN had dual chief executive roles, with Martin Simons being in charge of the publishing and digital side and Hastings holding the reins at TRN. Updated with comments from Hastings.
For many, cardboard is something that belongs in recycling bins. But for ‘cardboard engineer/packaging ninja’ Mat Bogust, it’s something to be messed with, as he did recently as part of Beck’s NZ Music Month sponsorship. Plus: the rise of cardboard casket business Rest in Pets.
Hyundai’s everyman test-driver, Weet-bix’s heart-warming stunt with the All Blacks, Godfey Hirst’s student hijinks, Tourism New Zealand’s mountainous promotion and ANZ’s animated depiction of the typical receive a sword on both shoulders this week.
Moves and shakes at Interbrand, TVNZ, Tangible Media, New Zealand Story and Vena.
When it comes to selling cars, there’s no substitute for getting bums on seats and letting potential customers get a whiff of that new car smell. And Hyundai and Shine have put a few different bums on the seats of its Accent model, including that of a truck driver, in an effort to inspire other Kiwis to take it for a hoon themselves. Plus: Hyundai’s rise through the reputational ranks.
Qantas has found a slightly different use for their inflight sick bags by encouraging passengers to utilize them as a canvas for a very unique type of art. Passengers are then encouraged to share there new masterpiece with the hashtag #QantasBlankCanvas.
Recently, Beck’s and Shine launched a series of playable posters for New Zealand Music Month, following on from its playable bottles last year. If only Beck’s sponsored New Zealand Wood Month, because then it could take some inspiration from Bartholomäus Traubeck, who modified a record player to play slices of wood and released a ten-track album called Years.
At 15, an age when most teens are experimenting with pimple-popping techniques, Brendan Jarvis had already entered the digital agency world. And this early foray set the foundation that would eventually lead him to the position of running The Space In Between, an agency with eight staff and a growing market in the education sector and the US.
After a couple of years as managing director at Y&R NZ, James Hurman has taken the best bits from his life in advertising and started up an innovation consultancy called Previously Unavailable that aims to help Kiwi companies create better products and services. So why did he do it and what will he be doing?
As the curtains were drawn on the fifth season of MasterChef NZ, the TVNZ team could tap each other on the back for once again dominating the ratings for the duration of the hit show. And this accomplishment will taste even sweeter given that it came in year when MediaWorks attempted take over the food porn throne with its bold—and at first confusing—The Great Food Race.
Just over a year after he arrived at Whybin\TBWA, Toby Talbot is departing the agency, with ex-M&C Saatchi executive creative director and chief executive Dave King coming on board as the replacement chief creative officer.
Every time a GPS-connected vehicle drives down the road, data related to the speed, route and habits of the driver can be recorded. And while most of this information might seem arbitrary, Tower has just released an app that uses it to reward responsible drivers with reduced insurance premiums—thereby marking a shift from the generalisations traditionally used to determine the amount to be paid.
You might think the 11 herbs and spices used by Colonel Sanders is a simple calculation of the ingredients required to create the world-famous deep-fried bird. But, according to consultant Greg Rowland from The Semiotics Alliance, you’d be wrong, because in the world of numerical symbolism, 11 supposedly has mystical powers. So which attributes do we ascribe to other numbers? And why?
Although content marketing has become one of the latest buzz phrases uttered at conferences, it has actually been around since 1895, when John Deere started Furrow magazine, a publication dedicated to information for American farmers. Following this in 1932, after seeing value in being associated with well crafted content, Procter and Gamble sponsored a radio programme via one of its soap brands, adding the term soap opera to the vernacular. It’s from this historical standpoint that a Getty Images video recently published on YouTube discusses how content marketing has evolved over the years to eventually give us a range of modern applications that that not only contribute to branding but also entertain viewers.
In recent years, The University of Otago has been trying to move away from what it sees as the negative student stereotypes of binge drinking, couch-burning and filthy flats. Of course, those elements of the student culture tend to be quite a drawcard for many Kiwi young’uns hoping to embark on a journey of mind expansion/erosion and a major reason a large number of them fly over a range of other institutions of learning to live and learn in Dunedin. And Godfrey Hirst and Feltex carpets have embraced some those stereotypes with an experiment that aims show off the qualities of its ‘student proof carpet’.
As the design proponents keep saying, good packaging can make a difference and change the way consumers react to products. And artist Paddy Mergui has proven that by adding some luxury to the quotidian in an exhibition called Wheat is Wheat is Wheat.
Whittaker’s signed up Nigella Lawson as its mascot back in 2012 when she was still the high priestess of euphemistic domesticity. That reputation changed markedly after the domestic abuse saga and the ensuing divorce proceedings that revealed she had used substances slightly more illicit than five roll refined chocolate. But Whittaker’s and its agency Assignment Group have stuck by their woman and just released an ad to promote the Creamy Milk Challenge.
With 150 writers and more than 120 events over five days in and around Auckland’s Aotea Centre, the Auckland Writers Festival offers something for anyone interested in books, stories and ideas. We’ve got three double passes to three different events—Adrian Kinnaird’s ‘From Earth’s End’, Peter Alsop’s ‘An entrepreneurial tale’ and ‘Michael Leunig: exploring the creative process’—to give away, so post a link to some good writing, we’ll print it out, insert it into our prose-judging robot and give the tickets to those who offer up the best suggestions.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Paper? Pffff. Why doodle in 2D on dead trees when you could do it in 3D in the real world with the Lix pen, “the world’s smallest 3D printing pen”.