The most important night on the advertising calendar looms once again. And if the Battle of the Ad Bands registration poster is any gauge, it looks like it’s going to be a twerk fest this Thursday at the Kings Arms Tavern. So make sure you get your tickets.
Digital screens and mobile technology offer a range of new creative opportunities for the outdoor industry and Johnson & Johnson-owned brand Neutrogena has employed the services of a special hi-tech Adshel in Auckland that takes photos of punters, does a bit of whizzbangery and spits out an image that makes them look younger.
Energy drinks—and other terrible sugary, sciencey concoctions hoping to attract young customers—have long focused on extreme sports and mad stunts. Red Bull kicked it all off and has gradually morphed into a media company; V has created a few new crazy pastimes; and Monster has a penchant for boganic pursuits like drifting. But the Coca-Cola-owned energy brand Nos has decided that’s all a bit hackneyed, so it’s mocked its competition in the form of four fake interviews with a hyped-up ‘marketing expert’ who recommends ‘blasting the logo all over everyone’s faces’.
We’re big fans of doppelgangers here at StopPress. And while there’s been a lot of talk about Lorde’s Royals featuring in Samsung’s new ad, ‘The Developer’, no-one’s mentioned the important fact that Lionel Messi is a dead (but beardless) ringer for Y&R NZ’s managing director James Hurman.
Military dictatorship? What military dictatorship? Tourism Fiji has sent its new global brand campaign into the wild and, in an effort to differentiate it from its Pacific competition, the island nation is focusing on the fact that its happiness is likely to rub off on visitors.
DNA creative director Grenville Main and Formway Design Studio joint manager Kent Parker have been awarded the Black Pins as the Best Design Awards celebrated the cream of Kiwi design talent on Friday night. While Special Group won the top packaging award for an unprecendented third time in a row with its Karma Cola work and Clemenger BBDO took the Purple Pin in digital for its Flash driving game for NZTA.
Dedicated followers of advertising will get to peak through a keyhole into the headspace of one of the world’s leading small agencies, Mistress Creative, at the Semi-Permanent stage-show in Wellington this week.
A family member affected by illness or injury, or dying, are among the worst scenarios imaginable. That makes insurance for families a hard sell, but AMP, partnering with DNA, Running with Scissors and Bloodhound Media, want to remind Kiwis to protect what matters most.
Qantas and agency Droga5 in Australia have created a replica of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity to explore New Zealand and show off different ways Kiwis can use the airline’s Frequent Flyer scheme.
Colenso BBDO’s impressive winning streak continues to roll on and, after adding Volkswagen, Samsung, a few extra Fonterra brands and another yet-to-be-announced client to the roster recently, it’s also working with Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development (ATEED) and Heart of The City (HOTC) and will put its mind to luring more domestic travellers to the region and more Aucklanders into the central city.
There’s been a range of brands playing the absurd advertising card in recent years, from Old Spice to Skittles to HTC. And Aussie loan company Nimble has joined that club and pushed the boat a long way out with three weird—and weirdly compelling—ads from Clemenger BBDO Brisbane and The Sweet Shop’s Steve Ayson.
While the major topic of conversation in agency land today will presumably be last night’s Effie results, the Cannes Lions have released their report on the 2013 festival. And it makes for pretty good reading from a New Zealand perspective.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
Spark’s casting of comedic pranksters Jono and Ben for the local versions of Heineken Dropped have paid off in YouTube views and effective Kiwi-fying of the international franchise.
DDB and DraftFCB continued their winning ways at the Effie Awards last night, with DDB holding on to the most effective agency crown and DraftFCB taking the supreme Effie for its work on the Health Promotion Agency’s depression initiative.
Air New Zealand has created an expectation that its safety videos won’t be boring. But travellers can only handle seeing a fake plastic fish bouncing around in Bear Grylls’ backpack, Lord of the Rings gags, or a lycra-clad maniac so many times before the novelty wears off. So Air New Zealand and True have launched another new—but old—safety video starring ex-Golden Girl Betty White and a cast of oldies.
It’s often said people browsing the web have little appetite for long videos, but Tui’s proved that wrong with its viral beer prank. The beer plumber stunt created by Saatchi and Saatchi, featuring a builder and his tradie mates launched on 17 September. The 90 second version has had about 2.65 million views while the seven minute version has had more than 3.5 million.
Recruitment company Hays says a growing number of offshore marketing professionals are being pulled in to roles in New Zealand and Australia that require specialist digital skills, with particular gaps in the skill base for analysing big data to generate revenue.
A tweet that queried the horsepower of one horse was enough for Dodge to make a nice sequel to its campaign featuring fictional newsman Ron Burgundy. A talking horse that calculates its own horsepower? No, really.
Samsung has given Lorde’s hit Royals its ad debut in a new TVC for the recently-released Note 3 and Galaxy Gear smartwatch. It’s hard to tell how they’ve interpreted the song, but it seems homeless children have been freed to “live that fantasy” or get the “different kind of buzz” they crave thanks to the company’s tech.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and this year it’s themed around the idea of ‘Connecting’. It’s when some of the smartest people in our industry do amazing work to help us better understand mental illness. But when it comes to understanding, the real heavy lifting is usually achieved through conversation. So, as someone who’s lucky enough to be relatively successful in spite of mental illness, Michael Goldthorpe has decided to open up in an attempt to kick-start some chatter.
Social media channels based around images are getting our attention faster than others, a recent research snapshot by Colmar Brunton shows. That’s partly because of channel fragmentation, but also because pictures put us in touch with our feelings, the company reckons.
We wonder if someone who hangs out in gyms too much dreamed up this video for Gillette that puts training moves to music. In any case the experiment for the company’s Clear Gel deodorant created a catchy number.
Kiwis are getting their own version of a 24 hour online event designed to whip shoppers into a frenzy, modelled on a day that kicked off in the US in 2005. The organisers are targetting a Kiwi-sized proportion of the sales results a similiar day achieved on debut in Australia despite that site crashing under the weight of web traffic.
Colenso BBDO has formalised its relationship with Samsung and will be the agency of record for all its various divisions, making it one of the few markets in the world where the Korean behemoth isn’t aligned with a Leo Burnett agency. But it means the agency has had to say goodbye to a long-time client, Haier-owned Fisher & Paykel.
The radio survey results always make for entertaining/confusing reading. There’s certainly no shortage of self-aggrandisement (‘We’re number one* in shemales^ aged 48-49# between 10pm and 10:15pm!’) and MediaWorks Radio was pretty chuffed with its performance in this round. So, to showcase the network’s galaxy of stars and its ability to reach Kiwi audiences, it created an entertaining and very self-deprecating clip showing its DJs swapping stations and attempting to appeal to very different demographics than they’re accustomed to. Mark Leishman reprezent biatches!
Vodafone is carrying on its tradition of releasing apps designed to help more Kiwis use technology – this time it’s one for senior smartphone newbies.
We’ve seen a few companies turn their back on traditional staff recruitment lately, and now Aussie tech firm Big Commerce has done the same thing, in an even geekier way. In its search for engineers, it put posters up in Sydney with tear off strips traditionally reserved for phone numbers, But instead of a phone number there was a complex code candidates had to crack.
Samsung’s Smartwatch is among a raft of new timepiece tech to hit the market of late, but it’s not the only clever watch to be celebrated in popular culture. Samsung is celebrating its place in history with a new video, A Long Time Coming.
GE’s resource maximising machines are the star of a new USS Enterprise Crew – the cast of a BBDO New York campaign for GE.