Jane Sweeney plans a combination of board seats and executive positions having closed the door on her nine year career at the top of PR firm Porter Novelli. Offshore stints could also be on the cards, but she wants to stay based in New Zealand.
The judges for News Works’ Newspaper Ad of the Month competition didn’t deem any entries worthy of winning in either August or September, but three ads—DDB’s Reflect, Ogilvy & Mather’s Auckland Council Elections, and bcg2’s Ezetrol—were given special mentions in September, earning them one point each on the Agency League table.
Whybin\TBWA’s ‘Results Don’t Lie’ campaign for the 2013 New Zealand Effie Awards put a few creative big-wigs from New Zealand’s advertising industry in a dark room, gave them lie detector tests and asked them about the legitimacy of their most awarded campaigns. The results have been comical and controversial in equal measure and, with awards night looming, the agency has stepped it up a notch, announcing that one of its own—chief creative officer Toby Talbot—will take to the stage for a live polygraph test as part of the evening’s proceedings.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
The NZRU has made no secret of the fact it wants to get more sponsorship dollars. And certain All Blacks are already making their own endorsement hay while the sun shines. Sadly, big locks Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock aren’t on that list, but, as this clip shows, the cocktail-loving hard men are well and truly up for it.
Not long after one German car company chose its favoured agency, another German car company is following suit, with DDB, Special Group and DraftFCB getting set to duke it out for the BMW and Mini business.
US department store giant JC Penney either wants to laugh at the expense of customers who say the word hashtag in public, or has failed to heed the warning sent by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake in their skit on the Late Night show about how silly social conversations would sound in real life.
Sometimes companies make outrageous claims in the name of marketing themselves – like saying they can create a webpage in mid air in seven minutes. But Kiwi startup Designbymobile put their money where they mouth is and did just that – and got some quick publicity in the process.
A new Orcon campaign with Contagion gives the ISP a chance to get new customers and frontman Kim Dotcom a chance to push his political barrow. Orcon is using what it calls a “fun, cheeky” video featuring Dotcom, and social media activity, to push its $99 uncapped internet plan on fibre or ADSL.
The floor of the car is a place where various horrors tend to lie undiscovered until the annual clean. Honda has tried to remedy this in its new people mover with an in-car vacuum cleaner. And, along with a series of ads featuring the voices of Rainn Wilson and Neil Patrick Harris, it has also taken to Twitter to let various snack and toy brands know that they don’t stand a chance against its powerful suction.
Looking at viewable impressions is a nice thought. But it’s bloody tough to implement and it’s unlikely to make a difference, says Dan Robertson.
NZ Girl wants to be the change it wants to see in the industry, says Jenene Crossan and it’s putting its money where its mouth is by changing its commercial proposition and giving away display advertising for free.
The dirty secret of gamification – which chairperson of our Game Developers Association Stephen Knightly defines as using game thinking and mechanics to engage customers and users – is that the psychology is nothing new. The good news is it still works.
ASB has built a new app for businesses, seeing as much demand for convenient mobile commerce among businesses as among consumers.
A couple of months back, Heineken challenged unsuspecting travellers at New York’s John F Kennedy Airport to ditch their travel plans for a destination of the roulette board’s choosing. Now the stunt’s had a cleverly crafted sequel by the brand’s agency Wieden and Kennedy. Heineken tracked down people who tweeted saying they’d drop everything for a spontaneous trip and rolled in the roulette board to test their mettle.
Over the past few years, Sky has favoured the humorous approach in its ‘My Happy Place’ advertising. Its new ‘Come with us’ brand was rolled out around the start of August and, while a series of relevant movie quotes dotted around HQ certainly gave the brand a sense of whimsy, its big, cinematic and poetic TVC by DDB and Ruskin is a much more serious, intriguing and emotive affair that’s designed to showcase the range of quality content subscribers can access.
A single view of customers is at the heart of success for the world’s leading loyalty programmes enables marketers to truly understand customers and their behavior holistically, says Hayden Saunders.
DDB has teamed with Paw Justice in a campaign that asks Kiwis to spread opposition to a recent law allowing party pills to be tested on animals.
The interweb is chock full of creative ways people have left their jobs with fanfare. Now journalism graduate Marina Shifrin’s effort, a dance video, has scored more than a million views.
Paul Thornton discusses recent changes to Google’s algorithm and how these can affect businesses online.
Kiwi tech companies remain strongly export-focused, but there’s room for improvement in how they sell and promote themselves, according to this year’s Market Measures Survey.
Former Interest.co.nz managing editor Bernard Hickey is banking on subscriptions as the route to growth for his new politics and economics news website and email service hivenews.co.nz.
NGAGEMENT is the largest digital signage event in New Zealand and is coming to Auckland on 4 October at The Cloud.
Five good’uns this week, with ukuleles, emoticons, family time, song rash and Rotorua making the cut.
Since DraftFCB took over the Air New Zealand account at the start of last year, its work has been fairly retail focused, with the airline’s deals being promoted on TV and online. But it’s finally got a chance to have a bit of fun with a campaign to promote the launch of the new Airpoints credit cards.
AJ Park patent specialists Anton Blijlevens and Jillian Lim touch on some of the interesting patents to look out for on the shelves.
There’s a growing movement in food around provenance, as seen by US restaurant chain Chipotle’s recent campaigns. And there’s a growing, but still unfortunately fairly niche movement in business around ethics, as evidenced by the creation of organisations like The B Team and the real steps being taken by big companies like Puma. All Good Organics has tapped into both of these trends, first with bananas and recently with its drinks range, and co-founder Simon Coley recently put down the crayons at Powershop and, along with Matt Morrison, headed to the jungles of Sierra Leone to see how the kola nut farmers it works with have benefitted.
There’s been a buzz of interest, judging by the comments, on this Trade Me auction that gives the less pure-minded among us an alternative to New World’s Little Shop collectables.
The Herald on Sunday can stop chasing now it has a new lead, Westpac is on the hunt for a GM of strategy, products and marketing, Cooper Street gets Time on its hands, Devlin is back in the fold for Radio Sport and True bolsters its leadership ranks.
Clemenger BBDO’s Simon Wharton and James Burton have taken the August ORCA off DraftFCB for their NZTA ‘GPS vs.’ campaign, which reminds us that “when you’re focused on the phone, you’re not focused on the road”.