There’s a perception that canned-beer is of lower quality than the bottled variant and makes the drinker look like a lout – an image that Boundary Road Brewery (BRB) and its agency Barnes, Catmur and Friends are attempting to push aside with their ‘Blind Taste Test’ campaign.
Anthony Gardiner considers the importance of participation in marketing, especially in this modern age of apathetic consumers.
Spouses, they’re scary. Am I right? Tower’s new TVC campaign plays on the age-old fear of breaking bad news to your significant other, showing that having a policy with the insurance company (or add-on services such as TXT updates) makes the task just a little bit less frightening.
Over the past year or so, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has been on a mission to assemble a panel of trusted advertising soldiers to join its army, just as it has done with a range of other suppliers. After a bit of a delay, it released the longlist in February. And now the final list has been released, with 37 agencies in the mix. But not everyone’s happy with the end result, or the process used to create it.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
The news industry is under significant stress at present. Budgets are being cut, new business models are being searched for, and surveys show being a news journalist is one of the worst jobs you can have. But as this amazing promo clip from the ’80s for a Milwaukee TV station shows, it didn’t always used to be like this. In fact, it used to be frickin’ awesome, with vans, haircuts and grabbing things while walking. Eat your heart out Ron Burgundy. And some food for thought for the creative direction of Seven Sharp’s next promotional campaign, perhaps.
Audio visual content is still arguably the best way to convey emotion, tell stories and flog things. And, as evidenced by its position atop the ASA ad spend charts—and despite all the rhetoric and predictions of death—the telly is still a bloody popular advertising medium in this country. The advertising that appears on it is not always good, of course, but in an effort to celebrate what we feel are some of the best efforts of the past year and a bit, we’re asking our audience to choose their favourites as part of the StopPress/MediaWorks TVC of the Year competition.
Mel Reece departs from MediaWorks, Changes at Loyalty New Zealand, a triple treat at Saatchi & Saatchi, great Shakes at Running With Scissors, Subway shifts, and Ooh ramps up its creative capabilities.
The first instalment of TVNZ’s Future Now series, which aims to showcase some of the company’s big broadcasting brains, Dominic Corry interviewed head of digital Tom Cotter to find out how technology was changing the face of TV. And next on the list is Andrew Shaw, the straight-shooting general manager of commissioning, production and acquisitions, who waxes lyrical about TV content trends and the reinvestment in high concept, cinematic drama series in the US.
Two independent Wellington ad agencies are merging to scale up and take it to the big boys.
Rekorderlig Cider has brought a piece of Scandinavia to Auckland’s Shortland St with the arrival of a Swedish-themed bar and restaurant that will be open to the public for just ten days. All up, around $400,000 was spent on constructing and promoting the tree filled, wood-panelled Winter Garden. And when you look at the growth of cider in New Zealand and around the world, that seems like a pretty good investment.
To celebrate the yet-to-be-born heir to the British throne, Monteith’s has created a limited edition ‘Royal Series’ and is sending it off to Windsor. This fits into the StopPress philosophy of buying gifts for parents, not babies, and the Princes have previously sampled some of the West Coast brews on trips to New Zealand over the years.
DIY automatives are at their best when they look hilarious (such as The Homer) or do something completely out of character such as this mobility scooter.
The New York Times recently won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for its brilliant interactive journey through an avalanche, Snow Fall. It’s continued down that path with another interactive—and gutwrenching—story about Jeff Bauman, the man who had both his legs blown off after the Boston bombings. But Fairfax can play the long-format game too.
Without much fanfare Google has launched its terribly-named streaming music service Play Music All Access in New Zealand Australia, the first markets to receive it following the launch in the US in May.
InfoPages provides brands with profile pages which aggregates the content they release on Scoop. The profiles can include a logo, media and business contacts, and a description of the company.
Every year for the past eleven years, teams of furious filmmakers—some amateur, some professional—from around New Zealand have given up two days of their lives to partake in the Rialto Channel 48 Hours, “New Zealand’s largest guerrilla filmmaking competition”. 44 teams took part in 2004 and more than 800 took part this year. And a team with some strong connections to the world of marcomms were named as grand champions.
In a recent column in NZ Marketing (and again in StopPress) John Baker expressed some opinions on the recent launch of Standard Media Index (SMI) in New Zealand and on media agencies in general. Paul Head, the chief executive of CAANZ, responds to some of the specific comments on behalf of its member media agencies.
Yukfoo is now in its teens and all the pimply awkwardness it implies. To celebrate, the studio has released a showreel of its earliest works – including this infamous bunny-laden piece for Vodafone New Zealand.
Ex-Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide chief operating officer, STW director, Assignment Group don and butter aficionado Peter Cullinane offers up some hard-earned pearls of advertising wisdom.
Radio New Zealand isn’t known for being the hippest network on the airwaves, but the public broadcaster is launching a new brand aimed at bringing in the youth.
PopPress was quite partial to the recent poster campaign by New York PBS Station Thirteen that skewered the types of reality shows likely to be put on mainstream TV these days (and in so doing, show how it offers quality content and raise some money to create it). And after Knitting Wars (‘It’s Sew On’), Married to a Mime (‘She’s Got Plenty to Say’), The Dillionaire (‘Life’s a Pickle’), Bayou Eskimos (‘Their Life is Headed South’) and Big Bad Bag Boys (‘Clean up on Every Aisle’), it’s followed up with three trailers for fake shows Meet the Tanners, Clam Kings, and Long Island Landscapers.
Just as many writers are under the pump as editorial budgets shrink, many photographers are having a fairly rough time of it too, with the Chicago Sun Times’ recent decision lay off all its full-time snappers clear evidence of changing times. But it’s not all fire and brimstone, and the world still loves quality imagery, so in an effort to showcase the work of some of New Zealand’s best commercial photographers, the Advertising & Illustrative Photographers Association has launched a new platform called Cliq. PLUS: heaps of eye candy.
What would the iconic sci-fi classic Star Wars look like if George Lucas was an Australian (and a pretty hyperbolic stereotype of one, to boot)? Well now you know, thanks to this little spoof. Buggery wallabies, it’s good.
Pass The Idea, a cloud-based service that ‘helps everybody have more, better ideas’, has worked with local companies like DB, Frucor, Ara Wines and NZ Lotteries. It’s also got a few more big projects on the go, and, after receiving a grant from the Callaghan Innovation Fund, the two founders are planning on taking the upgraded platform to the world.
There are a rare few brands that have nailed the ‘commercial absurdity’ approach, chief among them Old Spice, Skittles and Tango. Many others have tried to replicate it and it often comes off looking slightly desperate, derivative and cringey, as evidenced by this spot from Coca-Cola, which is asking punters to explore the world of Ahh on a new website filled with a huge array of time wasting, fizzy beverage-related games.
When Time magazine chose ‘you’ as its person of the year in 2006, it featured a little mirror on the cover. And in latest edition of Next magazine—’The You Issue – What Every Woman Needs to Know’—Bauer Media has gone for the reflective approach as well.
Looking to attach another language to my resume, I found the language teaching service Duolingo. The website takes English-language-users through the basics of other tongues.
Yahoo’s new sales peeps, Ali Williams gets radio gig and more hip hop and RnB for the whole country.
The government recently gave SkyCity the right to operate a few extra pokies in exchange for building a new convention centre. More than a few commentators were aghast at the decision to increase the number of filthy money suckers and concerned about the impact it might have on low-income families. But please, won’t someone think of the rich people? What impact will more conventions have on them? Turns out there are some similarities between the two groups because in an article in Wired magazine about the rise of meditation and mindfulness in Silicon Valley, it described another, some might say even more insidious addiction that is becoming increasingly prevalent in some areas of the business community.