From Women Laughing Alone With Salad to Awkward Stock Photos, plenty of time can be wasted looking at ridiculous stock imagery. Getty Images has a whole host of them at its disposal as well and it’s chosen ten of the most bizarre. See the slideshow here.
The New Zealand chapter of global social media giant Facebook has doubled its revenue in 2012, although it still remains in the red on the back of increased employee benefits.
Getty Images already offers a range of grants to photographers, and it’s added another one that aims to recognise excellence in portrait photography by emerging photographers.
Retirement planning isn’t the sexiest of subjects. But AMP and Running With Scissors have added some human interest to the world of KiwiSaver schemes by conducting a psychological experiment to illustrate that a little bit of willpower now makes things all the sweeter in the future.
Who’s it for: TVNZ by in-house agency Blacksand Why we like it: It’s just a little bit odd and quirky, much like the show it’s trying…
‘Creatively-led, humanity-obsessed’ agency/production company Augusto has done some good work for Adidas in recent times, like the 60-minute documentary on the history of the All Blacks jersey and the Supersounds campaign. And for its latest trick, it’s got Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Israel Dagg to embrace their domestic sides to promote the arrival of iron-on numbers on fan jerseys.
It would be ungracious of Apple to create tablet ads mocking its competitors because it’s leading the pack in that field, however Microsoft has no such qualms when it comes to poking fun at the iPad.
There are plenty of motion-controlled games out there, from Nintendo’s Wii to Resn’s Face Arcade. Now US gum brand Stride and Wieden + Kennedy have embraced that technology for its latest campaign, “the most amazing chewing-based game we’re aware of”.
There’s been plenty of ink dedicated to Seven Sharp over the past few months—a bit too much in the opinion of TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick. But far from free-falling, the more informal, magazine-style current affairs show has stabilised to an average audience of around 375,000 viewers. And, in an effort to get more New Zealanders to give the show a go, it has launched a new campaign via its inhouse agency Blacksand.
ASB Bank was the first in the country to offer social media banking through Facebook and now stands to become the first in the country (if not the world) to offer a home loan rate completely dependent on the number of Likes it receives on Facebook. Although the premise of the competition is simple, its actual mechanics are shrouded in mystery.
Y&R NZ has been appointed the creative agency for KiwiRail-owned Interislander after a competitive pitch, continuing a run of new business over the last year. The incumbent was Saatchi & Saatchi.
Twitter’s Vine app is groaning under the weight of over 13 million humans sharing absolutely everything about their lives, no matter how banal and uninteresting, via six-second snippets (Facebook is competing with the launch of video for Instagram, which launched last week). And while some creative types believe restrictions lead to better solutions, this Funny or Die clip shows the short-format approach isn’t too well-suited to making ads.
The marcomms sector is renowned more for its competitiveness than its collegiality. But it’s nice to see The Radio Network’s ZM can still appreciate MediaWorks’ George FM.
Holden’s latest TVC for the Commodore is part black tie dinner and part bogan romp – showing the new VF Commodore’s classier side, while paying homage to Holden’s bogan roots and fan base.
Video content is still something of a teacher’s pet in the world of marketing and, in an age of sharing, the best of it lives on online. So drink in the ads and brand-funded video deemed to be the world’s best: the main winners from the Film and Film Craft categories at Cannes.
The final Cannes medals were handed out over the weekend, bringing the Dumb Ways to Die-dominated show to an end. But it was slim pickings for the Kiwis, with just one bronze to DDB in the final stages.
Technology magazines Computerworld, Reseller News and PC World live to report another day, the publications’ licenses are being returned by Fairfax Media to IDG Australia next month.
Condom-based promotions, racist ads for brownies, accusations of franchisee bullying, awarding sex crimes with prizes on social media … Hell Pizza has often been on the wrong side of the authorities over the years for its controversial marketing stunts. But the shoe is on the other foot now and, in quintessentially cheeky Hell style, it’s sent a “cease, desist and go sit in the corner” letter to one of its major competitors, Pizza Hut.
Our weekly wrap of good things, funny things, weird things and other things seen on the intertubes.
There are few things more annoying than sitting at a bar with someone who seems more interested in playing with their phone than in interacting with an actual human across the table. Thankfully, Salve Jorge Bar has come up with a clever way to pry phones away from its patrons: ‘The Offline Glass’.
DraftFCB’s having a brilliant Cannes Lions, DDB’s doing better than expected and took out one of the biggest awards on the roster, and usual top performer Colenso BBDO hasn’t had much to write home about. Now DDB’s in line for three more awards after the release of the Film shortlist.
Thick as Thieves’ Zoe McIntosh and Film Construction’s Hugh Mitton win directing gongs at Cannes Lions.
Jae Morrison shifts to Finch, farewelling Nick Coombe, more gold for Kim Hill, Spark PR picks up Pacific Brands, Trio shacks up with Tourism Malaysia, changes at Positively Wellington Tourism, the arrival of AAANZ, and Tourism Fiji welcomes a new regional director.
As the illustration above demonstrates, it seems The New Zealand Herald has become a bit formulaic with its photography – so much so that a new(ish) Tumblr blog has sprung up to seize the frowny-faced opportunity for laughs.
In November last year, 16 creative teams were given a brief, some sustenance and one hour to come up with an outdoor campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand as part of Adshel’s Creative Challenge. Colenso BBDO’s Ben Polkinghorne, Scott Kelly and Salah Ben-Brahim came out on top, and their concept has now migrated into the real world and forms the basis of the charity’s winter campaign.
New Zealand loves a good weather event. And Wellington felt the full force of natu… Hang on a minute, it seems as though the mainstream media has neglected to tell the people that the city was actually ‘attacked by a ravenous yellow goat’. Now that would make for a great Japanese monster movie.
According to a study in the UK, more than a third of 16 to 23-year-olds didn’t know that bacon came from pigs and four in ten failed to link milk with an image of a dairy cow. That lack of understanding around provenance is quite concerning, but Silver Fern Farms and Colenso BBDO embraced the farm to show consumers how easy they’ve made their lives with the ‘Going to Great Lengths’ campaign. And, with a win in the April round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award, it seems to have worked.
There’s crazy and then there’s John McAfee crazy. The millionaire founder of McAfee Antivirus gives the world’s craziest how to video on uninstalling the software that long ago made him crazy rich (keyword being crazy).
BNZ Bank is putting the call out for New Zealand’s best short story writers, with a Facebook app that turns prose into art.
He’s been on the wall for Daikin, he’s been on a bike for Rexona, he’s been in a video with his dad for Adidas, and he’s been in his undies for Jockey, but brands just can’t get enough of the commercial dream that is Dan Carter, so now he is trying to keep up with a working mum in a new spot for Healtheries.