It hasn’t been a particularly good month for old broadcasters and, following on from the death of Sir Paul Holmes, radio stalwart Kevin Black passed away last night at the age of 69 from a suspected heart attack.
Parliament has announced today it’s introducing plain packaging requirements for cigarettes and other tobacco products, making New Zealand only the second country in the world to do so. Rachel Ramsay looks at both sides of the plain packaging argument, asking if where there is smoke , there is liars.
Cupcakes all round for ASB’s beardy new mascot and Mitre 10’s romantic instructional video.
Latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Insight report shows digital creatives will be having many more “client lunches” in 2013, following a bonanza year in 2012.
In an effort to create more efficiencies across departments—and, of course, reduce the $60 million spent on the purchase of advertising and media services in New Zealand in 2011—the Government has been on a mission to assemble a panel of trusted advertising soldiers to join its army. And, after a bit of a delay, it’s chosen its longlist and asked successful parties for their “best and final offer”.
Partnership between New Zealand’s two biggest telcos, and Australia’s Telstra, will added almost 300 times our current internet capacity by 2014.
The lure of toasters, knives or coffee is fairly compelling for many Kiwis, and, according to the results of an independent study commissioned by Muffin Break that investigated the habits of shoppers and their interest in frequent purchasing programmes, 42 percent of those surveyed said they would return to a store where the service had dropped if the loyalty programme on offer was good.
Ecoya came in for some unwanted attention for its very visible nudity in 2011, with its Lady Godiva-inspired billboard getting a slap from the ASA (and also getting stolen). And in the latest campaign it’s maintained the sans clothes approach, although this time it’s claiming the nudity is ‘invisible’.
Memery is a fickle mistress. One day you’re hot, one day you’re supplanted by people tipping milk over their heads for no apparent reason. And, generally speaking, you know a meme is close to death’s door when people in offices start partaking (or, in the case of flash mobs, when companies implement them as the experiential aspect of a campaign). Given there’s a website dedicated to agencies around the world that have embraced what the kids are calling the Harlem Shake, and given practically every media outlet in the world has collected some of the best efforts, it’s quite possibly in its last throes, but we couldn’t resist the pull of the thrust, so here’s our obligatory post showing local business folk indulging in weird, bacchanalian behaviour.
Colenso BBDO continues the age old tradition of microsite campaigns with its latest work for V Energy drinks, while finding time along the way to promote light robbery.
Sim Ahmed captured the goodness of Air New Zealand’s social media breakfast last week with a liveblog. But if you hate words, then you’ll be overjoyed to learn that the airline has put together a video highlights reel for aspiring social media gurus who missed out.
In 2007, almost two in five New Zealanders who planned to buy a new car in the next four years said they would ‘definitely would not consider’ any Hyundai model. But, showing how perceptions can be changed quickly with quality products and solid marketing to back them up, the latest automotive brand rejecter results from Roy Morgan Research show this proportion has now halved, and effectively increased Hyundai’s available market by 25 percent.
DDB is well-accustomed to showing off the spoils of spending through its work with NZ Lotteries. But it’s showing a different side of excessive consumption in its latest spot for Westpac.
Clearly not done with just taking our doctors, engineers, aunties and nephs, Australia is now looking to poach New Zealand’s reality TV talent for Beauty and the Geek Australia. FOUR has announced that next season of the gameshow will feature a Kiwi beauty and geek, but applicants must play into some heavy and insulting stereotypes in order to be eligible.
Towering beanstalks, enormous tomes and lie detection are the ingredients in Contagion’s new campaign for TV2, which aims to enchant viewers into picking up the remote for the new season of programmes that started this week by focusing on Once Upon a Time and Revenge.
Stolen from your mum’s purse? Relieved yourself in a swimming pool? Told someone that, no, they don’t look fat in that? Boundary Road and Barnes, Catmur & Friends are looking questioningly at you. And a new ‘scientific’ online survey seeks to gauge Kiwi honesty, with a campaign asking cider-drinkers or free-stuff-sifters to answer 15 questions in The Great Kiwi Honesty Test and win a season’s* worth of the new bevvie, Honesty Box Cider.
ASB has a good pedigree when it comes to using likeable characters in its marketing. And, after seven months of planning with its agency Saatchi & Saatchi, it’s hoping it has created another one after foisting the bearded, booming Brian Blessed on the nation to help get New Zealanders to celebrate success, no matter how small that success might be.
Why give your best ideas and energy to a client, when you could make it your own successful business, says Jim Coudal.
Sir Bob Jones says Sonny Bill Williams ‘seems to be an idiot adrift on a float of publicity.’ But Kaleb Francis thinks he’s an immensely physically talented individual—and a branding freak.
Monocle editor, Wallpaper founder, Financial Times columnist and overall media darling Tyler Brûlé was in the country recently to eat oysters at the Oyster Inn on Waiheke Island and speak to a few invited guests as part of Colenso BBDO’s Love This Speaker series. He also recorded a radio show about the state of the local magazine market with John Baker, chair of the MPA and publisher at Tangible Media, and Andy Pickering, editor of Pilot and the Herald’s Spy pages and freelance creative director. So click your thingee to hear what they had to say.
Aside from a classy print ad, and some classic Spring home loan activity, ASB largely kept its powder dry during the Great Bank Wars of 2012. But now it’s ready to play and, with the help of Saatchi & Saatchi and Brian Blessed, an able but much hairier replacement for its last foreign thespian, Dame Judy Dench, it’s launched its new ‘Succeed On’ campaign, which aims to get us humble Kiwi folk to indulge in a bit more healthy self-congratulation.
Tyler Brûlé’s media empire makes a point of avoiding the path that its contemporaries in print have taken over the past five years. Instead of investing in magazine apps, a social media presence, or web content strategies, Monocle, the magazine he launched in 2007, doubled down its analog output and now has two resort newspapers, stores in three continents, a cafe, and a 24 hour radio station.
After the liquidation of Publicis Mojo, we heard a few whispers that its car client, Motorcorp distributors, wouldn’t be moving across to Joy and was on the hunt for an agency. And that agency has been chosen, with Federation taking over responsibility for the Volvo and Renault brands. Plus: Federation’s new work for Emirates.
The weekday Herald took the ‘modern gothic’ approach with its new masthead last year, and the Herald on Sunday has gone in the same direction, with its new look unveiled ahead of this Sunday’s relaunch.
Radio Hauraki is in the midst of an existential crisis. And, after rather forthrightly saying it had been pretty shit for the past few years and that it had to kill that station to save it, The Radio Network brand has come out of rehab with a new line-up (Martin Devlin and Laura McGoldrick, Angelina Boyd, Greg Prebble, Matt Heath and The General and Mikey Havoc) and a new campaign at the hands of Saatchi & Saatchi. And, as part of its ‘intervention’, legendary turntablist and Beastie Boys DJ, Mix Master Mike is venturing to New Zealand to celebrate the official relaunch.
Bacon roses, a cat with a heart on it, or perhaps just a laid-back, low key fight. The list of options available to show you love on this most romantic of days is almost limitless. And Mitre 10 has helped aspiring romantics by offering instruction on how to play a tool-based love song.
Yellow Group has dropped DDB / RAPP Tribal and appointed True as its new agency, according to the directories company. Yellow says it is finalising one more project with RAPP, which will be completed by the end of the month, after which the relationship will end.
NZGirl’s Regretgasm campaign pushed all the right buttons, winning the December / January Outstanding Radio Creative Award (ORCA) from The Radio Bureau.
Campbell Live won its first battle in the 7pm timeslot last night, by attracting more viewers than its current affairs rival Seven Sharp. This is the first time the Mediaworks show has overtaken any TV One 7pm programme, a massive blow for TVNZ which has probably got John Campbell yelling “bloody marvellous” from TV3’s Mt Eden office.
The liveblog kicks off from 7:30am. Teddy Goff is the digital director of President Barrack Obama’s data-driven 2012 re-election campaign. He discusses how he and his team raised more than US$600 million, and harnessed an online following of more than 78 million to find victory.