We’re fans of Charlie’s ‘Mission from Good’, Unitec’s ‘We make the people who make it’ and Fly Buys ‘Every time you swipe something a little bit good happens’. And they just keep on giving.
Auckland Fringe 2013 officially launched today with a snazzy new look devised by design partner Special Group and the promise of three weeks of the bizarre, the beautiful and the baffling in February as “joystick orchestras, boy bands, Antarctic song cycles, cross dressing history celebrities and stories about dogs, Nazis and curry” vie for attention. And for all the creative types out there, festival sponsor Taxi Impact is offering you the chance to plaster one of its taxis with whatever wrap you want* as part of its Taxi Art Project.
‘Tis the season for awards, and Kiwi agencies have put in a more than respectable showing at the recent Australian Graphic Design Association Design Biennale Awards in Melbourne.
Auckland-based digital display and customer engagement company Ngage Media has struck up a deal with the Efficiency Group that will see it launch Ngage Australia. PLUS: a run-down on last week’s Cutting Through the Digital Landscape event.
As expected, there was a fair bit of discussion on StopPress after Localist’s decision to shift away from print and focus on mobile. And, with the help of Projector Media, 8com’s Paul Jones and Will Hall, it’s created an entertaining, innuendo-heavy ad featuring B&D, full bodied bears/beers and artistic bollocks to show that the app learns to love the same things you do and can also help you avoid things you don’t like, such as Huntly or drinking tea with mimes.
As the Auckland Zoo gets set to mark its 90th birthday this month, it’s received an early birthday present in the form of a rebrand that was launched this week.
After a competitive pitch involving six agencies, Owen Glenn has appointed Naked Communications to join the team of the ‘Glenn Inquiry’, an initiative funded by the businessman and philanthropist to address child abuse and domestic violence in New Zealand.
Big Communications already has a solid list of Auckland-centric clients on its roster, such as ATEED, Auckland Rugby, Barfoot & Thompson and The Blues. And it’s added another one to that list: The Langham Auckland.
Hoax chain letters on Facebook, copyright confusion, career limiting evidence posted for all to see … When it comes to the internet, we need to engage our brains or suffer the consequences, says Simon Fogarty.
Lindauer has been on a mission to empower the girls this year, and, in an extension of the Girs’ Night Out brand campaign, DDB played on the Sunday Star Times About Town section by creating an ad featuring forlorn, lonely male partners who were left at home to wallow in self-pity, iron, eat pizza, pat cats on stairs and watch TV with men friends as the girls got amongst it on Lindauer’s National Girls’ Night Out. And the esteemed judging panel of Matt Sellars from Saatchi & Saatchi, Crispin Schuberth from Barnes, Catmur & Friends, Paul White from AUT and Oriel Davis-Lyons from Special Group chose it as the best of the November bunch.
As another busy summer of brand activation looms in New Zealand, EMANZ chair Mark Pickering reflects on the state of experiential marketing in New Zealand.
Whereas previously data analytics was confined to the laboratories of marketing research agencies, it is now becoming as commonplace in a marketing department’s arsenal of weapons as A/B testing and the now-ubiquitous brand blog. And a trio of New Zealand’s leading corporate marketers from BNZ, Farmers and Telecom shared their recent experiences of turning data interrogation into a competitive advantage at this year’s last DAN Dialogue event.
A number of recent studies show women in New Zealand are paid on average ten percent less for doing the same job as men—and the pay gap is widening. To draw attention to this inequality—and hopefully grease the wheels of new legislation to better address the issue—the YWCA Auckland and DDB NZ have decided to turn the tables and, through TV, print, online and experiential, including male-only surcharges at coffee carts and sausage sizzles, show men how absurd it is for the two genders to be treated differently when it comes to money. Plus: ASB’s Barbara Chapman on the glass ceiling.
In social, just as on talkback radio, a one-off comment or blip in traffic may not mean much, says Jennifer Duval-Smith. But a good listening programme arms us with the ability to discern the blip from the trend, respond appropriately to an established pattern and back up our decision.
With a restructure currently taking place, assets being sold and general tough times in the newspaper industry being faced up to, APN certainly has a lot on its plate at the moment. But the local and international awards its digital team have won—from best website for the fourth time in five years at the Canon Media Awards to a few mentions at The Webbys—show it’s creating international quality solutions and doing its best to keep pace with rapidly changing media consumption habits. And APN Digital New Zealand was recognised again last week at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers 2012 Digital Media Awards for the Asia Pacific region, with the recently redesigned nzherald.co.nz winning silver in the best in online media – newspaper website category, following up another silver in 2010.
Run the Red promotes from within, Toni Street gets back on the couch, Sports Tonight draws to a close and AWARD School names its top students.
YWCA’s turning of the tables, Igloo’s double Ohs, 2degrees’ Christmas push and Telecom’s mistaken identity get the vote this week.
It’s been a rough few years for Christchurch, but when we spoke with Harvey|Cameron’s managing director Neil Cameron for NZ Marketing magazine a few months back (see interview below), he said the agency had managed to come through relatively unscathed after moving out of the CBD and into its new Merivale offices just before the Earth shook. He also mentioned the fact that a few curious souls were being drawn to the area as a result of the city’s potential and now, with Iain Harvey pulling back from the business slightly, “brand builder” Cam Murchison has added his name to that list of imports to become managing partner.
In a world where digital trickery is de rigueur, ‘traditional’ mediums like magazines are often seen as offering fewer creative opportunities. There are restrictions, of course, but great ideas often emanate from restrictions (Steinlager’s ‘We Believe’, for example). And to celebrate its 20th anniversary—and to show the level of engagement it has with its readers—Wired created a brilliant Easter egg hunt.
Humans are into some strange things. Extreme ironing, scrapbooking, My Little Ponies, and slightly masochistic long-distance running, to name but a few. And now New Zealand’s trail runners have their own dedicated publication with the launch of NZ Trail Runner.
We’ve seen some pretty creative ideas used to increase pet adoptions and gather donations in New Zealand in recent years, with Colenso’s Doggelganger and Donation Glasses standing out in that regard. And now DraftFCB and Mini have joined the furry fray with a so crazy it just might work campaign for the SPCA that will see Porter, a 10 month old Beardie Cross from SPCA Auckland, attempt to drive a car live on TV.
3 Wise Men has found a good aerial niche with its entertaining long-copy ads in Air New Zealand’s inflight magazine Kia Ora. And in the Hobbit-heavy December edition of the mag, Assignment Group has used that niche to great effect with a novel campaign that aims to make the back of the plane slightly more appealing to fliers.
Wellington/Amsterdam digital agency Resn is renowned for pushing the envelope online, with the likes of Face Arcade, Rhizopods or the world’s first crowd-sourced feed. But it’s not all fun, games and weirdness. There are some serious issues currently bubbling away in the halls of power around internet freedom, so, along with a couple of its fellow digital dab hands rehabstudio and Stinkdigital, it has created a site that aims to get the internet to stand up for itself by threatening to take away the thing it loves most: a kitten.
New Zealand’s Got Talent launched with plenty of fanfare and massive ratings back in September, and, with Marlborough teenager Clara van Wel announced as the winner last night, it finished on a high note as well, cementing its place as the most watched show of 2012 and the biggest show of the past ten years.
Almost one year after it was officially announced (and a bit longer after it was unofficially announced), Sky and TVNZ’s joint venture Igloo has finally got its googly-eyed mascots to deliver its set-top boxes into the wild. And it’s also launched its brand campaign, via Sugar&Partners.
After the launch of The Listener’s new paywall last week, Fuseworks’ Matthew Harman puts forward his views on what publishers need to do to create an online experience he’d pay for.
Avanti Bikes, which celebrated its 25th birthday last year, is renowned as a design-led company, as evidenced by the gold it won at the Best Awards this year for its sexy Corsa DR. And that focus on design is helping it move into other overseas markets. Now it’s added another technology-driven advantage to its arsenal in the form of its multi-lingual, responsive website, which was built by Auckland digital agency Salt Interactive.
There was plenty of discussion about James Bond adding Heineken to his list of favoured tipples in Skyfall. But product placement/branded content/integration/cap in handing is an accepted part of the film and TV business these days (as Daniel Craig told Moviefone: “The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn’t do it. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it is. This movie costs a lot of money to make, it costs as nearly as much again if not more to promote, so we go where we can”). And the tie-in appears to be working for the brand because Heineken’s ‘The Express’ ad, which features the raspy tones of own Gin Wigmore, has won Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award for October.
After an industry-wide review, The NZ Direct Marketing Awards had a big refresh this year, with a new name, a new judging process and a number of new categories and individual awards resulting in a 12 percent increase in the number of overall entries. And those entries have been whittled down to the finalist stage, with justONE leading on 16, DraftFCB on 12, Colenso BBDO on eight, Loyalty NZ on six, Affinity ID, Federation Rapp Tribal on five, and Twenty and ANZ/National on four.
We live in a world of information overload, says Andrew Lewis. And as consumers start entering ‘The Age of the Cull’, brands that enhance life through digital connections are the only ones likely to survive.