MetService is launching a redesigned website this afternoon to bring more of its labyrinth of meteorological data up to the user level.
The new site also gives advertisers an interesting proposition: bid for ads next to different weather types.
Mass market weeklies have had a rough time of it in recent years. But ACP has opened an early Christmas present in the form of the recent double issue of Woman’s Day, which clocked in at over 200 pages and took the title as biggest ever issue.
It’s official; Instagram and Twitter are no longer BFFs.
After several weeks of thrusts and parries, Instagram no longer allows images from its 100 million users to be displayed on Twitter, according to a statement made by Instagram to AllThingsD.
With a new chief executive, a new joint venture with Sky, the highest rating show of the past ten years for New Zealand’s Got Talent, plenty of interest in branded content, and the march of mobile seeing new Ondemand apps on the horizon, it’s been a big year for TVNZ—and, after knocking newspapers off the top ASA spot and charting ten year highs for viewership, TV in general. Head of sales Jeremy O’Brien talks.
2011 wasn’t a particularly memorable year for Saatchi & Saatchi, with the pink fist debacle casting a major pall. But the new executive and creative team has shaken things up and, after winning ASB without a pitch earlier this year and releasing some of the best work of 2012, the confidence—and the quality—appears to have returned. Creative directors Corey Chalmers and Gus Roberts speak up.
While Volkswagen dominates overseas, research showed that Kiwis thought the brand was too cold, too bland and too European. So to change that, it invested heavily in indigenous research and advertising, launched some very successful new products and quickly went from ‘niche street to main street’. National marketing manager Denise Goodwin opines on the year that was.
With some quality work, a fresh management team, an amazing new office in the Cityworks Depot in central Auckland and an almost but not quite moment in the recent Genesis pitch, a few agencies might be looking over their shoulder at Y&R next year. James Hurman and Josh Moore go for a hoon on 2012.
Unitec has pushed the educational marketing envelope over the past couple of years with some novel and risky campaigns and helped change the perception of the institute among potential students—and their parents. And Jeanette Paine, the executive director of marketing and communications, was rewarded for her efforts after being named as a finalist in the TVNZ-NZ Marketing marketer of the year award.
It’s been a rough ride, and with the whiff of restructure in the air, there will undoubtedly be a bit more roughness to come. But Telecom has steadied the ship in 2012 and, with Jason Paris at the helm and a resurgent Saatchi & Saatchi helping to create one of the best campaigns of the year, it is starting to get back on the goodfoot from a brand and storytelling point of view. Head of brand and insights Charlotte Findlay takes the stage.
Steve Bayliss had the Midas marketing touch at Air New Zealand and he seems to have transferred it to his role as group general manager of marketing at Foodstuffs, with the Pak ‘n Save brand continuing its top form and New World getting a long overdue—and almost universally applauded—refresh.
After the blessing/curse that was losing Vodafone, 2011 wasn’t the best of years for Colenso BBDO. But it’s been a strong 2012 for the “awesome bunch of bastards” at the agency, which has achieved more creatively than ever before in its 43 year history. It’s currently the #5 agency in the world according to the Big Won Report, the #5 ranked agency globally in the international Effie rankings and it brought home a big load of metal at Cannes, Axis and, most recently, Caples. Here’s what the Nicks—Worthington and Garrett—had to say about it.
After kicking off its ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign with a few friendly dictators, Powershop and DoubleFish then moved into fictional territory with ads featuring Jaws, Daleks, Darth Vader and Frankenstein. A cease and desist letter from LucasFilm moved the campaign back in the direction of well-known humans, such as a free-lovin’ Margaret Thatcher. And now the brand has either bravely or foolishly taken things in a much more controversial direction with a new ad that wouldn’t be out of place on a St Matthew in the City billboard and features Pope Benedict XVI presiding over a same sex marriage. We predict fire and brimstone Powershop’s way cometh. And, if we’re lucky, maybe even @pontifex’s first Tweet.
Rob McGregor accentuates the positive, Jane Guthrie and Gregor Whyte chosen as the University of Otago/NZ Marketing Magazine Outstanding Marketing Students for 2011 and 2012, Tamati Coffey departs Breakfast, and Goldie joins LIVESport.
Auckland agency Contagion has taken out the latest Yahoo! Digital Strategy Award for its ‘Not Quite As Kiwi As’ campaign for New Zealand snack brand Tasti.
Taschen and Mad Men. ‘Tis a match made in advertising heaven. And we’ve got three Ads of the Mad Men era notebook diaries to give away to those hoping to relive the glory days in 2013. So delve into the recesses of your mind (or the recesses of the internet) and post your favourite line or scene from the show (or just a funny old ad) in the comments and you could be the envy of all your friends next year.
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.