Anyone got Warren Buffett’s number? APN New Zealand Media has announced it has made a strategic decision to put three regional publishing businesses—The Star in Canterbury, the Oamaru Mail and the Capital Community Newspaper group in Wellington—on the market.
There’s gold in them thar mobile hills. And a rare few developers have been able to mine it, with The Angry Birds brand estimated to be worth over $1 billion, and OMGPOP, the makers of the hugely popular Draw Something app, bought by Zynga earlier this year for US$185 million (it’s a fickle world, however, and, as is often the case, both Zynga and OMGPOP have failed to rediscover the magic recently). And now, inspired by the gameplay of Draw Something, Kiwi entrepreneurs Tristan Holman, who runs a consultancy called Flashgun in the UK, and Brett Hancock, who heads up Born Digital, are hoping they might follow in their footsteps with their own game called Act a Word.
As head of marketing for ANZ, Mike Cunnington is donkey deep in one of the biggest ever changes to New Zealand’s financial landscape. And the campaign to fuse the brands is now in its final stages. We had a chat with him for the November/December edition of NZ Marketing. And here’s what he said.
TBWA\ has been cranking out the work for ANZ since ‘The Announcement’ of the new—and, if you believe the ads, improved—bank. And, with plenty at stake, it’s no surprise that no expense has been spared and the doctor has been well and truly gone for. And now it has moved into the final phase of the campaign to show what products and services it can now offer its customers.
The air was thick with the smell of creativity at the Hopetoun Alpha on 8 November for Adshel’s Creative Challenge (turns out creativity smells a little bit like a combination of cigarette smoke, ironic t-shirts, Sal’s Pizza and desperation), and after 60 minutes of furious jotting and pressurised thinking to come up with a campaign that would raise awareness—and funds—for Surf Life Saving New Zealand next winter, it was Colenso BBDO’s team that took the top prize.
There is little value in reminding agency folk that magazines are well targeted and engaging, says MPA’s commercial director Katrina Horton, as a recent survey shows everyone’s pretty much in agreement there. But there is value in talking about why magazines are well targeted, how readers are engaged and what this means for advertisers.
New Zealand’s largest national newspaper, The Sunday Star Times, has had a pretty rough time of it recently, with some fairly concerning readership and circulation results. But an editorial rejig is in process to, as Fairfax chief executive Allen Williams says, improve the newspaper and make it more appealing and authoritative, and it’s also launched a new campaign with its new agency .99 that aims to draw attention to the great content it provides.
Colenso BBDO has earned a reputation for its cause-related communications, from its multi-award winning Doggelganger campaign for Pedigree to the brilliant Trial by Timeline for Amnesty International. And now it’s aiming to help St John, New Zealand’s primary frontline medical response organisation and the main provider of ambulance services. It takes over from Work Communications.
Coloured facial hair is usually reserved for those who drive housebuses, members of hair metal bands or Billy Connolly. It’s certainly not too common in this biz, but Carat’s business director Gareth ‘Connolly of the South’ O’Connor has used colour to great effect and been rewarded with the mo of the week title.
Aside from the arrival of Jeremy Wells’ column in the Herald, 2012 hasn’t been a particularly memorable one for New Zealand Cricket. But things can only get better (right?) and, after a short competitive pitch process, it’s chosen indie agency True to help out.
The growth in the outdoor industry is largely being driven by digital media, both ‘place-based’, like shopping malls, oil chains and airports, and large format. In the Asia/Pacific region, ad spend in digital out-of-home has grown 19 percent on average every year from 2006 to 2011 and global spend in the sector last year was $US7 billion, which is forecast to grow almost 20 percent this year. So local digital signage network nGage is bringing together a few smart cookies at an event that aims to showcase the digital signage ecosystem and offer a glimpse into the future.
Westpac’s Martine Jager heads back to Oz, Colenso shares the account management love, CAANZ announces four new board members, indies band together to create new agency forum, Orangebox makes a big Wellington hire, Fairfax goes Peat mining and Alexander Communications goes global.
More than half of Kiwi households with televisions fork out for Sky, which is thought to be one of the highest per capita rates in the world. And, according to a recent PwC study, 40 percent of these subscribers have taken up MySky, an increase of 45 percent since last year. It’s where most of the growth is coming from for Sky, much to the chagrin of poor old father time, who, as a great new, almost Wes Anderson-esque 90 second spot by DDB and The Sweet Shop shows, has been rendered obsolete by the wonderous technology.
TVNZ brought out the big guns last night as it announced the launch of some snazzy new Ondemand toys and the new and returning shows for 2013 to trade and media. And here are a few glamour shots.
DraftFCB took a couple of .99’s biggest accounts last year in the form of Vodafone and Air New Zealand, but it looks likes .99 has got some retribution as it’s won the Genesis Energy pitch along with justONE. And there’s also a change in media, with Starcom taking over from the incumbent Spark.
During the annual hirsute pilgrimage that is Movember, many participants become quite attached to their new lip slugs. So, to ensure that the memory lives on, Schick and Y&R have created a Facebook campaign called Mount your Mo to not only reward the dedicated men of New Zealand for their efforts, but, through the wonder of taxidermy, to “allow them to keep their pride without prejudice”.
It aims to put on good shows all year, and, with a selection of its stars wheeled in (including a performance from the biggest of them all, Billy’s Big Brass Brand), a few branded ice sculptures (rumour has it new chief executive Kevin Kenrick fashioned them with his bare hands), lots of bass, some slick production and plenty of delicious things in spoons, TVNZ certainly put on a good one last night to launch its 2013 season.
As we wrote a few weeks back, Contact Energy put the feelers out for some new agency partners and JWT New Zealand has been chosen as the company’s sole creative agency across brand, digital and retail.
Marsden Inch have chucked a generous sum behind the bar so there are drinks, there are nibbles, there are students, and there are portfolios. All that’s required to complete the equation are lots of creatives to wander along between 5.30 and 8pm tonight to The Nathan Club on the ground floor of the Nathan Building at 51 Galway Street, Britomart. There’s also been a suggestion to bring along a few more of the shit idea bins to the show. So to encourage everyone to be at their biting and incisive best, MDS will have a special limited run of 20 shit idea bins on offer.
Hakanoa Ginger Beer and M&C Saatchi got into a bit of PR strife a few months back after a campaign asking for parents to swap their red-haired kids for a six pack of ginger beer received a public scalding. After the public response—and despite claims about it being an attempt to raise awareness of the discrimination of ginger haired children—the campaign was pulled early. But the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about it, saying the posters were socially irresponsible and discriminatory.
Interactive ad revenue figures have been steadily heading upwards over the past few years in New Zealand and in the latest round of figures, the sector hit its highest ever level, with total advertising spend in Q3, 2012 of $94 million, an increase of three percent from the last quarter and an increase of five percent year-on-year. But, as you’d expect in such a rapidly developing industry, there are still a few issues to contend with, including a fall in display advertising, the use of ad blocking software and discussions around the appropriate methodology for collecting revenue data.
The best moment of my life was undoubtedly winning the meat pack at a friend’s wedding, closely followed by the time when three loyalty cards came due on the same day. So it was pleasing to learn that an ad celebrating sexy meat for Pak ‘n’ Save’s Meat Week has won DraftFCB the October ORCA.
Absolut’s latest artistic innovation is, as per usual, pretty impressive, with the company rejigging its entire production process in an effort to create unique patterns on four million bottles. There are only 4,800 of them available in New Zealand and, judging by the number of co-workers fawning over the bottle sitting on the StopPress desk, they might not be around for too long. But fans of the brand and its creative MO have an opportunity to get the next best thing by creating their own personalised bottle online.
The various ‘Look At These People Having More Fun Than You at Fancy Events’ sections in the nation’s magazines and newspapers have a powerful pull on the often judgemental, fame seeking human animal. So, in a continuation of Lindauer’s ‘Don’t Worry Boys’—and in a continuation of its vow to never show the target market in the campaign—it hijacked The Sunday Star Times’ ‘About Town’ (or in this case ‘Around Town’) social pages to show real partners despondently left at home on National Girls’ Night out last week.
And we bow down and give TVC of the Week praise to Westpac’s bickering oldies, Good Books’ bodice ripper, Stickman’s chicken adulation, OPSM’s surf lifesaving tie-in and Big Little City’s visual love letter to Auckland.
Unitec’s brave ‘Change Starts Here’ campaign by Special Group and Naked helped change perceptions of the institution, and its latest ‘We make the people who make it’ push ramped up the brand’s cool factor by showcasing some of the impressive constructions its students have been involved in around Auckland. But it certainly didn’t stop at TV because that quest has continued through a range of smart campaign extensions and media partnerships organised by Beat PR, including one with George FM that’s given a group of Unitec students the challenge of constructing the ultimate DJ booth.
Yahoo! New Zealand has announced a three-year sponsorship of Netball New Zealand and the Silver Ferns. And the good news doesn’t stop there for the sport, because Kia has switched its sponsorship focus from tennis and signed up as the naming rights sponsor for the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic.
Rob Banks heads to New York, Naked appoints a head of Australasian ideas and viral fun glutton Rob Whitey McConnaughy joins the Sweet Shop.
Red Bull is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest content marketers and has been successfully fusing marketing with pop culture for decades through its association with ‘extreme sports’. That was cranked up even further recently with its investment in Red Bull Stratos, and it got plenty of payback in the form of roughly eight million people watching the event live on YouTube and tens of millions of dollars worth of media coverage and social buzz following Felix Baumgartner’s successful jump. And while this marketing stunt/scientific mission is obviously going to be hard to top, the brand’s latest Rube Goldberg-esque stunt, Kluge, which follows up another classy effort from last month, features a host of its sponsored athletes doing their thing and took 17 days to build, is still pretty bloody amazing and once again proves the value of creating ideas worth talking about.
We included a link to a brilliant Irish charity initiative that saw “ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more dress up their favourite worst feedback from clients, transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters” last week. But the depictions of the sometimes fraught agency-client relationship—some of which have presumably used a bit of poetic licence—seem to be universal and we thought they deserved a bit more of a showing, so here’s a few of our favourites.