What do you get when you cross glitter canons, cheerleaders showing their bums, overly dramatic sound tracks, media types eating all the nibbles and Paul Henry? A new season TV launch, of course. And first cab off the rank for 2013 was MediaWorks, which announced some of the goodies it will be showing on TV3 and Four at Sky City, interviewed some of 2012’s stars on the couch and introduced the first X Factor NZ judge, Stan Walker.
MasterCard is launching a new national direct to consumer (cardholder) privileges programme in the New Zealand market, and it’s putting the call out for agencies with a bit of mana in the travel, loyalty, offer generation, experiential and POS space.
Entries for this Thursday night’s Adshel Creative Challenge wind up on Tuesday night at 5pm. And there are still a couple of spots available for agency teams who enjoy eating pizza, drinking booze and developing a campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand in just 60 minutes.
It’s that time of year again, when fresh faced young’uns with dreams of creative greatness prostrate themselves in front of adland’s judgemental powerbrokers and show off the year’s handiwork. So get thee to the end of year show for the AUT Ad Creativity course on Friday 9 November at the Film Construction building in Minnie St if you want to see it.
The TV industry, here and around the world, is currently dealing with some major challenges, but all that serious business was mostly forgotten on Saturday night as the stars—from in front of and from behind the camera—of the local industry turned up to accentuate the positive at the 2012 New Zealand Television Awards. And in the annual (mostly) two horse race, it was MediaWorks that wrested the big news prizes off TVNZ, and TVNZ that took home most of the prizes in the drama and reality sections.
As a small airline that can’t afford to buy attention like some of its larger competitors, Air New Zealand has long advocated the benefits of content marketing through effective seeding of its unique—and often polarising—campaigns and safety videos and a world-class YouTube channel. With the help of Weta Workshop, it nailed The Hobbit inflight video. And it’s already a global hit, achieving worldwide media coverage and 6.2 million YouTube views in just four days since launching.
There were 1200 entries from 46 countries for this year’s Pentawards, which celebrate outstanding packaging design, and three projects by specialist consumer branding and packaging agency Redcactus made the final cut and were announced as winners.
The Southern Man has been a feature of Speight’s advertising—and a prominent feature of Kiwi pop culture—for many years, so any major change to the much-loved advertising figure is obviously fraught with danger. But times have changed. And, while New Zealand might not have too many skyscrapers, the new Speight’s campaign aims to show that we’ve got our priorities right.
Mother always said not to dwell on the past. But what would she know? She doesn’t even have an iPad. So, once again, we will soon be flying back through the mists of time for our ever-popular Year in Review series on StopPress. We’ll be lining up some of the industry’s most vigorous cutters and dastardly thrusters and asking them a few questions about the goods, bads and uglies of 2012. But we thought we’d ask our dear readers who they wanted to hear from most. So add your suggestions in the comments section and we’ll see what we can do.
Two days in to November and the lip hair of males around the country is already sprouting. The Movember industry challenge also kicked off yesterday, and while there are a few publishers stepping up to the mark, it could do with a few more contenders from agency land. But there’s still time. And all those who enter will be up for some tasty beverages, with Mo of the Week sponsored by TVNZ, which is putting four $150 bar tabs up for grabs, and Most valuable Mo sponsored by iSite, which is putting up a $300 Libertine voucher. Robert Dunne, the Movember country manager, will be picking the winners. So if you’re up to the task, register now, join your agency team and the Movember agency challenge (or become a team captain for your business) and show the industry just what kind of incremental growth you can deliver.
Tourism New Zealand’s marketing strategy is all about convincing ‘active considerers’ to give New Zealand a go. And almost all of its budget is now spent on digital marketing to communicate directly with consumers, with the award-winning newzealand.com website acting as the central hub to convert them to travel. And, with the help of TBWA\’s Digital Arts Network (DAN), the latest iteration of the site has been launched.
Cameron Slater takes on The Truth, OMDepartures and arrivals, digital developments at Colenso, McComms, Orange Group’s mission gets underway, a good Choice, Komli buzzes out, and another Bright Spark.
Whatever St Matthew in the City can do, Chapel Bar can do better. To celebrate seven years of Almighty Nights at the Ponsonby Road institution, it enlisted the sacrilegious services of Ogilvy, which created a great (unless you’re a devout Christian) ad that’s bound to appeal to the secular customer base.
When Localist launched as an Auckland-only print directory, plenty of questions were raised about the rationale behind the creation of a new product that went head to head with a dominant player in what many saw as a dying industry. 18 months on and it’s still here and, confounding the sceptics, it’s still growing. But as of next week Localist will be very different and 100 percent digital.
As Genesis, the country’s biggest spending energy company, gets set to announce the results of its recent pitch, Contact, the country’s second biggest spending energy company, is also searching for some new agency partners, although, judging by the number of go-to industry gossips who didn’t know about it, it seems to have been a slightly more exclusive affair.
Recent changes to Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm have got a lot of people up in arms. Yet again, the social sky is falling. But PHDiQ’s Polly Williams is here to be the voice of reason.
Air New Zealand became the official airline of Middle-earth a few months ago as part of a marketing deal struck up between Tourism New Zealand, New Line, MGM and Warner Bros. And, after plenty of teasing, including a countdown clock on its Flying Social Network site, it’s released a classy new Hobbit-themed safety video.
Last year’s impressive Step Up campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi for the RNZAF offered users the chance to experience four live simulated challenges that tested their skills against some of the everyday situations they’d encounter if they took up a career in the Air Force. This year’s version, ‘Virtual Missions’, follows a similar path and it’s been deemed good enough to win the IABNZ Online Creative Award for November 2012.
Esquires Coffee Houses is moving on to its third different agency in as many years, with Y&R picking up the business following a review of several local creative agencies. Media buying will be retained by Mediacom.
There were plenty of naysayers when Kiwibank was launched, but, after ten years, few would argue it has done a stellar job of facing up the big Australian-owned banks on the personal banking front (it announced a tripling of profits recently and now has around ten percent of the retail market). But now it’s aiming to bump up its business banking credentials with a campaign by Ogilvy and Ikon that aims to demonstrate how the bank can save SMEs time and money and let them get on with running their businesses.
Findings from InMobi’s Mobile Insights Report Q3 show Apple remains the dominant force in the New Zealand market, with 42 percent of total impressions, a nine percent increase from last quarter. But there are also positive signs for Android, climbing five percent to take 34 percent of the total market share. PLUS: infographic action.
After nearly eight years in business, PR agency JML Communications is shedding its moniker and rebranding as PR Partners.
We’ve seen the banks gunning for new customers after a big merger. Now, after Vodafone’s $840 million takeover of TelstraClear was cleared by the Commerce Commission yesterday, it’s time for the telcos to have some fun, with Telecom running a full-page print ad today riffing on TelstraClear’s slogan.
Insurance is usually a very low involvement category; a grudge purchase if ever there was one (although it’s become a very high-involvement category for some in Christchurch, and not in a good way). As a result, the service it offers is often taken for granted until it’s needed. So, perhaps rather bravely given the current feelings towards the industry, AA Insurance has decided it’s time to promote the positives of its business with a big multi-media campaign by its new agency Special Group that spans TV, digital, DR, outdoor and radio.
Andy Warhol’s iconic image of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most influential pieces of modern art ever, can now be seen at Queen Elizabeth II Square in downtown Auckland. As part of Art Week, 3,944 Resene test pots in four specially chosen colours – Princess, Smitten, Shooting Star and All Black (actual Resene paint names)—were commandeered to create a 4x4m mosaic.
The table. Pretty much every office has one. And they’re generally not the most exciting of objects. But the table that sits in the offices of Assignment Group—and the table that features on the front cover of the November/December issue of NZ Marketing—is surprisingly interesting and has become a rather fitting symbol of how the agency began and how it still likes to work.
The winners of the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year competition were named in an awards ceremony at the Auckland Museum last week and Bruce Mercer, a Cambridge-based photographer, took out the coveted photographer of the year award, as well as the photo story category, for images taken after the MV Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty on 5 October last year.
Westpac’s ode to asking and Barkers’ slow motion All Blacks earn their keep this week.
It’s pretty tough going for the mainstream beers at the moment, with all the growth coming from the craft category and the old stalwarts struggling to keep up as palates change and new tipples tickle fancies. Speight’s Gold Medal Ale is still the country’s most popular beer brand by volume, however, and the brand has recently tried to become more craft-like and even branched out into—block your ears Southern Men—cider. So, in an effort to create a more cohesive family unit and ensure the flagship variety continues its reign, the brand has been given an overhaul by Dow Design.
