The quarterly number fest that is the Nielsen CMI Readership and Audit Bureau of Circulation data has been released, and while only a few magazine titles bucked the general downward trend in paid circulation, a majority of titles experienced readership increases, making it the third consecutive survey showing an improvement in total readership.
There are some brilliant ads that bring joy to viewers and add to the pop-cultural landscape. And there are many more horrible ads that do the exact opposite. Either way, there’s no doubt humans have a love/hate relationship with advertising, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of Fair Go’s Ad Awards, which increased its audience from last year and crowned MasterCard’s All Blacks ‘Tight on Tour’ ad as the best and Lumino The Dentist’s ‘Love Your Smile’ ad as the worst.
Bum wiping and high fashion are fairly strange bedfellows. But Kleenex’s Paper Dresses campaign has been mixing the two surprisingly well since it launched in 2009. And the final cog in this year’s nine-month campaign, which upped the ante thanks to a collaborative effort between Ogilvy, Kimberly-Clark and TVNZ, has come out on top of the September round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.
It’s pretty tough out there in retail at the moment, with the internet affecting bricks and mortar and economic malaise affecting everyone. But there are plenty of savvy retailers making it work and a couple of international retail gurus—Jon Bird, IdeaWorks’ chief executive based in Sydney, and UK retail expert Martin Butler—are visiting next week to share some of their secrets.
For the second year in a row, an electricity company has topped the Deloitte Fast 50 list of New Zealand’s fastest-growing companies—though Pulse Utilities NZ’s 2637 percent revenue growth didn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of last year’s winner, Powershop, which clocked in with 5280 percent growth. And in the marcomms field, Mediacom came in ninth with 487 percent growth, Gopher was 17th with 304 percent growth, SnapComms was 30th with 222 percent growth, recently acquired SublimeNZ was 31st with 216 percent growth and Christchurch’s Plato Design Agency was 35th with 208 percent growth.
Back in the heady days of the early ’80s, invoice scams were thought to be one of the reasons for the creation of the Magazine Publisher’s Association—and the implementation of a more robust approach to measuring circulation of titles. But despite these measures, such scams are still occurring today, as evidenced by Operation Edit, a major joint enforcement agency operation led by the Serious Fraud Office that has led to six arrests.
As one famous Brit hits our screens, another famous Brit departs, because Dame Judi Dench’s time is up as the voice of ASB. And while Saatchi & Saatchi has already presided over an online campaign, a cool Spotify app and some nice print work for Big Yellow, it’s just released its first TV push with a spring home loan campaign offering borrowers some cash, Samsung Galaxy tablets and a taste of ‘fully furnished’ domestic bliss.
Wendy Rayner’s new reign, Michael Laws drops the mic, DDB makes a deposit, changes at Woman’s Weekly, no comment from Fairfax, Top Gear New Zealand heads across the ditch, Charlie’s finds a new chief, Ideas Shop adds a new general manager, Alt Group pleases ze Germans, Mi9 moves them up the chain, Simon Barnett heads back to TV, Dominic Bowden takes on X Factor, Datamine adds an ‘Owl’ and Bright Sparks beefs up in the south.
QR codes have slowly started to infiltrate the local scene, but it’d be a stretch at this stage to say they’ve rocked the marketing world. Enter Boxtcode, patent-pending smartphone technology that aims to resolve the limitations of QR codes, with location-based technology that connects consumers with brands via a four digit code rather than a barcode that requires scanning.
Following a story in the Herald over the weekend about increased competition leading to a drop in broadband prices and increases in data allowances, new player Flip, a business in the CallPlus group of companies, and its agency Sugar&Partners decided to take the opportunity to link itself with the news and promote its offer of free* broadband with an ad in yesterday’s Herald.
The Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards are hitting stage and screen next week, and, just as it did last year, Vodafone has employed the services of augmented reality (AR) as part of its sponsorship push. But it’s gone a bit further in its seventh year as naming rights sponsor with a few innovative mobile additions, like tapping into the second screening phenomenon with Pluk functionality and claiming a New Zealand first with an interactive broadcast set to be screened via its app.
Those with a penchant for posteriors may have noticed the outdoor campaign for StepOut Nature’s new range of bamboo socks and tights. And one of our dear readers had his morning brightened today when he saw this perfectly timed lamp-post shadow on Ponsonby Rd. Perhaps a caption competition is in order.
They say you can’t buy experience, but you can buy experiential agencies and that’s what Professional Public Relations has done with the acquisition of specialist experiential marketing brand SublimeNZ, an offering it hopes to grow in Australia across PPR’s six state offices.
After three years at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, Mark Cochrane has accepted an intercompany transfer and promotion to become the chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi Thailand, with Colenso BBDO’s Marcelle Baker brought on board to take over as group account director on Toyota and DB Breweries.
Whittaker’s foreign correspondent, Bay Audiology’s moments of joy, Prince Nikolai Stroganov III, NZ Police and VW’s take on the importance of being young at heart earn TVC honours.
As more technologies emerge and are adopted with ever increasing rapidity by ‘connected consumers’, Roy Morgan has connected all the dots with The Digital Universe. Pip Elliott shares nine key trends from the study to show how the exponentially expanding range of touchpoints is affecting New Zealanders’ media consumption, shopping habits, socialisation and expectations.
With the decline in consumer sales for most printed news publications and most of the growth coming from digital communications, Rugby News has decided to move with the times and, from next month, will cease printing hard copies and offer all of its news online for free in the form of a digital magazine.
While some could probably think of nothing better than a bit of silence, having to do without your favourite sounds forever is a different kettle of fish. So, to show what role sound plays in people’s lives, Bay Audiology, Shine and Exposure’s Kevin Denholm have taken a charming—and very Kiwi—look at how customers can keep ‘hearing the things you love hearing’.
The Maggies judges have spoken and the covers they have deemed to be the country’s best will now fight it out for top honours in their respective categories, plus the coveted overall cover of the year award, as they go up for a public vote over the next five weeks at www.themaggies.co.nz.
While the joy of seeing clients succeed offers inspiration for creatives, ego points, a sweet prize, and free pizza and booze are also renowned as powerful incentives to get adfolk to strive for quality. And, in an effort to promote the wonders of the static poster, Adshel is doing just that with the second instalment of its Creative Challenge, which has just opened for registrations and this year hopes to attract 100 local creatives to develop a campaign for Surf Life Saving New Zealand in just 60 minutes.
Whittaker’s and Assignment Group have been successfully beating the patriotic, family-owned, challenger brand drum for many years. But, due to New Zealand’s International Inferiority Complex (IIS), everyone knows that anything with Kiwi provenance needs a ringing foreign endorsement before it can be considered a true success and Whittaker’s has got a good one in the form of UK celebrity chef and unashamed chocolate lover Nigella Lawson, who has signed on to promote the new five roll refined Creamy Milk Chocolate—and give the Swiss a bit of a hurry up.
While Google’s AdWords scheme has taken plenty of wind out of the sails of print media—and traditional directory services—here and around the world, one thing Google lacks is the sales force on the ground to sell to the small to medium enterprises that make up such a big chunk of the economy. So, to remedy that, it partners up with resellers and New Zealand-based tech company Gopher has become the third local company alongside Yellow and Localist to be named as a Google AdWords premier SME partner.
Keen to get your foot in the door at Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney? As any young creative knows, one of the biggest challenges is cracking that door open. But aspiring creatives can now go inside the Sydney branch after it claimed to be the first agency in the world to team up with Google to create Saatchi Street View.
The time has cometh once again, when the upper-lips of men around the country—and the world—are given a temporary hairy embrace as part of Movember celebrations. And Carat has stepped up to the plate and challenged the rest of the marcomms industry to get growing and support the cause.
Auckland indie agency Shine doesn’t really play the show-offy PR game like many of its contemporaries and tends to focus on doing good work for some pretty big clients like Fonterra, Speight’s and Hyundai. And it’s thought it has added another two scalps to that list, taking House of Travel off Saatchi & Saatchi and GE Capital off Y&R.
Yesterday in the Image Centre Group’s boardroom, a company was reborn, with the country’s biggest home services franchise Green Acres launching a new, more contemporary brand.
There are a few things you can expect from a New Zealand summer: torrential rain, sunburnt tops of the feet and sausage and booze-related weight gain. You can also expect a campaign from Tip Top, but this year’s effort is a bit different—and more logistically challenging—than normal, because it’s launched a big new brand platform and is “on a mission to make New Zealand Feel Tip Top this summer, one ice cream at a time”.
Lindauer and DDB’s recent tear jerker created a bit of a stir when it was released, with some seeing it as low hanging fruit and others (particularly the female target market) seeing the hyperbole as spot-on. But the piece de resistance of the over the top campaign was a champagne tower that was filled with salty male tears* during the 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty Style Weekend at the Cloud.
The digital realm offers plenty of opportunities to monetise content. But, as AJ Park’s Matt Adams says, there are a few issues artists need to consider before signing up for services like Kim Dotcom’s new online venture.
Given Genesis Energy is the biggest spender in the electricity sector, clocking in with a very specific $4,408,317 in the year to July according to Nielsen’s AIS data, the news it was up for pitch whipped up a bit of excitement in agency land. From what we’ve heard, pretty much every non-conflicted man and his dog was in the room at the RFP stage, which could either be seen as an indication Genesis was testing the whole market to find the best partner or it didn’t know what kind of agency it actually wanted. But reliable sources have informed us the shortlist has now been decided on, with .99, Y&R, M&C Saatchi and DraftFCB thought to be getting set to fight it out for creative duties and Spark and Naked thought to be in the running for media.