IABNZ chooses its new executive weapons, Flying Fish signs up the ‘young Lee Tamahori,’ Eye adds to its Kiwi arsenal, Waitemata Films adds another directorial string to its bow, Telecom’s Chris Quin joins the Icehouse and Waikato-based HMC expands.
There are plenty of moral dilemmas working in—and writing about—marketing. At its core, it’s about using creativity and communications to grow businesses. And, often, using creativity and communications to grow businesses selling products that some deem harmful. As this Ad Age story points out, Alex Bogusky used to work with Coca-Cola when he was part of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, but after a bit of a break, he’s now fighting the other, less well-resourced activist corner, delivering a bit of an uppercut to Coke and other producers of sugary drinks with a four-minute long animation about a family of unhealthy, fizzy-drink-loving polar bears who finally see the light.
It wasn’t too long ago Saatchi & Saatchi was showcasing the joys of life in the Air Force in an effort to drum up new recruits. And now it’s taken to the water, with a new Navy campaign that “uncovers the extraordinary life of adventure, belonging and purpose that comes with being a sailor” and features a stirring rendition of the national anthem by New Zealand’s oldest living Navy veteran, 96 year-old Vince ‘Cyclone’ McGlone.
It might be our national fizzy drink but you’d probably be hard pressed to describe the flavour of L&P. And explaining what L&P tastes like is the central theme of four new TV spots launched in a new campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi, along with the Taste-a-liker – an app that encourages the brand’s 190,000 strong Facebook community to share their own thoughts on the flavour.
Unilever has announced the outcome of a global review of its media planning and buying agency services and, just as it did in Australia, it’s retained the incumbent in New Zealand, with PHD defending its turf.
The government has an eye on changing the way it markets the country as a whole, and in a recent StopPress column, Courtney Lambert argued that a mixed agency model was the way to go.
The Kiwi masses were whipped into a frenzy last month by Coca-Cola’s announcement that it was looking for 50 new names to plaster on Coke bottles through its Share a Coke campaign and now it’s time to vote.
When Special Group came up with The Gravity Coffee Run, they thought well beyond the parameters of the 30-second spot and drummed up a fully integrated, made-for-radio promotional campaign using the talents of More FM and one unsuspecting intern. And the ORCA judges loved it, naming it the winner for September.
Telecom’s great escape and Gib’s Kiwi connections take the honours this week.
King takes a break, Connan James sharpens his lance, Clemas returns for another stint in OMANZ chair, Film Construction signs two up-and-coming Kiwi directors and Derek Handley snuggles up with Richard Branson.
When Pernod Ricard asked bars across New Zealand to come up with a fresh way to engage customers with Absolut Vodka, a group of AdSchool students at Media Design School took up the challenge – and won.
After heading south to take up the role of general manager at Ogilvy Wellington a couple of years ago following the closure of Saatchi & Saatchi’s digital arm DGS, Tony Gardner will be heading north again to take on the role of chief executive of events specialists The Orange Group in Auckland. And his replacement has been named, with current general manager of M&C Saatchi Wellington Aaron White set to man Ogilvy’s fort.
Despite Steve Jobs’ passing, consumers’ emotional connection to his brand remains stronger than ever, with Apple climbing up the ranks of Interbrand’s 13th annual Best Global Brands report to second place behind reigning champion Coca-Cola.
Natcoll is dead – at least in name. Going forward, the design technology institute will be known as YOOBEE School of Design in line with its sister business units.
A year ago we introduced you to Veronica Nobbs, the AUT graduate and entrepreneur behind mobile app Get a Room. She had a vision for shaking up the hotel booking industry—having noticed that customers were increasingly booking on the same day as their stay—and devised an app for reserving rooms at super short notice. That vision continued as the business rebranded as Stay Today a few months ago and added features like a unique price-drop engine that reduces room costs throughout the day from noon onwards.
The digital realm offers marketers a deep understanding of its customers. But it’s what you do with the understanding that counts. Theresa Clifford with her four principles of customer engagement in the digital age.
We’ve featured plenty of bank ads in recent weeks on StopPress. But this one’s a bit different. And while ANZ is doing it’s utmost to retain customers around the country after the National Bank announcement, it might not have to do quite as much in Ohakune to keep them loyal, as this cult-like classic shows.
Shopper marketing is very du jour at the moment. And, given the importance of the last stages of the purchase cycle, rightly so. But James Hurman thinks it works better when the strategic thinking is done inside the customer experience.
Kiwis enjoy a good vintage and we produce more than a few stellar wines ourselves – a message Running with Scissors is serving up as part of a new campaign for The People’s Wine.
As the face of the Student Volunteer Army in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, Sam Johnson was an obvious candidate for the title of Young New Zealander of the Year. And now he can add Communicator of the Year to that, with PRINZ honouring him at an event for senior PR pros last week.
Alt Group’s rebrand of the Auckland Art Gallery, Sons & Co’s website featuring disembodied limbs and Designworks’ slick packaging for Silver Fern Farms were among the major winners at the 2012 Best Design Awards, the Oscars of the New Zealand design world.
It’s a bit of a lolly scramble in bank land at the moment, and we mentioned a few of the overtures National Bank competitors received from competing banks last week. But Kiwibank and Ogilvy have turned on the Barry White, lit a few candles and, with a challenger brand twinkle it their eyes, set about wooing Kerre Woodham.
Radio listeners across the country have once again taken pen to paper to log their listening patterns as part of Research International’s Radio Audience Measurement Survey. And the latest results show that audience levels have remained much the same when compared with the same period last year, with MediaWorks radio claiming its first ever most listened to network title.
There’s been a lot of hype around the launch of the Shopping Channel this week, and there’s no question awareness of the channel was boosted significantly by the appearance of Eva Longoria. But by and large, unlike a certain online trading website that launched this week, the Shopping Channel’s debut seems to have gone relatively smoothly, and both ACP, which announced its partnership with the channel at a gala event on Wednesday night, and Ogilvy, have big plans for the brand.
If you just so happen to be sitting on a chair on top of your Persian rug with a power chord nearby, clearly you like living dangerously. Or maybe you just don’t know that your chair is in fact a four-legged assassin conspiring with the other objects in and around your house to cause your demise. So, in an effort to draw attention to the unsuspecting objects that are often implicit in home-related injury, DraftFCB launched ‘Fight the 5’, its campaign for ACC’s Home Safety Action Week.
With the relaunched New Zealand Herald now simmering along, APN is turning some of its attention to the imminent launch a new website that will be dedicated to all things food and cooking, called foodhub.co.nz. The digital offering will house APN’s new and archival recipe and food content, showcasing more than 6,000 recipes drawn from APN’s newspaper and magazine publications including the NZ Herald, its regional newspapers, and magazines including the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly and the New Zealand Listener.
Following on from some big changes at Droga5 recently, which said goodbye to its foundation client and one of its founding partners, creative partner Mike O’Sullivan has announced the departure of the brand from the New Zealand market after two and a bit years and the arrival of The Collective, a new creative venture with a central hub of five and a network of contractors to call upon.
We pointed them out a few weeks back when the Herald shrunk, and DraftFCB’s entertaining contextual ads—‘Magnifying Glass, Pirate and Shrink Ray’—for Pak ‘n’ Save to celebrate the paper’s new format have also impressed the judges of the September round of the Newspaper Ad of the Month awards.
GrabOne has come out as the first New Zealand company to integrate with Passbook, a new feature in iOS6 that enables the storage of coupons, loyalty cards, tickets and more on your iPhone. And the mobile wallet fun doesn’t stop there, because Westpac, Telecom and Auckland Transport have cranked up a trial.
After 18 years together, AMI has said goodbye to DDB and shifted the business to Colenso, which works on fellow IAG-owned brands State and NZI.