It would seem only those with a heart of stone could fail to be swayed by Telecom’s latest brand campaign starring excitable eight-year-old Tommy and his new turtle friend Boris. We reckon it’s one of the best ads of the year and it sees Telecom heading back to its heartland territory of connectivity and New Zealandness. Here’s what chief marketing officer Jason Paris had to say about the thinking behind the campaign—and the state of the company.
Around this time last year there was a glut of ‘manvertising’. And this year it seems as though cute kids are de rigueur, with Civil Defence, Z and Pink Batts all recently enlisting a few young’uns to tell their stories. Now Telecom can be added to that list, because it’s gone back to what it knows best with a great ode to connection featuring a lovable frontman Tommy and his ‘turtle of few words’ Boris.
Hunger-based angriness, or, as the experts call it, ‘hungangriness’, is a horrible affliction. Some might say the same about Paul Henry. So it’s quite fitting that he has be called upon to run the New Zealand leg of the global ‘You’re Not You When you’re Hungry’ campaign.
There’s been plenty of action at Y&R recently, with Jon Ramage departing and James Hurman cutting short his OE to join executive creative director Josh Moore at the top table alongside non-executive director Ross Goldsack. It also won the the ASX-listed Quickflix business for Australia and New Zealand in March and, with the help of Finch, it’s just launched a campaign starring two aspiring actors/film buffs discussing the merits of the streaming service between takes.
The magazine sector was celebrating a mostly positive swing after the latest readership, circ and, importantly, engagement figures were released last week. And while the numbers aren’t quite as good for the newspaper sector, the sky is still not falling.
…the more people look like they did in the ’80s, if these old Cadbury ads we were sent are any guide.
The ‘compact’ weekday Herald is just around the corner. But APN New Zealand’s digital team will also have a few new toys to play with, with a revamped nzherald.co.nz website, a new social reader for Facebook and updated mobile and tablet apps set to go live on Monday 10 September. And to help keep everyone up to date with “the most significant changes being made to the company’s print and online products for a decade”, it has even launched a new microsite, nzherald.co.nz/themoreyouknow.
A guitar with a body sculpted like a spider web, uber cool packaging for compost, a Mexican restaurant, a fanzine for motorcyclists, a tiny cinema in a stair well, and various pop up shops in Auckland’s Viaduct and the Christchurch Re:START container mall are among the 310 finalists in this year’s Best Design Awards, which are organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand and recognise the country’s best graphic, interactive, spatial and product designs from the past year.
The last time DDB created a campaign for Pink Batts back in 2008, it came up with a lovable pink sidekick who kept homeowners snug. And it’s back in the hotseat to celebrate the brand’s 50th anniversary this year, launching a campaign on Sunday that features two fairly mischievous kids who have had the game of ‘Hot and Cold’ completely ruined by ‘New Zealand’s favourite insulation’.
It’s a rather interesting period in the history of magazines and, despite the prevailing belief that shiny new digital toys are killing off paper, the latest readership and circulation numbers have once again showed the market is still in fairly good health in New Zealand.
‘And’ is by no means the sexiest or most attention-grabbing word in the dictionary. But Ogilvy Wellington’s clever and repetitious use of the word in a print ad for Open Polytechnic has garnered it the top spot in July’s round of the Glossies.
Last week, the Twitterverse was abuzz after questions were raised about the legitimacy of follower numbers and whether the system was being gamed by some to increase the perception of influence. And we’ve heard from a couple of people since who want to alert brands to what they believe is a social media scam—and a completely over-hyped metric.
Shop revenue is a primary source of fundraising for Hospices round the country. And the second annual ‘Give It Up for Hospice’ campaign, which runs from 13 to 31 August and encourages people to donate pre-loved spring and summer clothing for their local Hospice Shop, has been boosted by the help of a new association with Postie, with its 82 stores around the country collecting clothing donations.
Peter Alsop, author of upcoming book Selling the Dream: The Art of Early New Zealand Tourism, gives an overview of how our publicity pioneers put New Zealand on the map.
Some would argue that when complainers fall into the trap of reacting to a purposefully provocative campaign (ginger lovers, wine snobs, conservative religious types etc), they only help inspire more purposefully provocative campaigns. And a similar rule could be applied to flash mobs, because the more often they’re featured, the more someone, somewhere, might think they’re a good idea. Ah well, too bad. Here’s a clip of over 500 people from the Harvey World Travel conference violating Sky City and dancing to terrible music.
Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. And, after the Sanitarium factory was knocked around by the Christchurch earthquakes, passionate yeast spreaders have been pining for their regular slathering of Black Gold. So, in what most see as a company making the best of a bad situation and what some cynics see as a stunt to raise the profile of the brand, Sanitarium and Saatchi & Saatchi launched the Don’t Freak Out campaign to assure eaters Marmite would be back. And it’s continued that approach with a competition asking Kiwis to prove how far they’ll go to protect their stash.
NZ Lotteries is in the money, Metro announces a new art director and Mi9 names one of its own as sales manager for its new ad network.
MSN NZ has launched its new corporate umbrella brand Mi9, a joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment company, in New Zealand. And, at the same time, it has also officially launched the Microsoft Media Network (MMN), which general manager Liz Fraser claims is already the country’s largest advertising network offering behavioural targeting.
Tile Warehouse opened its doors in 1989 with two staff and a forklift. 23 years later the company has over 100 staff, 28 stores around the country and now a shiny new brand courtesy of Publicis Mojo to “celebrate being New Zealand’s market leader”.
It seemed like such a good idea: Peanuts vs Cashews. Grab a handful, pelt your mates and discover once and for all who’s the real ‘King of the Nuts’. Then things went wrong. A rogue peanut bounced off a lamp-post, caught a cycle courier and tossed him in front of a bus. Luckily the bus swerved, no one was hurt and they only took out a small building. Rogue accident, you wouldn’t read about it (mostly because it didn’t happen). But it could. And the question on the table after a recent Australian Standards Board decision that has put the onus on brands to manage their Facebook pages is where does the buck stop when social goes awry?
Prime didn’t quite manage to beat TV One’s 2008 ratings for the Olympic opening ceremony, but, not surprisingly, broadcasting the Games has certainly helped steal some eyeballs off the other channels, with Prime’s share and time spent watching numbers increasing substantially over the previous four weeks and all channels except for Prime and Sky losing share.
Griffin’s, Burger King, Tile Warehouse and Cavalier Bremworth make it to the podium this week.
Nostalgia’s not what it used to be. But when it comes to biscuits, it’s obviously still a very powerful force, because the decision to get behind a campaign started by Upper Hutt-based biscuit crusader Amber Johnson to bring back Choco-ades has well and truly paid off for Griffin’s, with AZTEC scan data figures showing it set a new benchmark as the top selling product by value in supermarkets in its first week of sales, beating the Avatar DVD.
If you’re anything like us, you’re wondering how Tom Selleck got involved in shot put coaching, why staying on your bike while waiting for the lights to change isn’t an Olympic sport yet, whether the Sunday Star Times cover was a casualty of coincidence or something more sinister, and what happened to Charlie Brooker to make him think the Olympics are better than they looked on the tin. You might also be wondering how an event like the Olympics develops its visual identity. Luckily, Design Boom has detailed the whole massive process to come up with a cohesive look for the games—and the pretty bloody impressive results.
TVNZ’s Eric Kearley joins Rick Ellis at Telstra, Air New Zealand shifts some troops, Copper prepares for growth with a double, Rory Carter opens the doors of Red Dennis, Getty bolsters its APAC marketing team, CAANZ welcomes a new recruit, Kip Brook heads into academia, and James Mok and Kelly Bennett get the call up for Spikes Asia.
Ambient Group and the Star Metro Retail Partnership have launched a new media portfolio consisting of fuel pump handles, door media at point of entry to the store, floor media in front of the payment till and fins on beverage fridges through 116 Caltex member sites covering Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and all other major centre and roads networks nationwide.
Breakfast, as the old idiom goes, is the most important meal of the day. Burger King NZ obviously didn’t get the memo and left that segment of the fast-food market to competitors like McDonald’s and Wendys. But, as a new campaign by Colenso BBDO that spans TV, radio, press, online, sampling and PR states, it’s now “woken up to a whole new time”.
It’s tough out there in charity land at the moment. There are lots of organisations fighting for funding, consumers are still counting their pennies and in EFTPOS-loving New Zealand the cashless society is a very real thing, which means the traditional street appeal doesn’t work quite as well as it once did. So to get around this and drive donations in the lead up to Daffodil Day on 31 August, the Cancer Society and &some have called on the ubiquity of the mobile phone to help smooth the process.
When Colenso BBDO’s head of planning James Hurman decided to expand his horizons and take a role as planning partner at Ogilvy Shangahi, he said he’d probably be back in the homeland eventually. But he’s returned much sooner than expected, with the bearded one cutting short his OE to take up the role of managing director at Y&R, where he will be working alongside one of his old cohorts Josh Moore.
Readers of New Zealand building industry magazine Build can look forward to a new contemporary design in October as part of enhancements that will soon include digital delivery and better access to back articles. And island lovers have also got something to look forward to with the launch of the inaugural Island Destinations annual.