Vodafone may be seeking to acquire a new branch of business with Telstra Clear, but DraftFCB’s latest TVCs for the Telco revisits BestMate, an old product favourite that, although popular, hasn’t received much promotional love as of late.
It’s no secret that the traditional postal mail business model is in decline. And while New Zealand Post’s ability to adapt to change can be exemplified by its 170-year existence, the digital age is certainly proving to be the toughest nut to crack yet. But rather than fight the digital, it’s working with it to create viable business extensions and at today’s Direct Marketing event at Eden Park, a rather chuffed head of digital solutions at New Zealand Post, Simone Iles, offered the first glimpse into its new free digital service, YouPost, designed to make life that much easier to manage.
Wellington startup Showcase Software has launched its Showcase app, a business tool for marketers and sales teams that enables them to create a business app without the need for an app developer. And with Z Energy and Hyundai New Zealand already on board, the company’s eyes are now firmly set on the millions of business users of iPads and Android tablets around the world, with discussions already taking place with Nike and Apple.
Of all the sabbaticals you could embark on, flying halfway round the world to New Zealand to work on crafting a new beer range surely has to be one of the most desirable. And that’s the precise task assigned to US brewmaster Brian “Spike” Buckowski thanks to a campaign run by Barnes, Catmur & Friends for Boundary Road Brewery. Utilising brewing sites around the world, the agency put the call out for a genius brewer, with a skill set that sits somewhere between genius and God-like, to “come down and do his stuff”.
The advertising and marketing approaches of old are much less effective in today’s marketplace. Many consumers just want companies to stop shouting at them. And Stop Shouting is the name of an upcoming marketing seminar put on by Post Creative’s Post New in association with Air New Zealand, featuring speakers who believe that to win in business, radical changes in brand behaviour, marketing approaches and the way organisations conduct themselves is imperative.
The latest issue of North & South features an in-depth cover story on the Ewen Macdonald case that was one year in the writing. And, as often happens when a big story hits the public domain, it was picked up by the major papers, which led to a bit of an online barney between ACP and editor in chief of the Herald’s products Tim Murphy.
It’s all about staying up late, comical advice, scare mongering and warmth spreading this week.
Following on from its slick rebrand of Paper Plus last year, Hyde Group, with the help of writer Vaughn Davis and designer Graham Murray, has launched the chain’s new online office stationery offering paperplusoffice.co.nz with a series of billboards that aim to capture the attention of traffic in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.
On average 115,000 Kiwis use Skype daily, and MSN New Zealand has added the site to its local advertising network, boosting MSN’s audience reach to over 2.3 million New Zealand internet users.
Babyboomers are often portrayed as greedy, BMW-driving, house-hogging, tax avoiding luddites. But they also use the internet, have Facebook pages and watch YouTube. So why should they miss out on all the viral marketing fun? As no one was really catering to them specifically in this area, Publicis Mojo Auckland, Goodman Fielder Australia’s Lawson’s bread and The Down Low Concept have tried to fill the gap with a light-hearted look at that particular life-stage, with self-help tips delivered by one of the statesmen of Australian comedy Trevor Marmalade.
As is often the case in the advertising biz, losing big clients usually means losing staff. And after Sugar decided not to go back for a BNZ booty call, managing director Jeremy Johnston says it has said goodbye to approximately four full-time equivalents over the past few months. But now that the “recalibration” is complete, he says the newly restructured business is on the upward trajectory, as evidenced by the arrival of ex-Ogilvy executive creative director Damon O’Leary, who has joined as creative partner.
After almost two years of consultation and development, Nielsen has launched its new online audience measurement solution, Nielsen Online Ratings, which measures people rather than computers and claims to paint a more accurate picture of the whole online consumer and digital universe. But while the new system has already been endorsed as the official measurement currency by the Australian IAB, that’s not the case in New Zealand.
Due to a combination of rain fade, La Niña, the dog eating it and launching a new website, the June round of The Glossies is a bit late. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, so have a look at this month’s contenders and vote for your favourite magazine ad.
New Zealand has a special connection to Antarctica, due to a combination of our close proximity, the past efforts of explorers like Edmund Hillary and our ongoing investment into scientific research on, protection of and stake in the icy continent. And, in an effort to draw attention to some of the altruistic, world-leading work the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute is doing to unlock the secrets of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, the appropriately named BRR was enlisted to create a new identity.
After weeding through nearly 1,600 image submissions, Getty Images has picked Aucklander Jamie Wright as the winner of Grab New Zealand, a photography competition that gave enthusiasts the world over the opportunity to show off their visual definition of everyday Kiwi life.
After a pretty intense rough patch, where three of its big clients—Vodafone, Air New Zealand and Westpac—went west in quick succession, .99 has been on the hunt for a few wins and it’s received some welcome good news after being appointed as the full service agency for Tower following a recent head to head pitch against M&C Saatchi.
Sentia Media welcomes a new general manager, Cooper Street Media aims for the Sky, AD2ONE adds one, Insight goes global and JWT gets a move on.
The effectiveness of advertising on Facebook is being called into question once again following revelations from the BBC that its ‘VirtualBagel’ experiment, an imaginary business that tech reporter Rory Cellan-Jones started in a bid to test it, received 3,000 ‘likes’ within four days, despite the fact that it offered no products or interesting content.
Here at StopPress we often start the week off with a frank discussion about vaginal discharge, so you can imagine our excitement when we saw an ad for Johnson & Johnson’s brand Carefree last night depicting a naked woman talking about the female body and the role of its new acti-fresh product. But, rather than beat about the bush, so to speak, and use the obligatory ‘patronising euphemisms’ often associated with the category, the ad features the word vagina, and it’s thought to be one of the first times it has been used in a New Zealand TV ad.
Following the worldwide unification of TBWA’s digital operations into the Digital Arts Network (DAN), Whybin\TBWA has announced that its digital consultancies Tequila and Shift have officially been melded into DAN\Auckland. And in a coup for the local agency, the Auckland arm was chosen to build DAN’s user experience (UX) lab, the network’s global centre of excellence for digital user experience design.
He was up on stage a few months back collecting a trophy for best production company at the AXIS awards. But George Mackenzie, who spent three years with The Sweet Shop, most recently as managing director for NZ/Asia/MENA, has decided to try his hand elsewhere and will join Robber’s Dog as managing director.
As Rebecca Black so famously sung, “It’s Friday, Friday, Gotta get down on Friday, Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend, Friday, Friday, Gettin’ down on Friday, Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend.” But today isn’t just any old Friday. It’s the third Friday the 13th of the year. And to celebrate, Pak ‘n’ Save and DraftFCB decided to have a bit more fun and try to scare the bejeesus out of everyone.
When iconic ad man Martin Lindstrom starts preaching ethics and green sensibility, you know the writing is on the wall for business as usual in the marketing world. But it’s not really Lindstrom calling the tune here. He’s just the weatherman pointing out the massively changed consumer climate. In New Zealand, 88 percent of us want to buy more sustainable products and services according to Colmar Brunton’s B3W research 2010 & 2011, with spends increasing even in tough times.
The big news yesterday in the business world was that Vodafone had put in an offer to buy TelstraClear for $840 million in an effort to better compete with Telecom in the corporate and fixed line space. There’s plenty of water to go under the bridge before the deal is approved and, as you’d hope with a merger of this size (and with a restraint of trade clause written into the contract for Telstra), the decision is expected to take a few months. So if it does go ahead, what will that mean for TelstraClear’s existing agency partners?
Saatchi & Saatchi officially welcomed ASB into the building at the start of July, along with around 12 new staff across its account service, digital, production and creative teams. And while there’s no title on his business card, Philip O’Neill—ex Mitchell’s and TBWA\ managing director and self-proclaimed “adman at large”—has joined the agency as the main man on the account.
Independent mobile advertising network InMobi has released its latest New Zealand Mobile Insights Report, showing Apple’s iOS platform has overtaken Android for the first time and a 78 percent increase in tablet impressions on the InMobi network over the past three months.
Colmar Brunton has promoted Jacqueline Ireland to the position of chief executive officer, replacing Harry Papafloratos, who passed away earlier this year. She was previously managing director of Colmar Brunton Auckland.
In an effort to better understand modern consumers and their media consumption habits, and at the same time facilitate a rethink about outoor media among media agencies, Adshel recently conducted an in-depth study combining quantitative data and ethnographic insights. And, according to marketing manager Emma Barnes, the results of the ‘Inside Outdoor Lives’ study “really backed up our beliefs and strengthened our case of the benefits of Adshel”.
Go to any industry function and someone is bound to mention the term ‘bullshit bingo’, a game where attendees nod knowingly at one another when meaningless jargon is uttered. And CAANZ, Barnes, Catmur & Friends and Film Construction’s Steve Saussey have taken that to a new, very entertaining level by producing “an award-winning, persuasive, brand-building, results-getting, call for entries viral video” for the Effies that manages to, as Paul Catmur says, jam as many advertising techniques into one piece of communication as possible with the limited budget they had.
The international ads performed strongly in the June instalment of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact award, but it was the branding of the 3M Super Sticky Post It Notes ad that took the title, just beating out the latest Pringles campaign.