Coca-Cola South Pacific, giffgaff and comparethemarket.com from the UK, KidZania from the US and Digital Alchemy from Australia arrive next week to spill the beans to New Zealand marketers on how they’ve harnessed modern direct marketing to take their businesses to another level.
We’re big fans of passive aggressive notes here at StopPress and, as such, we also enjoy www.passiveaggressivenotes.com, which showcases “funny (if not necessarily ‘passive-aggressive’) notes from pissed-off people”. So what a treat it was to spy a tweet from Home NZ magazine today about some strange goings on in the ACP towers.
TVNZ’s new chief executive Kevin Kenrick has had his feet under the desk for a few months now and Jeremy O’Brien took over from MediaWorks-bound Paul Maher as its new head of sales back in May. And now it’s announced five new senior appointments, four of them coming from within, that “herald a new era for the company and recognise the changing needs of consumers and customers in the modern media landscape”.
New Zealanders love it when foreigners stroke our ego, heap praise upon us and seek out our talents. And a fairly surprising example of this phenomenon occurred recently when Critic, the student magazine of the Otago University Student Association and the country’s longest-running student newspaper, completed a project with Newsweek magazine to produce the cover of its latest issue.
For the first time in a long time, Jack Daniel’s has launched a new product: a combination of its whiskey and a “proprietary honey liqueur”. And what better way to get the new Tennessee Honey variety some attention than by inviting Kiwi revelers to rummage around in a bee hive.
In the lead up to the Rugby World Cup, All Blacks sponsor Rexona went for the rather earnest, clenched fist on heart approach with its ‘rituals’ ad. But things are a bit more relaxed after the win, with a recent black and white spot by Aussie agency Naked and Curious showing some of the lads laughing together as friends (and hugging mum). And the same team, with Tammy Davis on directorial duties, have followed that up with something of a French farce showing “never seen before footage from the opposition dressing room after THAT game last year.”
The Media Counsel hit the skids back in February 2010. And in the fifth six-monthly report, liquidators McDonald Vague are in no doubt as to what caused it: “The reason for the company’s failure lies solely with [Glenda Wynyard’s] action of removing funds from the company to fund her own lifestyle”. And as a result, Wynyard’s conduct is currently being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.
Five of the week’s best spots, from endearing child stars to George Clooney-esque stickmen and everything in between.
Z has finished the massive task of rebranding more than 200 Shell station forecourts, and it’s ramping up the patriotism once again for the next stage in its evolution with a new campaign from Assignment Group and Exposure starring some financially savvy youngsters.
Barnes, Catmur & Friends gives a high five, Donovan and Boyd go solo, Toa Fraser joins the 8com roster, First Rate and Market United become one, Radio Rhema names its new chief executive, Massey stalwart professor Philip Gendall receives a new title, online retail advertising network iNC launches in New Zealand, Datamine hires a new geek, and Sam Neill puts his name to short film comp Tropfest.
With the massive changes currently taking place in the Australian publishing scene at the moment and the steady move of readers from print to digital around the world, the newspaper business is at a crossroads. So what is the rationale behind the Herald’s change to tabloid? Will New Zealand readers soon be paying for online content? And how is APN preparing for the future? We chat with APN’s chief executive Martin Simons.
justONE gets its mitts on some prized goods, bcg2 grabs a coffee in Australia and Mango adds its name to Tourism Fiji’s growing agency roster.
Music and marketing have long been pretty cosy bedfellows. Jingles from many moons ago can often still be recited, bands regularly lend their tunes to ads, and brands are now even creating playlists on Spotify. But V and Colenso BBDO have taken that marriage to a new, hi-tech level with the V Motion Project. And, following on from the launch of the TVC recently, it released the full-length music video on Friday on TVNZ’s U-Live.
Tapping into the rising popularity of QR codes, Waterfront Auckland has a new trick up its sleeve: a new attraction that uses your smartphone to take you on an interactive tour of the city’s best sights.
There has been widespread speculation recently that the weekday version of the New Zealand Herald would be moving to a compact format and APN New Zealand has confirmed that’s the case, with a date set for September 2012. And, as its print product changes, it will also be redesigning its major digital property nzherald.co.nz.
Fonterra has been under the pump in recent times due to the steadily rising price of dairy products. But a complainant recently took aim at some of the language used on its website to promote the goodness of dairy. And not even new ambassador Richie McCaw could stop the Advertising Standards Authority from upholding two of the five complaints.
After a tender process that ended up attracting over 50 submissions, Sydney agency Iris has been chosen to lead Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism’s push to bring Aussie visitors back to the region after the earthquake.
The Magazine Publishers Association has set some fairly bold targets for the industry and hopes to increase its share of ad revenue by around $30 million over the next two years, going from around 10 percent of the total ad market to 11.5 percent. It’s certainly a big ask, but Nielsen’s more in-depth Consumer and Media Insights research, mostly positive readership and circulation results in the last batch of numbers, and now, the appointment of Katrina Horton to the newly created role of commercial director with the MPA, all seem to have given the industry some extra confidence that it can reach those goals.
Colenso BBDO and .99’s ‘Every Day a New World’ brand campaign for New World was very well received, and even inspired a piece in Mumbrella asking why New Zealand’s advertising was so much better than Australia’s. And .99 has kept up the good work, with its rich media homepage takeover winning the IABNZ Creative Award for June.
As the owner of a Subaru with close to 250,000kms on the clock, getting the chance to drive a car that doesn’t creak when you turn into a park or smell like a squash court is something of a novelty for me. Driving Audis around Hampton Downs at high speed was certainly a helluva lot of fun, so when I was given the opportunity to take Honda’s new hybrid CR-Z coupe for a hoon, I decided to give it a nudge. And the kind folks at Honda are keen to offer one StopPress reader a hoon too.
Given what’s happened—and is still happening—in Christchurch, it’s fair to say earthquakes and cuteness are rather incongruous. But the new Drop, Cover, Hold campaign for Civil Defence by Clemenger BBDO and Robber’s Dog has managed to combine the two to surprisingly good effect by asking Kiwi kids what they think causes earthquakes. And some of their answers are pretty awwwwww-inspiring.
Skinny welcomes a new Paul, Jo Hartley trades OMD for Carat, Studio Alexander appoints a general manager, Acumen Republic ups its events firepower, Volkswagen goes human hunting, and iStart and Software Shortlist get together to embrace the pay-per-lead model.
There was plenty of pomp, ceremony and promotional activity to celebrate the airing of the first episode of MediaWorks’ big reality show The Block last night. And the Nielsen TAM numbers have given the network something to crow about.
Leo Burnett Sydney has won the McCafé and Family portfolios for McDonald’s across Australia and New Zealand, taking the business off DDB, which has held the account for more than 30 years.
Air New Zealand filled up a room with social media sponges and marketers yesterday to hear Randi Zuckerberg, the former Facebook marketing director and less famous sister of Mark (some might say she’s the female equivalent of Doug Pitt) and Wildfire’s Jessica Gilmartin speak. And if any Kiwi company was going to sponsor a social media breakfast, it would have to be the very socially active national carrier. But in case you haven’t been paying attention over the past few very difficult years in the aviation industry, it has put together a video explaining the airline’s approach to social media and showing what it has managed to achieve as a result of its focus on it .
The ‘Shit People Say’ meme kicked off with a couple of stunners that clocked up 16 million and 8 million views respectively and then rapidly went downhill as everyone climbed aboard that particular bandwagon. But Beam Global has brought it back for its Bar Legends trade campaign, with a clip made by Young & Shand (eager eyes might be able to spot Mr Shand in the video) and The Downlowconcept detailing some of the interesting scenarios Kiwi bar tenders have to put up with.
Back in September 2009, we sent StopPress into the wild. Almost three years later and, with steadily rising audience numbers and what we think is a fairly well-established position as an important source of news, views and hullaballoos for the marketing, advertising and media community, we’re pretty proud of our e-baby. But, as everyone in this industry knows, laurel-sitting is not recommended, so, with the help of our digital agency and ‘creative co-conspirators’ &some, we’ve spent the past few months redesigning the site. Rest assured, we’ve kept all the good bits, but we’ve given it a good spruce up, shifted from WordPress to Django, installed a better comments engine, added the ability for users to submit jobs (an events uploader will be coming in the near future), made the design more responsive so it will work on iPads, tablets, smartphones and big browsers, and basically tried to ensure we took care of what &some’s head nerd Matt Cooney calls ‘the whole platform-for-the-future thing’.
Having recently departed his executive creative director role at JWT Sydney to return to New Zealand, Angus Hennah has joined a different member of the WPP family and taken the role of executive creative director at Ogilvy.
There weren’t too many particularly memorable promotional efforts from the wide range of Rugby World Cup sponsors last year. But a few stood out, and one of them was MasterCard’s Priceless Moments series by McCann Sydney and Prodigy. Now the agency has followed that up with a pretty funny spot promoting a competition that’s offering one lucky—and, judging by the ad, potentially very annoying—rugby fan a trip to Europe to watch the All Blacks play Italy, Scotland, Wales and England.
One of the smart things about Pak ‘n’ Save’s proposition is that it isn’t really based on price, it’s based on value. And that was proven recently when it was judged to be the best value brand in the country. Its entertaining corporate spokesstick Stickman has been beating that particular drum in his inimitable animated style for a few years now and DraftFCB’s self-reflexive, whimsical campaign is one of our favourites here at StopPress (not everyone likes him though). And the two latest spots reaffirm that.