The switch is about to get turned off on TVNZ7 this month, but one of the channel’s best and most popular shows, Media7, has been kept alive after NZ on Air gave it funding and MediaWorks agreed to screen it.
New domains including .app, .blog, .cloud, foo, .lol, .mail and .sucks could soon be part of the fabric of the internet. And today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the governing body of the domain name system, opened up about the nearly 2,000 applications it received for new domain extensions.
Over 2.6 million New Zealanders tuned in to watch series three of MasterChef New Zealand, with an average 590,000 Kiwis aged five-plus watching every week making for a nine percent increase on season two and a 14 percent increase on season one. And the producers have had to clear up some confusion when a bit of social media Chinese whispering took hold after some unmentioned goings on in the final came to viewers’ attention.
Innovation helps drives our economy. And, in the marcomms world, innovation helps to drive effectiveness. But are you getting the recognition you deserve? Sir Ray Avery is calling on enterprising Kiwi minds and organisations to enter the New Zealand Innovators Awards. And who are you to argue with one of our country’s best-known innovators?
Many believe the US$108 billion valuation of Facebook, which started off at US$38 a share and has fallen back to around US$31 a share, was based on “option value”; on the future money-making potential of what Wired writer Steven Johnson feels is becoming a monopoly. The social networking behemoth has certainly been under the pump in the media since the IPO, but research released yesterday about the powerful effect both earned and paid messages have on purchase behaviour offered some welcome good news.
Designworks has just completed work to reposition the University of Canterbury and help attract prospective students, which has been a bit of struggle since the earthquakes. And it is urging Canterbury businesses to follow the university’s lead and take a fresh look at their positioning if they want to grow in the future.
The gamification of marketing and branding is here to stay. According to M2 Research, corporations spent USD$100 million on gamification in 2010, with that figure expected to rise to $2.8 billion by 2016. That’s a serious amount of cash—and a serious amount of fun and entertainment. So if you feel the time is ripe for you and your brand to jump in and explore this new marketing trend, Gamedojo (in partnership with Idealog and NZ Marketing) is putting on The Gamification Lab, which is to be held on two consecutive half-days, 26 June and 3 July.
From 15,000 entries, two of Media Design School’s student short films—Dr Grordborts Presents: The Deadliest Game and Das Tub—have made it into the top 50 for the YouTube Your Film Festival and now the school is calling on Kiwis to help boost the films into the top ten. If that happens, the films will screen at the 2012 Venice Film Festival and a grand jury including director Ridley Scott will decide on the overall winner.
Over the summer, Lipton took a four storey canvas slide to some of the country’s summer hotspots, like Homegrown Wellington, Otago Uni’s O-Week, and Sounds in the Sun. And the digital and social aspects of the sLIPTONslide campaign have earned PHDIQ Yahoo! New Zealand’s 2012 first quarter Digital Strategy Award.
Y&R adds a pair, Val Morgan shuffles deck for launch of Brandfit, Katie Mills returns to MediaWorks Radio, Jacqueline Sainte-Rose-Warn to run Prodigy’s Auckland office, TVNZ launches its onenews.co.nz website, and Datamine nabs a new developer.
Who’s it for: Lexus by Saatchi & Saatchi
Why we like it: While Toyota’s marketing is all about New Zealandness, this moody new campaign for its luxury subsidiary Lexus aims to drum home the brand’s proud Japanese heritage—and, more specifically, its focus on craftsmanship. And …
Facebook is a big believer in the hack mentality; in “putting a bunch of ridiculously talented people in ridiculously small quarters under ridiculous time pressure and building cool stuff”. From time to time it employs this approach to come up with big ideas for big clients or charities in some of its larger markets, but last week, the hack came to New Zealand, when around 40 digital and creative folk from the likes of Contagion, Colenso BBDO, Rapp Tribal, DMD, Gladeye, DraftFCB, Saatchi & Saatchi and Young & Shand put aside their rivalries and gathered in the Contagion offices in Auckland to come up with ideas that would help cement the legacy of Sir Peter Blake and spread the word about the work of the Sir Peter Blake Trust.
Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus has a tough battle on its hands in the prestige class, facing as it does the European goliaths of Audi, BMW and Mercedes. But it’s aiming to reinvigorate the Japanese brand’s challenger spirit with the launch of a classy new campaign out of Saatchi & Saatchi called ‘Kokoro Wo Komete’ or ‘Soul Meets Machine.’
Freeview has just launched a new campaign starring Pio Terei and announced some snazzy new interactive features. And to celebrate the imminent digital switchover, we’ve got a MyFreeview digital TV recorder worth $700 to give away to one lucky StopPresser. The Panasonic DMR 380 has a 250gb hard drive, one touch HD recording from Freeview’s eight day electronic programme guide, twin tuner and live pause. And, if you’re in Auckland, it means you can watch and record 16 TV channels and listen to three radio stations. So tell us about the best free thing you’ve ever received and you could get yourself something else for free.
Once you get past the Dr Seuss headline, there’s a serious question here. It’s also a hot topic right now. When big business is scouring every budget line to trim a little fat, many of them ask, “Can I save money with an in-house studio?” I reckon the answer is “maybe.” Having worked in big agencies, smaller ones, digital shops and in-house, here’s why I think the answer is “horses for courses.”
DB Export’s ‘The Wine is Over’ campaign by Colenso BBDO has won plenty of fans–and a few overly serious, wine-loving detractors. And after Bevan claimed the NAB Newspaper ad of the month title in March, his old mate Sean has taken a win in the May round.
The buzz about mobility just keeps getting louder but many clients are still working out what the rapid uptake of the technology means for their business and how they can use it to their advantage. So out-of-home media company Eye is aiming to make things a bit easier for them and get their content onto consumers’ phones with the new technology-agnostic Amplify platform, “the world’s largest mobile enabled digital out-of-home network”.
According to the latest MYOB Business Monitor, 80 percent of Kiwis use the internet to research products and services, so it’s slightly surprising—especially for many in this sector who are battling with the seemingly unrelenting march of technology on the world of marketing and communications—that only 32 percent of New Zealand businesses have a company website. But Westpac and MYOB are aiming to change that with an initiative called getonline.co.nz, and it’s likely to be one of the last major campaigns created for the bank by the Clemenger Group before it heads across to DDB.
According to Overland’s website, attention to detail and good design is paramount, whether it it be the styling of its ranges or the stores customers visit. And, judging by its latest winter campaign, which was shot by Tony Drayton, features the song ‘Pretty Thing’ by Dylan Dray and has been showing on TV3 and Four for the past few weeks, the same goes for its advertising.
Jason Jones, former creative services manager for DraftFCB and more recently head of integrated production at Sugar, bought The Collective Force from founder Christina Force a few months back. And with refreshed branding, a new website and a re-energised roster of photographers including Andreas Smetana, Charlie, Chris Lewis, Kieran Scott, Sara Orme, emerging talent Tom Roberton, Charles Howells and Spid, he’s looking “to reclaim its position as New Zealand’s premier photography agency”.
DDB may have a bit less work on with Wattie’s, but it’s getting geared up for the arrival of Westpac in about three months, and it’s announced a few of the anticipated hires, with three experienced campaigners joining the team: art director Toby Morris, planning director Rupert Price and group account director Cath Bosson.
We wrote about Brother’s plans to promote its naming rights sponsorship of the brrmm brrmms a few weeks back. And the multi-channel campaign went live this week, led by a cool new TVC created by Raydar and SPG/Kaleidoscope that’s about as far away as you could get from the Japanese company’s previous TV efforts and links its technology with rally driving by bringing a print out of a car to life.
After a competitive pitch, Running With Scissors has won some project work with Heinz Wattie’s, beating out JWT for the spoils and leading to a few questions about the role of DDB.
Four years after McCann Worldgroup New Zealand re-opened its Auckland office, it has more or less pulled the blinds and locked the door. As a result of the consolidation, its clients will now be serviced from the much larger Australian operation.
Depending on how you look at it, second screening is either breathing new life into live broadcasts and showing TV is about shared experiences, or offering proof that viewers aren’t really paying full attention to what’s on the box. Either way, it’s proving fairly popular in New Zealand, with a new survey of 482 smartphone users released by IABNZ and 3DI showing that 63 percent of them are simultaneously using their smartphones and watching TV.
Les Mills International (LMI) is one of the country’s biggest under-the-radar business success stories, and its fitness products can be found in more than 14,000 gyms in 80 countries. And to help keep in touch with them all—and reach some fairly ambitious goals for growth—it has appointed Contagion as its new global media social media partner, effective immediately.
We know you marcomms folk like to wine and dine from time to time. And the Lewisham Foundation Awards rewarded the best in the Auckland scene recently, so here’s some food—and drink—for thought if you’re planning to impress.
A total of 225 entries were received across 13 categories for the 2012 edition of the Magazine Awards. And after the judges had their wicked way with them all, they ended up choosing 144 finalists. Some category finalists will be announced at the Gala Awards Dinner on June 28.
A record 34,301 entries from 87 countries have been submitted to the Cannes Lions 59th International Festival of Creativity, an overall increase of 19 percent versus last year. And, after a total of 347 entries from New Zealand across almost all of the 15 categories, the Kiwi contingent will be aiming to improve on its rather slim takings last year when things kick off in ten days.
Maggie Christie integrates herself into Clems, Stefan Lepionka steps down as head juicer at Charlie’s, Heartland agency upgrades its Tracta, Newstalk ZB wins gold in New York, 8com cuts the ribbon at new Auckland office, Craig Franklin swaps Oz for New Zealand, and Tony Bozzard joins KMS Data.