Coinciding with a few new business wins, recent recognition at the Pharmacy Awards and the promotion of Robin Powell to creative director, BCG2 has expanded its creative department with four new arrivals: Alex Dyer, Anita Young, Matthias May and Matt Watts.
As we delve further into the depths of winter and you busy yourself with avoiding the rain and eliminating unsightly goosebumps and chapped skin, we warn you the following story includes references to lucky bastards lapping up the Summer sun in the South of France. The 59th Cannes International Festival of Creativity kicked off Sunday evening (local time) and the first two shortlists (which are actually very long ) have been released, revealing seven New Zealand finalists, a number of which have also received finalist nods in multiple sub-categories.
As far as years go in the history books, 1932 wasn’t exactly a winner, after all, it was a time when New Zealand was plunged deep in the murky depths of the Great Depression. But that apparently didn’t mean women had to forgo their love of lace knit jumper, cut pattern services or home craft competitions and on December 8 that year, journalists Otto Williams and Audrey Argall launched New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, a magazine that preached the “gospel of usefulness, cheerfulness and happiness”. Eighty years on, in a more exuberant way it continues to equip women with their weekly fixes of fashion, food, weddings and gossip and to mark the auspicious milestone, it’s released a special birthday collector’s edition.
Wine may be heralded as a sophisticated and premium product, but it seems an increasing number of wine labels are seeking to expand their reach by matching their liquid offering with newfangled and arty presentations, most recently exemplified by Kiwi winery Invivo. The label, founded in 2007 by Tim Lightbourne and Rob Cameron, has released a limited edition range of bespoke graffiti wine boxes produced by prominent Kiwi and British street artists, in a move to target a younger audience of wine enthusiasts.
As you wind down and get set for your two days off ahead of the next week, spare a thought for Colenso BBDO’s copywriter Simon Vicars. The poor bloke was sitting in an airport lounge when we called him, getting ready to wing his way to Fiji for a week’s “work”. Then we had to break the news Colenso BBDO had won the May round of The Glossies with 34 percent of the votes for its ‘Idiot’ print ad in NZ Rugby World. ‘Idiot’, part of DB Export Dry’s ‘The Wine is Over’ campaign, put itself a fare distance ahead of its closest rivals. Bettle’s Langham ad, featured in New Idea, placed second with 22 percent of votes while BCG2’s effort for Audi in Metro earned it third place with a 16 percent share of votes.
Komli brings all its businesses under one banner, VW adds another high-profile sponsorship to its list, Ispos announces two big hires, Prodigy gets a pair of Underpants, plus ça change at Jobmedia and All Good and KidsCan dish out the bananas to schools.
I was lucky enough to recently attend the largest Event & Experiential Marketing summit in the world in Chicago. I immersed myself in three days of learning with over 500 others from around the world and came away feeling a whole bunch of things: inspired (absolutely), brain whipped (definitely), and connected (in a myriad of ways). But mostly I feel charged up about the future of the industry in New Zealand.
Wattie’s general manager of marketing Tim Skellern called the battle of the shelf ‘the next big land grab‘. And in-store media and shopper marketing agency Hypermedia has released some information to prove its worth.
Most of the One Show Awards were handed out last month, with Colenso BBDO taking a gold and Publicis Mojo taking a silver. And the winners of the One Show Entertainment Awards, which honour the world’s best entertainment concepts, television ideas, branding and mobile or online content, were announced yesterday in Los Angeles, with Special Group’s Smirnoff Night Project taking a silver pencil in the television/reality/unscripted category.
Certain industries usually do quite well in recessions. Supermarkets, debt collectors, discount retailers, education providers, ‘sin industries’, the armed forces and plenty of others. And at a time when life is pretty tough for many young folk in New Zealand, a new campaign launched this month by the New Zealand Defence Force, Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand and Starcom Worldwide aims to offer potential recruits a peek at what their life could be like as a member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
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”.