Sony has a history of making beautiful ads to sell its TVs, with bouncing balls, paint and rabbits all clocking up millions of views on YouTube. And Flying Fish director Luke Savage and local effects house Blockhead have built on that tradition with a brilliant TVC for agency Frontage Inc in Japan to promote the qualities of Sony’s X-reality picture engine.
After the defection of TVNZ’s ex-head of sales and marketing Paul Maher to MediaWorks recently, general manager of media solutions Jeremy O’Brien has taken over half of that role and been announced as the new head of sales.
Special Group is the first New Zealand ad agency ever to be asked to talk at the Semi-Permanent creativity conference, which packed out the Aotea Centre in Auckland for a few days recently and featured headline acts like New York artist Ron English, UK digital agency Hi-Res, San Francisco-based Industrial Light & Magic and Wallpapermagazine. The local lads opened proceedings in front of around 2000 people with a talk centred around the eight things they do to make their work more effective that showcased the diverse range of work they have produced over their four years of existence—including the Best Award-winning packaging work for ecostore and the 2011 AXIS-award winning AXIS opening film. So here’s a summary of their presentation.
The NZRU will no doubt be hoping the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup win might put a bit more lead in its commercial pencil to help get through a fairly difficult time for the national sport. And it’s managed to retain five of the team’s major sponsors, with Coca-Cola, Unilever, Sanitarium, Barkers and Bvlgari re-signing as All Blacks sponsors for undisclosed sums.
The magazine sector had some pretty good news to report in the latest round of readership and circulation figures and, given what’s happening internationally, the New Zealand newspaper sector should also be fairly pleased with the results, which show there’s still plenty of life in the old dogs yet.
You can read all about it here, and you can see all about it here.
It’s time to get back to our ABCs. And our Nielsens.
For only the second time, the new magazine circulation methology has spewed its quarterly data, coinciding with the Nielsen Magazine Comparatives Q2 2011 – Q1 2012 readership results.
And the news: it’s all up for most and a …
A handful of Kiwi agencies have made it into the finals of the APMA Star Awards, celebrating the year’s finest promotional and experiential marketing across Australasia.
Apollo Marketing NZ, Loyalty NZ and Below the Line (the only indie Kiwi agency) are among the 31 finalists shortlisted from a pool …
Earlier this month, prime minister John Key recently came out and said he’s not against gay marriage, following on from US president Barack Obama announcing his support for it. And last week the local marriage equality movement forged ahead with a punchy new campaign, known simply as WTF?
The …
Quickflix is hoping to make some big impacts in the New Zealand market as the country’s first TV and movie streaming service and, to help it along, its just launched its Quickflix App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The App allows Quickflix WatchNow subscribers to view unlimited blockbuster movies and television shows instantly, on-demand, from their devices and also provides entertainment for non-subscribers, including access to all the latest movie trailers, as well as free Hollywood entertainment.
To celebrate the launch, Quickflix is giving you the chance to win a year’s subscription to its service (worth $203.88). To win, we want to know which TV show and movie you’d stream to your hearts content, and why. And, because everyone likes to win something, every entry receives a free month’s subscription to Quickflix.
Clemenger BBDO Wellington’s major social marketing coup, Nick Ward jumps in the pond, Clemenger BBDO’s “long search” comes to an end, design agency Insight eyes up Australian opportunity, new agency The Creative Store, Facilitate Digital takes a creative lead, and Datamine mines more talent.
In front of an almost capacity Langham conference centre young MC Oliver Driver had to shout to get attention. That’s becasue the 800-odd media and agency flunkies were riotessly celebrating their efforts last night at the CAANZ Media Awards.
And the big winner? Well it was linked to the halting of interest and inflation rates last year, it forced the electricity industry to drop its pants and it has already won a host of the country’s big awards. And DraftFCB continued its golden run by following up from the last two year’s efforts and taking the Best in Show title for its work on Electricity Authority’s What’s My Number? campaign.
The StopPress scanner is smeared with greasy fingerprints, but it’s not because we’re submitting files to Scanwiches or Cat Scans. It’s because we’re hitting go on the May round of The Glossies. But we need your vote. So get in there and choose your favourite.
Mitch Olson is founder of game design studio, Gamedojo, which, in partnership with NZ Marketing and our sister title Idealog, is hosting the Gamification Lab in Auckland next month. He is also co-founder of the hugely successful social game world SmallWorlds and knows how to go beyond buzzwords and hype to create a business case for gamification for your brand.
The {insert thing here} is dead theme is a very common one in an industry that’s enamoured with the new. Newspapers are dead, magazines are dead, TV is dead, retail is dead, radio is dead, full-service agencies are dead .. and the list goes on. Typically, these rather evangelical assertions come from those with a barrow to push, not from those who are part of the ‘establishment’. So we were surprised to read a story about Saatchi & Saatchi’s global chief executive Kevin Roberts claiming marketing is dead, strategy is dead, management is dead and big ideas are dead in a presentation he gave at The IoD’s Annual Convention.
IdeaWorks closed its New Zealand doors in 2009 and said goodbye to eight staff and all of its clients, including the big Warehouse Stationery account. But it was officially reborn in March this year with Y&R Group as the new owner. And after a solid campaign to launch the new FCO retail brand in New Zealand, it has also been appointed as creative agency for Beds R Us after a three way pitch.
For many years, Brother has focused on promoting printers, copiers, sewing machines, labellers and other products from its “home and business IT peripherals” range, usually with a host of low-budget TV ads and that well-known tune at the end, ‘Brutttthhhher’. But it’s attempting to come out of the shadows in New Zealand—and, at the same time, showcase the Japanese company’s technological prowess—by signing up as naming rights sponsor of the Brother Rally New Zealand and the Brother International Rally of Whangarei.
The MA’s Digital Day Out Event last week was an opportunity to see how advertisers and consumers are interacting via social networking sites, the internet, TV, mobile devices, tablets and instore digital signage. And what may be involved in the future if those relationships hope to be strengthened.
Many have been anxiously awaiting the announcement, and it has cometh: digital streaming service Spotify is officially available in New Zealand and Australia, opening up its catalogue of more than 16 million tracks and bringing Spotify’s availability to a grand total of 15 countries. So what’s the deal? And why are brands like Coca-Cola getting involved?
The last time Nike and Wieden + Kennedy got together for a massive advertising push was for the Football World Cup and most would agree the end result, ‘Write the Future’, was one of the best sporting commercials of all time. But it’s taken things up a notch for the launch of the 2012 European Championship with the brilliant and multi-layered My Time is Now.
Entries for the 2012 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards officially closed on Friday. But if you still haven’t got your entry in for whatever reason (laziness, inebriation, unreliable minions etc), all is not lost. You can extend the deadline until this Friday by applying for an extension here and forking over $50.
Who’s it for: Rexona by Naked and Curious.
Why we like it: Depending on your viewpoint, the last Rexona spot that aired around the Rugby World Cup was either overwrought and overly earnest or powerful and beautifully shot. The follow up is fairly earnest as well …
As the biggest lender to the rural sector, the National Bank knows more about how our agrarian warriors tick than most. And while this ad is an oldie that was made by DraftFCB and Robber’s Dog around the same time as the National Bank ‘For the Places you’ll Go’ campaign (we obviously we don’t watch enough Country Calendar and hadn’t seen it before), we reckon it’s a goodie.
NZTA, Clemenger BBDO and The Sweet Shop’s Legend campaign became something of a pop cultural phenomenon when it was released last year, with a couple of lines quickly becoming part of the Kiwi vernacular, t-shirts bearing images of Ghost Chips being worn around the country, and hundreds of parodies, spoof ads and TradeMe auctions referencing the original. And while all those involved in its creation are still smarting a little after the most talked about ad of 2011 went home without any gold at the AXIS awards, it appears there is some justice in the world, because it quite rightly received 11 percent of the vote to win the StopPress/ThinkTV TVC of the Year.
MSN NZ announced a few big changes to its business last year, including the launch of real-time bidding (RTB) system Microsoft Advertising Exchange, something akin to a media stockmarket that allowed advertisers and publishers to buy and sell digital inventory. And the bet seems to have paid off, with MSN reporting significant local uptake of the system and a big recent increase in revenue.
One year after choosing to get rid of one of the world’s biggest brands and replace it with an “entirely Kiwi” identity, Z Energy says its commitment to the Shell-less strategy is already paying dividends and offering it a competitive advantage. And the new brand is tracking very well with New Zealanders.
North & South’s My Space hit TVNZ Heartland’s screens last month. And now ACP and TVNZ have announced another broadcast/print media hybrid with a slightly longer name: Entertaining in Style with The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Mark Richardson and Shannon Ryan get themselves on The Block, Haystac reaches double figures, ACP’s Kia Ora is voted world’s third best inflight mag, Frucor quenches its thirst with Gatorade, The Sweet Shop adds Wellingtonian animation director done good to its stable, and TVNZ teams up with Xpo for the upcoming MyBiz expo.
The Westpac rescue helicopters have saved thousands of lives in New Zealand. But saving those lives doesn’t come cheap (in fact, it costs around $4 million a year to fund a three-crew 24/7 immediate-response team). And despite the ongoing support of principal sponsor Westpac and other partners, the assistance of the public is also crucial to help keep them flying, so this year’s fundraising campaign by .99 aims to remind Kiwis that every donation is valuable regardless of its size, just like the equipment inside each helicopter.
It really is quite amazing how much technology is being packed into our pockets at the moment. And Massey University and Assignment Group’s Wellington office have shown just how far things have come—and how ‘the engine of the new New Zealand’ is changing the lives of people here and around the world—by getting the University’s vice-chancellor Steve Maharey to film its new 30-second commercial on an iPhone, something the Commercial Approvals Bureau has confirmed is a New Zealand first.