Hell’s Pizza Roulette product innovation received a huge amount of national and international PR coverage when it was launched and led to a massive increase in sales, without discounting. And Barnes, Catmur & Friends’ ad to promote it has added to the accolades by winning the April round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.
Creative seeds are planted as a new PR agency launches, MediaWorks TV says goodbye to its long-serving director of programming while MediaWorks Radio puts some wind in its sales, Ocean Design’s increased workload leads to a host of new recruits and a new office, Bullseye’s new Auckland office gets its hands dirty with Tui Products, Tamati Coffey takes a place on the Breakfast couch, Pluk gets set for expansion with a new country manager, and local animation ringmasters Cirkus get the call up for Cannes alongside Bill Clinton, Ridley Scott and Debbie Harry.
Avid fans might remember the debut of Shortland St back in 1992. Aside from delectable ’90s fashion and haircuts, it featured a particularly naughty romantic rendezvous between Dr Chris Warner and a lycra-clad aerobics instructor played by Suzy Aitken, and also gave birth to that line now etched in the Kiwi psyche: “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata.” Early signs weren’t too promising, however, and ratings dropped after its launch. But that was two decades ago and as the show edges closer to its 20th anniversary, its popularity seems well assured, with the show consistently capturing over 600,000 viewers in the 5+ market, second only to One News. And with a big promotional push to celebrate the milestone, culminating in a special anniversary feature episode on Monday 21 May, TVNZ is hoping those ratings will soon be shooting upwards.
On March 27 StopPress published a story about a BNZ campaign by its outgoing agency Sugar. A comment ostensibly authored by Jasmine Wilkinson was published under that story that took aim at Sugar, BNZ and other partners. We can confirm that Jasmine was not the author of this comment and that another user posted this comment using Jasmine’s name and email address. The comments were inaccurate and in no way representative of the views of Jasmine nor of StopPress, and were thus removed. We regret that both StopPress and Jasmine were implicated in this malicious use of the blog. We have reviewed the commenting system and will implement a new system in the near future.
As Marshall McLuhan famously said, the medium is the message, “creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived”. Very rarely does the medium get the message across and also have the ability to soak up grease, but OMD’s novel campaign for Fly Buys Visa that will see deep fried goods up and down New Zealand being wrapped in branded paper has managed to do exactly that.
According to a recent Commerce Commission report into the telco industry, the number of broadband connections in New Zealand has more than doubled in the past five years and Telecom has around half of the total residential ISP market. But it’s aiming to increase that, sweeten the deal its for existing customers and get more people streaming by doubling the amount of data for all Total Home broadband packages for no extra charge. And, as the new ‘Why Not?’ campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi shows, that means you can download and share to your heart’s content.
The stain jokes have been flowing freely after an onanistic carpet cleaner got busted busting one out on Target this week. And Cavalier Bremworth, with the help of its agency Federation, hasn’t let the opportunity to promote its carpet stain remover pass it by.
Sky TV and TVNZ’s joint venture, Igloo, has gotten the go-ahead from the Commerce Commission, and looks set to launch next month as planned. But a separate investigation is now underway into Sky’s content contracts with ISPs.
Doggelganger, last year’s Pedigree Adoption Drive campaign by Colenso BBDO, used facial recognition technology to match humans with dogs and ended up winning all kinds of awards. And there’s a technological bent to this year’s campaign, too, with production company Finch developing a system that allows two entirely different films to be screened simultaneously on the same cinema screen with the use of specially designed glasses.
The Block is one of the biggest reality TV shows in the world. In Australia, where the show began, it remains the highest-rated television series of all time, and over 350 episodes have been produced in the UK, USA, Israel, Russia, Romania, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Given New Zealand’s penchant for property, it’s perhaps surprising it’s taken this long to arrive here, but it’s landing soon and MediaWorks is claiming a first for a major New Zealand television series by allowing foundation partners whose brands are integrated into the show the ability to use the stars in commercial campaigns outside the broadcast of the programme.
The debate between those in favour of pre-testing ads and the creative departments who generally oppose it is an ongoing one. But Colmar Brunton has some new ammunition in its fight and is about to launch a new development to its Link pre-testing product that uses facial mapping technology to find out how consumers respond to ads.
Ogilvy’s Adam Barnes and Hywel James have taken out the March/April round of the new ORCA year after judges Karl Fleet (Campaign Palace), Lachlan McPherson (Publicis Mojo), Harriet Crampton (The Radio Network) and Chris Schofield (DDB) chose their KFC ads ‘Poor Old $5’ and ‘Ginga Note’ as the best of the bunch.
Who’s it for: New World by Colenso BBDO/.99 and Finch
Why we like it: A long overdue brand refresh for New World, which has been battered by the big-spending Countdown in recent years. All three ads from the new campaign are bang on in terms of …
When we interviewed Andy Fackrell, DDB’s new executive creative director, in the latest edition of NZ Marketing, he said we could probably expect fewer gags and more visual storytelling to come out of the agency in the next few months. And its impressive campaign to promote the Olympic coverage on Sky, a brand that’s well-renowned for taking a humorous approach to its marketing efforts, ticks both of those boxes.
Y&R NZ has been appointed as the creative agency for Quickflix Australia and New Zealand and will start immediately on developing separate campaigns for both markets. And Quickflix is certainly going to need some help in this market, as it seems to have largely gone under the radar since launching with a call to the government to regulate content rights because they hinder broadband uptake.
After a pitch involving a rumoured list of TBWA\ and the incumbent McCann, it’s thought DDB has managed to get a foot in the door with Coca-Cola after winning the Lift Plus account.
With the seemingly imminent move to a tabloid format on weekdays for The New Zealand Herald, the recent appointment of Deutsche Bank to undertake a strategic review of its media assets in New Zealand (and presumably ready some of them for sale) and the decision to upgrade its stake in GrabOne to 100 percent and buy out Shane Bradley, there are some big things happening at APN at the moment. And while times are pretty tough in the newspaper business, there’s plenty of courage being shown under fire and The New Zealand Herald has been rewarded for its efforts by scoring a hat-trick of wins at the 2012 International Newsmedia Marketing Association.
The biggest name in New Zealand rugby signs up with the biggest name in New Zealand milk, Wellington PR agency Ideas Shop gets into politics, Shine welcomes an experienced campaigner to the roster, The New Zealand Herald names its travel editor, Portfolio adds a digital recruitment specialist, fledgling magazine Homestyle fills a new position, Newstalk ZB is nominated for a prestigious international radio award, and super yacht guru Neville Crichton is honoured by his peers.
Per capita, more Subarus are sold in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world. And it’s not entirely surprising, as one in every three kilometres of New Zealand road is unsealed and there’s no telling when you’ll need to haul some golf clubs/diving gear/surfboards/groceries/kai moana/compost/children/dogs/drugs harvests in the back of your steed. So, to showcase the fleet-footed Legacy in its natural habitat, Barnes, Catmur & Friends has given a nod to the taxonomists of yore—and to the Department of Conservation—with its ‘Great Wagons of New Zealand’ spot.
The One Club’s Creative Week in New York has come to an end, and the world’s best creative advertising ideas have been acknowledged. But it was fairly slim pickings for the Kiwi contenders, with Colenso BBDO winning a rare Gold Pencil for the Levi’s ‘Rear View Girls’ web film at One Show Interactive and Publicis Mojo taking a Silver Pencil for the Greenpeace ‘Oil on Canvas’ campaign in the integrated branding – public service campaign category at The One Show.
Beer porn and students emerged as the big winners at the annual PRINZ awards over the weekend, with the Student Volunteer Army and the WilliamsWarn personal brewer—the best beer porn you’ll see all day—taking joint supreme honours.
Next magazine has recently embarked on a mission to reinvigorate itself after a period of significant circulation decline, and as well as a thorough redesign, a new masthead to give it a more sophisticated feel and a new size, it’s also targeting a younger audience, taking a few more risks and flouting a few well-established commercial publishing rules. And its just launched June issue is maintaining that trend by breaking with more than two decades of tradition and featuring a man—MasterChef judge Josh Emett—on the cover.
Countdown has been going hammer and tong on the marketing front recently. But New World has come steaming back into view. And its new brand campaign is about as far as you can get from animated shopping baskets and fruit and vegetable musicals.
The Shopping Channel announced its arrival last week, and dropped a few hints about the industry bigwig that would be running the ship. Seven days later and it has been confirmed that Alistair Duff, currently TVNZ’s general manager of media sales, will be the network’s chief executive.
It’s 2009 and we’re in the depths of recession. Damn those bankers! But one company is booming. Les Mills International is quietly taking over the fitness world with its new suite of products under the Bodyvive brand. The new, baby-boomer fitness regime is sold to gyms around the world and includes music, routines, training, equipment and a marketing pack and hits $1.2 million in sales in just one year. But wait, is this a marketing story? Where are the ads?
You’ve only got one week left to tell your marketing story and get your entry in for the 2012 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. Entries close 5pm Friday 18 May 2012 and hopefully you’ve noticed that there are eight new categories to enter. Time waits for no man, of course, but if you’re unable to submit your entry on time for whatever reason (laziness, inebriation, unreliable minions etc), all is not lost. You can extend the deadline by a week by applying for an extension here and forking over $50.
May not be a picture of painting spiderbots
Robots, social media, spray cans and three of the world’s leading design creatives are coming together in Auckland this month at design conference Semi-Permanent as part of Orcon’s Spider Art, which is believed to be the world’s first art painted by Twitter-controlled ‘spiderbots’.
Colenso was named as TVNZ’s ‘agency of choice’ in October 2009, when the Brent Smart/Jason Paris agency-client combo was in effect. But, judging by some of the national broadcaster’s recent projects, that doesn’t appear to be the case any more.
Public broadcasting is getting a pretty rough ride at the moment. Radio New Zealand has had its funding frozen for five years, TVNZ6 has been axed and TVNZ7 is on the chopping block, while The GC, New Zealand’s Got Talent and possibly even Sally and Jaime Ridge get the government’s cash. But there is a group doing its best to ensure there remains an appropriate balance between commercial and public broadcasting in New Zealand and Save 7 is hoping to enlist some creative assistance from those in the marcomms community who believe in the cause and can help spread the message about the need for a government U-turn.
Professional designers may groan at the news that logo design has once again been commoditised, but Auckland branding design agency Rare is claiming a New Zealand-first by launching a digital marketplace called logoorchard.com where businesses can browse for and buy ready-to-use, exclusive, locally-created logos—and the associated generic business names.