TVNZ was left to lick a few wounds after its $15-ish million TiVo blow-out. And there’s also been plenty of movement among senior staff since then, with the broadcaster still operating without a chief executive or a head of news and current affairs. But despite those difficulties, it’s managed to turn things around, with a half year unaudited net profit after tax of $19.2 million, an increase of $14.3 million on the prior year.
As a way to showcase the mass of multi-media content Getty Images now has on offer, it runs an annual—and global—competition called Mishmash that challenges creatives, filmmakers, mini-documakers and anyone with a vision or idea to create short stories, video art or music videos using a mix of high res video, stills and music from the Getty library. And Kiwi entrants Marcia Hawira and Shay Morris took first prize in the Asia Pacific section for their video Natalia.
The big list of judges was announced last month and The CAANZ Media Awards Committee has announced the 18 media agency representatives who, with a group of 12 representatives from clients, media owners and creative agencies, will engage in some robust debate and determine the 2012 finalists during this week’s category judging.
Back in July 2010, we wrote a story about a merger between Advocate Advertising, Wag the Dog and MediaR. At the time, Andy Taylor, co-founder and director of the three-pronged entity that called itself Wag the Dog Agency, waxed lyrical about the new set-up, but according to a story in the NBR yesterday, it has a date in the Auckland High Court on Friday after the IRD applied to have the company liquidated. And New Zealand’s biggest indie Affinity ID has swooped in to snaffle the existing business.
TVNZ Ondemand launched on 20th March 2007 as Australasia’s first catch-up television service. Five years on and the TV industry is nigh-on unrecognisable and while all major broadcasters face plenty of challenges coping with the rapid change, TVNZ’s ‘inspiring New Zealanders on every screen’ philosophy means there are also plenty of opportunities for the growing online platform.
We’re huge fans of stock imagery here at StopPress. When we’re feeling down, we just take a few minutes and check out some pics of women laughing alone with salad, men laughing alone with fruit salad, women struggling to drink water or awkward stock photos and all is well with the world. We’re also huge fans of pictures of corporate over-enthusiasm and are always impressed with businesses that can create such a high level of excitement. So imagine our joy when we received this email offer from Action Actors. Maybe you could hire one of these guys to hang around your desk.
There’s been plenty of chatter about the BNZ of late after a regional realignment meant it parted company with Sugar and, rather unexpectedly, shacked with Colenso BBDO. But before that all kicked off, the old pairing had time to come up with a new campaign pushing the bank’s offset mortgage product TotalMoney.
Start spreadin’ the news… NZ’s own Dave King, M&C Saatchi NZ’s executive creative director, has won the prestigious Irving Wunderman award at the 34th John Caples International Awards Gala, held recently in New York. In fact, the entire Kiwi contingent will be ‘waking up in the city that doesn’t sleep’ to find they’re ‘king of the hill, top of the heap’–between them they managed to bring home 50 awards from a record 51 finalist places (that’s one more than Australia, thank you very much), including seven Golds, 12 Silvers, six Bronzes and 25 Finalists. That’ll melt those little town blues.
Whenever a slightly controversial/deliberately antagonistic campaign is released, many would argue that the campaign gets a tick when those who are bound to be outraged by it come out and show their outrage. Almost without fail, St Matthew in the City’s ‘progressive’ billboards roil the religious types. And DB Export Dry’s ‘Great Wine Depression’ TV ad, a light-hearted parody of the beginnings of New Zealand wine snobbery that was made by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop, also appeared to have its desired effect when a couple of wine lovers took the wine-bashing to heart. Well, now they’ve got a few new print ads to get up in arms about as well.
2degrees and TBWA\ claimed victory in the March 2011 edition of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award with its animated ‘Bruce & Brian’ spot. And it’s come out on top again with a brand ad that trumpets the continuation of ‘the 2degrees Mission’.
In this exciting installment of who goes where; Carly Flynn hits her Target, a Barrell role for Samsung, Plankton floats across the Tasman, Carat dangled to Sewpershad, a US import for MediaCom, Simpson’s lovin’ it at Macca’s, JML Communications expands its girth, Adshel adds Atkinson, Touchpoint’s independent new chair, and Urlich is ‘worth it’ for L’Oréal NZ.
Korean carmaker SsangYong had 300 percent growth in New Zealand last year. And it’s confident that signing up one of New Zealand’s great hardmen, Colin Meads, as the face of its new Actyon Sports Ute will help maintain that level of growth in 2012.
Last year, Ogilvy was awarded the contract for the Auckland Tourism, Transport and Economic Development’s (ATEED’s) Rugby World Cup campaign and positioning the Big Little Super City as the host was a huge, multi-million dollar, multi-headed initiative. But now the dust has settled on that, the organisation is getting back to basics and has appointed Big, Barnes, Catmur & Friends and 4i’s on a roster basis.
Moa recently caused a bit of a hubbub in the brewing community after pinning its craft beer manifesto to the wall. And it soon might be creating hubbubs in America after securing some big US distribution deals.
Assignment Group has Antipodes, Special Group had Mr Vodka, a few Colenso chaps are involved with Stolen Rum, some of the Shine gang are in the hospo game and, as this article shows, ad agencies like Anomaly, Sid Lee and Droga5 are increasingly moving into new areas to help pay the bills. But despite this international advertising trend, we were still surprised when we received a tip-off about Saatchi & Saatchi’s diversification plans.
Nearly 30 years after Bob Jones famously smacked over TV reporter Rod Vaughan, Jones has beaten the unlucky Vaughan a second time – to win New Zealand’s most famous media award. In a cruel twist, Jones fought off Vaughan to win the latest Alcohol Press Sponsorship Award (ASP) as a result of the National Business Review’s announcement that Vaughan had joined the business newspaper’s staff.
Last year, Droga5 launched an online trailer for a campaign created for Fiveight, the local distributor of Turtle Beach, a manufacturer of high-end headsets and gaming gear. The clip showed an avid—and fairly cocky—Kiwi gamer who had agreed to head to Iraq to see what a real warzone was like and a fair bit of controversy erupted after its launch, which meant most didn’t get a chance to see it reach its denouement. But the full version is out there—although now under the Fiveight name—and there’s an interesting twist to the tale of the Kiwi gamer known as StatiC.
Do you love downloading music, but are afraid of the copyright laws? Luckily, there’s now a totally guilt-free, legal way to feed your ears. So, fish out that old library card of yours that’s been tucked away in the depths of your wallet since last millennium, and voila! All Auckland library members (from all 55 libraries in the Auckland region) now have access to millions of music files from the Sony Music back catalogue – for free!
Auckland indie Federation has been chosen by Emirates to handle its creative account in the New Zealand market. Federation won the account after a robust pitch lasting several months, understood to have involved at least two other agencies, including the incumbents Saatchi & Saatchi. As the agency of record, Federation will be responsible for brand, digital, direct and trade marketing, working alongside the Emirates corporate communications team in Dubai.
The myth of the stereotypical gamer as a young, male, energy-drink swilling, junk food-eating light-avoider is (mostly) just that, a myth. An Interactive New Zealand 2010 report found the average video game player was 33, 44 percent were female and 85.5 percent of households had a device to play games on. And the advent of more accessible tech like Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii has continued to bring new demographics into the fray. So, in addition to the global launch campaign for Sony’s new handheld PlayStation device Vita, the local Sony Computer Entertainment office and Satellite Media have released five YouTube webisodes featuring Ben “some dude from TV” Boyce and a few guest stars showing off the new gadget to a bunch of old folks in a resthome.
Yesterday’s ASA figures showed a $10 million decrease in ad revenue for the mag industry. And fairly tight times are forcing publishers to innovate, whether it be through branded content, new advertorial products, online initiatives or special issues like Tangible Media’s just-launched NZ Rugby World 1st XV and The New Zealand Weddings Planner.
After a referral from an existing client, Omnicom-owned Total Media was appointed as Merisant Equal’s full-service media agency at the start of the year. And it’s done it again after taking over the Sunday Star Times account following a good word from existing client and Fairfax cohort stuff.co.nz.
Throughout history, the arrival of new mediums has continually upset the apple cart. The printing press, the novel, film, sound, TV, 3D, and the list goes on, have all changed the way humans tell stories—and all taken a long time for the storytellers to come to terms with. And, as Frank Rose, Wired writer, media analyst and author of a new book called The Art of Immersion said this morning at a breakfast hosted by DraftFCB, exactly the same is true in this digital age.
The Advertising Standards Authority’s annual media turnover figures have been released, and while there are a few significant changes, there are no real surprises, with a slight overall increase on 2010 for the whole industry, TV doing as expected and claiming first place for the first time, interactive and outdoor charting significant rises and the rest of the media channels remaining fairly static.
You may have noticed a few pictures of Special Group’s flash new Drake St offices gracing the homepage of StopPress last week when it was helping to edit the site as part of our Hog the Blog Axis prize. And the 16th fastest growing company in New Zealand/Creative hotshop nominee has recently added a few humans to help fill those flash offices up, with Hilary Cootes being promoted to the role of general manager, Nigel Sutton and Rahat Chaudry joining as head of production and strategic planner respectively, and Claire Beatson returning from maternity leave.
DDB New Zealand was among the few to win Gold at this year’s Asia Pacific Advertising Festival (ADFEST 2012) Lotus Awards. The agency won Best in Show in the Promo Lotus category for Steinlager ‘Believe’. And the team also took home a Gold at the Film Lotus awards, one of only eight handed out for Sky TV ’60 things in 60 seconds’ and a Silver Press Lotus for Campaign for Best of Social Engagements for Coastguard New Zealand’s Mayday Appeal.
Who’s it for: Good Books by String Theory and Buck
Why we like it: It’s a brilliant, extremely well written tribute to the late great Hunter S. Thompson, it’s for a great cause, and the animation is stupendous.
Who’s it for: Dulux …
There’s been no shortage of action in bankland recently, with agency shifts galore and fairly sizeable profits being announced by the big boys that could potentially lead to some fairly enthralling market-share battles this year. And one of the big ones is set to be between ASB and ANZ.
The wise spokesrodent for sorted.org.nz has been helping to enhance Kiwis’ money smarts for almost ten years now and the website is renowned as one of the best financial literacy programmes in the world. New Zealand’s love affair with debt appears to be declining slightly, but there’s still plenty of work to be done and plenty of gaps in the educational process. And, with the help of GSL Network, DoubleFish and Yukfoo, the newly refreshed and renamed Commission for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income has launched the first phase of a new campaign that hopes to get the punters planning.
Last year's winner DraftFCB's Murray Watt
Voting for the 2012 People’s Choice Award is now open at The Radio Bureau (TRB). Last year, Murray Watt from DraftFCB took out both the Grande ORCA and the People’s Choice award. What happens this year is up to you.