Now in its third season, MasterChef has moved from Sundays at 8.30pm to Tuesdays at 7.30pm, so is it still pulling in the punters? According to Nielsen figures the show is more popular then ever, with over 200,000 viewers watching this season’s first episode. That’s up 40,000 from last season, and in its target demographic (25-54) it won a 29 percent audience share–up six percent on last year.
Special Group has managed to get itself a spot alongside BMF and The Monkeys as a finalist for Creative magazine’s coveted Hotshop Awards, while Finch and Curious got the Hotshop nod in the production categories. And in the AWARD nominations, DDB Group picked up the most finalists with seven, followed by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop with six each. In the craft categories, Finch received seven finalist nominations, Thick as Thieves three and Curious Film also received a nod for its poignant Helena’s story, made for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.
Since it entered the New Zealand mobile market, 2degrees has been running regular cinema advertising and offering deals like two tickets for $22 on 2degrees Day every month. And it’s continuing that trend with a new exclusive sponsorship that was brokered by Carat, features a fairly strange ad by TBWA\ about a well-moisturised, hibernating blue bear and aims to get moviegoers to turn off their phones before the flick starts.
After a one-year stint as executive director at Ogilvy, former National Party president and PR recruiter Michelle Boag has kicked off her newest venture, a strategic communications company with Cedric Allan, a former national president of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand, and Andrew Pirie, who worked as the strategic communications advisor for Auckland Airport and spent more than a decade overseas as the Asia Pacific head for global PR firm Weber Shandwick.
All the ads entered in The Glossies, including multi-page entries that can be viewed in their entirety.
Every year young girls lug boxes of biscuits around suburban neighbourhoods, knocking on doors and smiling sweetly as they try to raise some much-needed money by feeding what could be seen as a longterm national addiction. This year Assignment enlisted the help of Yukfoo for the fundraising campaign and, with the voice talent of three Guides and netball star Maria Tuta’ia, as well as a dose of Yukfoo’s typically impressive animation, it’s hoping the charm offensive will help boost the number of Griffin’s biccies being dunked around the country (if you want to avoid the grey sludge at the bottom of your cup, you’ll be pleased to know that mechanical engineers in the UK have devised a mathematical formula to ensure the perfect technique).
Negative commentary tends to flow freely in this industry and typically anonymous commentors are pretty quick to put the boot in on the comment wall if they don’t like something—or have an axe to grind. Unfortunately, praise for good work is always less forthcoming, but if a story about a new campaign is well-read and only has a few comments, it generally means readers are digging it. That seems to be the case for JWT’s just-released reality advertising campaign for PlaceMakers and while the agency rubs its hands with glee about that one, it has also recently sent another nice piece of work for Ford into the wild: a retail campaign that pokes fun at retail campaigns.
Hats off to some great gets in tellyland recently. John Campbell kicked it off on Thursday 1 March with a brilliant interview with Kim Dotcom. The interview garnered world wide attention, and was picked up by international networks Rtl Germany, NBC America, and Reuters. Then on Sunday both David Tamihere and David Bain broke their silence for the first time in a night of must-see TV. Both did time… but did they do the crime?
Who’s it for: PlaceMakers by JWT NZ and Exposure
Why we like it: Like a nature documentary—but with tradesmen as the focus. A classy reality advertising campaign that shows the nuances of the building site very well, portrays the builders as craftsmen who like …
Online revenue figures show no signs of abating at the moment, and one of the newer players in the local ad network scene, PostClick, is aiming to get a bigger slice of the pie by launching a new multi-unit online video product called Play, which national sales manager Ben Osborne says simplifies the fragmented online video industry and makes it easy for agencies to buy pre-roll ad space.
‘Just do it’, ‘The best a man can get’, ‘Show us your crack’ … They’re all slogans that have in some way captured our attention, seared themselves into our consciousness and given us a powerful catchphrase to remember a brand by. And this year marks the 40th anniversary of another successful catchphrase, L’Oréal’s ‘Because I’m Worth it’, which was thought up by a 23-year-old copywriter in New York in 1971 “when a new spirit of feminism was in full swing”. We’ve got a hamper containing an assortment of L’Oréal Paris skincare for both men and women, hair care products and cosmetics worth more than $420 to give away to one lucky StopPresser, so add your favourite slogan of all time to the comment wall and the best effort gets the goods.
Know someone in your office with Hobbit feet, someone who’s a bit pasty after the cloudiest summer on record, or some hot babe and/or hunk who simply deserves a little extra pampering? Well, nominate your Flossie of the Week by emailing [email protected] or putting a comment on the comment wall telling us why they (or, if you’re greedy, you) deserve it and we’ll give a lucky someone a $100 Flossie voucher and a bottle of French Champagne every week. Entries close Friday morning.
“Ideas worth spreading” is the TED mantra, and, after searching the globe for ads it deemed worthy of spreading, the judges have chosen a L’Oréal Paris spot featuring disabled American athlete, actress, and fashion model Aimee Mullins as the most spreadable.
This month’s stand-out newspaper ad was Tui Brewery’s ‘Valentine’s Day’ ad from Saatchi & Saatchi. The judges agreed that it showed “great use of the medium and was interactive” and that it “spoke nicely to the immediacy of newspapers”.
It’s been a tough old time in the building biz of late. Homes have been leaking, consents have been dropping and the Christchurch rebuild is taking longer than expected to kick into action. But there is some optimism afoot this year and PlaceMakers is aiming to assert its position as the go-to trade supplier in New Zealand with its first brand campaign for a few years and a major sponsorship of the Super Rugby competition.
Looking for some words to read and pictures to look at? We’ve got just the thing: a freshly minted copy of NZ Marketing magazine. It’s out now, and there’s plenty to sink your eyes into. Our cover star Dave Walden feeds our own Vincent Heeringa some humble pie, during a very long, very expensive and very overdue lunch; James Hurman shares a few parting shots; we look at whether it’s the best or worst time to be in the TV biz, head outdoors to see if 2011 was just a fluke, and talk to some recruitment high-rollers to find out where job hunters should be looking; Nielsen’s AIS figures show 2011’s big spenders–and where they spent it; and there’s a rundown of all the winners of the RSVP and Nexus awards.
Toyota New Zealand has teamed up with Saatchi & Saatchi for its latest Camry campaign, which is aimed at the ‘executives of life’. And, in terms of being so chock-a-block full of Kiwi patriotism it makes your teeth hurt, it’s right up there with Air New Zealand, Telecom, the BNZ, and, more recently, Mercury Energy. Of course, it was always going to be tough ask following up the Hilux’s ‘tougher than you can imagine’ campaign, but–hang on to your steak and cheese mate.
With only two things certain in life, death and taxes, accountants can count themselves lucky (geddit?) they’re in one of the few sectors with almost no need to advertise. As the late great Albert Einstein himself pointed out: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.” So, you know there must be a GFC happening when you see previously cloistered bean counters putting down their calculators and promoting their maths skills in a fancy-pants digital marketing campaign. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) has teamed up with Clemenger BBDO and OMD to launch its first advertising campaign in five years.
Dwarves the world over are dusting off their greens as St Patrick’s Day fast approaches. March 17 sees many things turn a touch green, and most people find enough Irish in them to justify celebrating with 13 million pints or so of Guinness. This year Jameson Irish Whiskey is adding to the party atmosphere by releasing a limited edition bottle of its finest. Designed by Paul Daly, we have one to give away, which you could win by impressing us with your finest hyperbole about the whiskey’s bouquet, nose, body and fruity yet subtle notes.
This time last year we were oohing and ah-ing over the mad ball skills of the All Blacks. Which turned out to be the mad skills of the mighty ABs—and the special effects jiggery pokery of Brandspank. So when #aliwilliams tweeted “Haha yeah that copter thing was hilarious. Izzy took it out. BOOM!” along with a news announcement on the All Blacks and BackingBlack’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, followed shortly after by the release of a film showing the All Blacks smashing a “coptercam” out of the sky with a rugby ball, we should have guessed… we’d become victims of yet another ad campaign ‘going viral.’
NZ Book Month is back with the same plan it’s had for the last seven years: to promote books, reading and literacy amongst all Kiwis, young and old. To do this the organisers are repeating last year’s Books Change Lives campaign, and distributing more than four million $5 vouchers, aimed at putting a book in the hands of every single New Zealander. This simple idea got extraordinary results last year, when New Zealand was the only country in the developed world where book sales rose rather than fell.
Creative types in adland who drink too much V will be overjoyed to learn that registrations are now open for the tenth V48HOURS Furious Filmmaking competition. And, in what could be seen as rather serendipitous timing, the event’s founder and self-confessed filmhead Ant Timpson was this week chosen as the Creative Entrepreneur of 2012 by the Arts Regional Trust.
As the magazine sector’s revenue from sales keeps shrinking, publishers are increasingly looking to make up the shortfall by moving their brands into meat-space (and greasing up the paymasters with creative advertising solutions). And, following on from ACP’s successful 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty last year, it has just launched the next iteration of the scheme with 30 Days of Health and Wellbeing, “a cross-platform editorial and advertising initiative designed to promote health awareness and physical and emotional wellbeing”.
The Marketing Association celebrated the use of insight-driven marketing and data last week. And CAANZ will soon be celebrating what could be seen as the opposite end of the marcomms spectrum with the creatively-focused Axis Awards. And after 50 judges—and presumably the wonderous Axis Metal Detector—spent three days scanning the very best work in New Zealand this year, regular creative award-hogger Colenso BBDO came out on top with a massive 57 finalist nominations, followed by Special Group with another excellent showing on 21 and DDB Group and Clemenger BBDO on 17.
David Thomason and Lew Bentley take on Effie responsibilities, DDB Worldwide shifts its creative nerve centre to Shanghai, Mick Connolly joins Waitemata Films, Senate Communications nabs two senior bods, Miles Gandy kicks off his new biz with New Zealand Geographic, Datamine adds two to the flock and AUT trumpets another win for its students.
Visit Ruapehu launched its first-ever TVC campaign last weekend. It’s aiming to drive interest in the region’s two new cycle trails, which form part of the Government’s national cycleway network, Prime Minister John Key’s baby from the 2009 Job Summit.
A galaxy of marcomms stars—as well as a few comets and plenty of space dust—graced the Langham last Friday night to see DraftFCB clean up at the RSVP Awards and, ah, no-one clean up at Nexus. So, for your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of people hugging their colleagues, posing awkwardly on stage as they get photographed and shaking Oliver Driver’s hand.
Six of the best Kiwi marcomms brains have been chosen to choose the world’s best campaigns at the 2012 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, with SparkPHD’s chief executive Louise Bond on the Media jury, M&C Saatchi’s executive creative director Dave King on the Direct jury, Y&R executive creative director Josh Moore on the Cyber jury, DraftFCB’s creative director Tony Clewett on the Radio jury, Mango Communications’ managing director Claudia Macdonald on the PR jury and Colenso BBDO’s creative chairman Nick Worthington the jury president of the Promo & Activation jury.
The Super Bowl may be the most expensive and viewed commercial break, but these ads from Hyundai and filmmaker Wes Anderson, that aired during the Academy Awards ceremony, are in another class altogether. Cleverly targeting film buffs, the ads spoof popular movies and Knight Rider, as well as Anderson’s own inimitable style. The director brings his quirky aesthetic, seen in films such as The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox, to both commercials along with his whimsical style and retro set design.
January was largely dominated by car ads with Jeep, Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Mazda, Holden, Nissan, Skoda and Ford all sharing screen time. There were the inevitable ‘Back to school’, Waitangi Day, and Valentine’s Day offerings.. no real surprises there… although artist Dick Frizzell popping up as an ambassador for the 2012 New Zealand Olympic Team, now that’s a surprise.