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.
Outward Bound is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. So, to mark the occasion and show how the organisation has been unlocking Kiwi potential for 50 years, two 15 second TVCs—one aimed at those aged 18-26 years and another targeting those over 27—have set off on a journey of their own.
DraftFCB saw its creative director Chris Schofield take up a role with DDB in October last year, following on from Justin Mowday’s shift there a year or so before. And, in the latest example of the ongoing inter-agency hostage swapping saga, DDB’s deputy creative director Regan Grafton has joined the fray as joint executive creative director with Tony Clewett. Executive creative director James Mok will become group ECD of Australasia.
Working Style is experiencing a lot of success with its savvy new advertising campaign ‘They’re Wearing Our Gear Here’. Its latest print ad came third in the January/February round of prestigious Glossies, beating some of the country’s top agencies. You would expect a campaign like this to come from a top creative advertising, but Working Style is bucking the trend with this one. Warning: the following material could make agencies very, very afraid.
On February 17, after a regional alignment saw SparkPHD take up the ANZ account and resign BNZ, we mentioned that rumours about a change of creative pants for the bank also appeared to be gathering steam. And it made the call this morning to put the account up for review, with the incumbent, Sugar, deciding not to participate.
“And the winner is… no one.” That was the result for the top prize at this year’s Nexus Awards after the judges scratched their data-weary heads and decided New Zealand’s best data work wasn’t good enough to justify the big prize. There was lots of talk about standards to maintain and excellence required and all the rest of it. But the bottom line is: we went backwards. We all got together to celebrate the best data thinking of 2011 and our standout result was “please try harder”.
The January/February round of voting for The Glossies has been tabulated, and FOUR’s Home of NOT Rugby in ACP’s Metro, cooked up by FOUR and Special Group, has taken top honours with 27 percent of the vote. Yellow Pencil BrandSharp’s effort for Red Paris in NZ Marketing got them tantalisingly close, with 26 percent, and Chris Dobbs was third for Working Style in Metro (10 percent). That’s two in a row for Special Group…
In a slightly unusual move, Motorcorp Distributors Limited has appointed Big Communications as its agency partner on the Land Rover and Jaguar brands while allowing it to maintain its existing relationship with Škoda. The other two Motorcorp brands, Renault and Volvo, will remain with Publicis Mojo, which was awarded the business in March last year, and media planning and buying for all four brands will stay with ZenithOptimedia.
As the focus continues to shift to online products like YellowToolbox, the print bell continues to toll at Yellow Pages, which has announced it will lay off around 20 percent—or 125—of its staff, primarily from the sales department.
Who’s it for: Mercury Energy by TBWA\Tequila
Why we like it: It’s the talented Tiki Taane, and with profits from his song going to Starship Children’s Hospital what’s not to like? That and the goofy Footrot Flats-esque mixture of animation and reality.
Youtube …
Global integrated PR and communications agency Hotwire has rebranded its New Zealand operation Creo to bring it under the family name.
UK-based Aegis Media, “the world’s fastest growing marketing communications group”, bought Mitchell Communication Group in June last year for AU$363 million. And Carat and Mitchell have now officially been brought together in New Zealand, with around 70 staff from a variety of businesses now beavering away in a new Parnell office.
Mercury Energy is celebrating New Zealand’s “good energy” in its latest TVC. Tiki Taane has that in spades, and has happily lent his talent to the ad, which was made by TBWA\Tequila, with the Always On My Mind singer recording a new version of Over the Rainbow and donating all proceeds from the sale of it to Starship Hospital. What a good country!
One of the great ironies of the advertising industry is the fact that advertising agencies, despite dispensing plenty of advice to their clients about the need to continue spending up large (especially during a recession), rarely advertise themselves. But DraftFCB has been the exception to that rule in New Zealand in recent years and it caught our attention with a campaign that showed off some of its remarkable powers of persuasion in Air New Zealand’s Koru lounges.
As an array of talent shows fill our screens, the sound of wannabes is nigh-on inescapable. But whatever your opinion on the worth of such content, there’s no denying they’re popular. And TVNZ is planning to add to the melee with a multi-million dollar local production of NZ’s Got Talent that will screen on TV ONE.
TV3 has matched rival TVNZ’s talent show announcement with an ace card of its own. The much anticipated local version of hit renovation show ‘The Block’ is one step closer, with the ‘fab four’ sponsors announced. Bunnings, Kiwibank, Mazda and Wild Bean Café are the inaugural ‘foundation partners’ of this long awaited local series, and the call has gone out for contestants. Three million Aussies watched the final live show, of the most watched series in Australia, where it consistently out-rates Masterchef.
Andrew Kordek is the co-founder of Trendline Interactive, a market research agency based out of Chicago. Before that, he was responsible for strategy at Groupon, the first ever group-buying start-up, and fastest growing company of all time. With nearly 20 years marketing experience, Kordek knows his stuff. He’s an avid blogger, and advocates responsible email marketing. He was in New Zealand for a few hours last week, so we nabbed him, and made him spill the beans…
With the current popularity of Kate and Wills, Sherlock Holmes and Downton Abbey, the English aristocracy is so hot right now. And Griffin’s and Assignment Group have harnessed the zeitgeist with a brilliant new campaign that pokes fun at British stereotypes and aims to make consumers think differently about Huntley & Palmer’s crackers.
DraftFCB was told it had won the Vodafone account on Friday afternoon. And as if that wasn’t enough good news for one day, it also won the Grand Prix at the RSVP and Nexus Awards that night for the Electricity Authority’s What’s My Number? campaign.
Beck’s recently launched a series of limited edition art labels on all its beer bottles. And to celebrate, Beck’s are giving away a swish prize pack, which you could win by sharing your artistic bent.
It took a bloody long time, but DraftFCB has won the Vodafone account ahead of Ogilvy and .99, and AffinityID, which has done some project work for the company in the past, has won the CRM business, bringing a long-awaited end to the uncertainty—both for the agencies involved in the pitch and for the local Vodafone team thought to have been waiting on a decision from global HQ.
adidas New Zealand will be showing off one of the latest in marketing technology to its head office in Germany, all thanks to a Hamilton print company. Last November we told you about Print House in Hamilton’s new integrated multi-media technology that allows ultra thin video screens to ‘show-and-tell’ about a product. adidas New Zealand tried it, loved it, and are taking it to the company’s HQ in Germany.
Grabaseat’s ambassador Ron Rowwdy will be sharing his exclusive reports every Thursday throughout March on grabaseat.co.nz and Grabaseat’s Facebook page. His weekly reports reveal the very scientific formulas Grabaseat use to discover each week’s ‘nice price’. The campaign was developed in conjunction with Rowwdy Productions, the Grabaseat team, and the agency Contagion.
Around 450 industry folk turned up for APN Outdoor’s Friends in High Places event last night at Mantells to hear Tiki Taane, Sola Rosa, PNC, DJ Sambora and State of Mind. So if you were there—or you want to live vicariously through those that were—here are some glamour shots for your viewing pleasure. All the guests are invited to tag themselves in the album of party pics available on the FIHP Facebook page from this afternoon.
The country’s packaging heroes and villains have been unmasked once again thanks to the Unpackit awards, with the folks from Wanaka Wastebusters whittling down 200 nominations to the eight best and worst examples of packaging in New Zealand.
There were a few raised eyebrows in the industry when Corey Chalmers and Guy Roberts followed the ASB business from TBWA\ to Droga5. Now, after 18 months with the agency, the pair have upped sticks again to fill the role of creative directors at Saatchi & Saatchi NZ, while Droga5 has named Anomaly London’s executive creative director Nathan Cooper as a replacement.
One of our dear readers had an embarrassing experience yesterday. And, by sharing his painful story, he hopes others can avoid a similarly embarrassing fate. He was using his iPhone to show some female colleagues a story on StopPress. They looked on in wonderment at the digital dexterity on display as he started typing the name of the esteemed vessel into the browser. But their eyebrows were soon raised when the list of search terms appeared, leading to an uncomfortable explanation about the fact that ‘stop premature ejaculation’ came up as a result of auto-complete, not because of his recent search history. Forewarned is forearmed.
Accessing government information can be a necessary evil, one often accompanied by much gnashing of teeth, wailing, and tearing of hair follicles. Why? The word bureaucratic springs to mind, followed swiftly by convoluted, unnecessarily intricate, and confusing. But that’s all about to change, thanks to a brand spanking new website The New Zealand Government Directory. Now, understanding the workings of government, and its key power brokers, has never been easier. The interactive new site, developed by Network Communication, brings together all publicly available information onto the one site. Hurrah.
Looking for number-based sneakiness and selective/creative use of statistics comes with the territory in this job. Whenever audience data for magazines, newspapers, radio, TV or online is released, we can generally look forward to a host of releases from proud media owners that, understandably, aim to portray the results in a positive light—and, by extension, portray their competitors in a negative light. And, with the battle for online eyeballs heating up, MSN NZ and Yahoo! NZ are currently engaging in some data-related fisticuffs.
The Christchurch earthquake and New Zealand’s subdued economy are being blamed for Australian media beast APN News & Media’s full-year earnings sinking $45m into the red. The results come at the same time as APN announces an outdoor advertising joint venture with Quadrant Private Equity, allowing it to expand further into Australasia.