There were 300 entries from 33 countries for the Google-sponsored IxDA Interaction Design Awards. And Xero has beaten corporate giants Nike and Windows Phone 7 to take out the “best in class for global interaction design” award.
It seems more and more mates are joining Bruce. 2degrees has announced a larger than expected growth, providing mobile services to 875,656 New Zealanders now, after two and a half years in the market. Included in this are more than 275,000 customers who brought their existing mobile numbers with them.
When we found out Sky and TVNZ were building an Igloo together, we heard Barnes, Catmur & Friends and Sugar were the two agencies in the hunt for the account. And Sugar has come out victorious.
Gone are the days when homebrew was a byword for, as your dad might say, bloody undrinkable horse piss. Craft beer is one the major growth areas of the booze market and there are now plenty of interesting brews being concocted in garages, laundries, hot water cupboards, man caves and, of course, breweries all around the country. To tap into the growing number of refined palates, Ian Williams and Anders Warn spent five years developing the world’s first personal brewery, WilliamsWarn, and the design and brand work by Studio Alexander has matched the quality of the product by taking gold in the international Graphis 100 Best in Design awards.
Ah Novus. The Auto Glass Repair and Replacement company behind one of the more divisive ads in recent history. This week Novus launches another campaign – again urging us to show them our crack. It is equally as, ahem, memorable, and looks to be made with much the same budget as the original. But this one comes with the chance to win a trip for two to the ultimate crack – The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. So get cracking and enter here. (ps you don’t need to send in an actual photo of one’s crack. There is an online entry form. Sorry about that Novus. Could you please just delete that email attachment I sent earlier?
In case you hadn’t noticed, the way we watch TV is changing. Appointment viewing is still surprisingly popular and according to Nielsen’s new Unitam figures, which factor in time-shifted viewing, just three percent of total viewing last week was time-shifted and 97 percent was live. In homes with personal video recorders (PVRs), time-shifted programming made up about nine percent of total viewing and people with PVRs watched about seven percent more TV in peak time than those in homes without. Away from the living room, however, the ‘what you want, when you want it’ culture and more reliable streaming means Ondemand content is becoming increasingly popular in New Zealand. And to push its online viewing platform iSky, Sky and two of DDB’s up-and-coming creatives Jay Hunt and Pete Gosselin have created a very funny campaign about a woman spurning her old, decrepit and rather bitter old telly for a shiny, vibrant and cocky new laptop. And, just like ‘Your Happy Place’, the slogan ‘Cheat on your TV’ is spot on, too.
Whispering sweet nothings just got a whole lot easier, but those with a sweet tooth might do best to avoid the Q-Pot phone, which is more than likely to cause users extreme chocaholic cravings every time they pull it out.
Your last chance to be touched by a Hurman. New Zealand’s marcomms community is bracing itself for its biggest loss since Uncle Toby bid adieu. But in a kind and generous move before heading east, planning director, talented author, effectiveness evangelist and all round good guy James Hurman is prepared to share some top tips. And let’s face it, the hairy Hurman has been involved in pretty much every piece of great, highly awarded work the Colenso BBDO has done in recent years including Vodafone, Yellow, V, DB Export and Westpac.
Who’s it for: Meridian by Assignment Group and Perendale
Why we like it: Wells works very well as a quirky Meridian mascot and manages to spread its renewable gospel in a non-preachy, sensible and entertaining way. Plus, it shows off some of the best bits of New …
Meridian Energy has released some consistently good ads over the past couple of years and created a point of difference by loudly banging its renewable energy drum. And, following on from its quirky West Wind and Ross Island ads, which were conceived by Assignment Group and shot by Perendale, the team has sent Jeremy Wells on another entertaining journey in an effort to celebrate the country the company generates all of its energy from—and, of course, get more customers around New Zealand to “sign up to a better energy future”.
Glenn Jameson has “been putting out fires his entire career and now wants to start some”, Raydar’s long serving creative director hands over the baton, James Coleman gets up early, ex APNer Greg Hornblow moves into real estate, and, fresh from swallowing Mitchells, Aegis launches a new innovation unit.
Super Bowl ads are known for generating buzz—and viewers—but not all creatives are created equal. Chrysler courted controversy and won kudos for a two-minute Super Bowl advertisement that was less a car sales pitch than a rousing political message in election year. Chrysler ignored the unwritten rules of Super Bowl advertising – to be brief and funny, for the second year in a row. But it was still voted best ad of the event. Volkswagen’s The Dog Strikes Back was a distant second and M&M’s dancing candy ad polled third (results here).
Earlier this year All Black hero Piri Weepu recorded his third Smokefree advertisement, made by the Health Sponsorship Council and Base Two. His appearance in two earlier Smokefreee ads had been so successful they inspired both his brother, and his mum Kura Weepu, to quit smoking. But now, a furore by the ‘breast-is-best brigade” has seen a two second clip of Weepu dropped from the new 2011 ad, for *gasp* bottle feeding his baby daughter.
Apparently retail is dead. Online shopping is destroying it and, if you believe the hype,all the malls will soon be full of tumble-weeds. Due to constantly improving and sophisticated e-commerce, e-tailers like Amazon, or little online ‘stores’ set up and run through TradeMe it would seem that consumers have very little incentive to shop at brick and mortar stores any more. The social aspects of shopping are now being attacked by start-ups like Svpply. And group buying and the tipping point theory are still there as well. So why are the malls are not empty yet?
Brands increasingly need to look for creative ways to make the most of their sponsorship dollars. And bands increasingly need to look for creative ways to make money. So, what better way to do both of these things than by filming and editing a pretty bloody good music video in one rather manic day at Auckland’s last Big Day Out, something Kiwi band I am Giant and Speight’s Summit did.
As smartphones become more prevalent, QR codes are picking up steam and are now seen more regularly on ads, on products and even on t-shirts at festivals in Poland. Most of the time, the fairly ugly, alien-esque black and white shapes are employed to disseminate information—or offers—but there are some pretty creative options now available (Kiwi company Set QR is leading the way in this regard) and one of the coolest QR executions we’ve seen recently is this print ad for Panasonic that was made by Publicis Mojo Auckland to go on the cover of trade publication Wares Magazine.
Given the recent overhaul to the CAANZ awards programme, those hoping for glory at this year’s Media Awards are being pushed in the direction of the ‘How to write an award winning entry’ workshop next Thursday so that entry writers can adapt to the changes.
An ongoing investigation into a bug found under a plane tree has won New Zealand’s most coveted media prize. Number 8 Wire, an online community news service in Waikato settlement Gordonton, scooped the latest Alcohol Sponsorship Press Award with its breaking stories about the life cycle of a caterpillar.
BCG2 Health appears to be revelling in its niche at the moment after a couple of good wins and it’s toasting to more good health because, after a competitive pitch, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare has shacked up with the agency to launch a digital consumer and trade campaign in the US, a key market for its range of sleep apnoea medical devices.
Special Group duo Kim Fraser and Sarah Frizzell took the combined Dec/Jan ORCA with their ’91 Days of Summer’ campaign for Streets Ice Cream. They made 91 different ads, turning each day of summer into a national day. “December 4. National Weta Freak Out Day. Nothing says summer like a weta under that thing you just picked up. Is it a giant insect or a tiny brown crayfish? Doesn’t matter, your boyfriend still needs to man up, and grab a glass and a piece of cardboard.”
Once again, CAANZ and The Sweet Shop are set to send two young Kiwi creatives off to Thailand as part of its sponsorship of the Adfest Lotus Award. And another two Kiwis who have already shown their creative chops, the hot-to-trot directing collective Special Problems, have just signed up with The Sweet Shop for commercial and branded content work worldwide.
Tait Communications is one of New Zealand’s best under-the-radar business success stories and is a great example of a local tech company finding its niche and selling its wares in the international market. And, in an effort to better reflect the company’s transformation into a “world-leading solutions provider” rather than just a radio manufacturer, Designworks Wellington has given it a spiffy new visual identity, slogan and website.
It began as a cool marketing move by BMW: paying a paltry sum to have the name of its Mini Cooper Roadster associated with the cold snap engulfing Europe. But the car firm will rueing its decision now, after the freezing weather killed more than 130 people and sent over 500 to hospital.
British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s are enjoying a boon of newfound popularity, after a customer service response went terribly right.
There’s been a bit happening in the aviation scene lately: Air New Zealand has shifted to DraftFCB (and Saatchi’s), the nation’s alpha chief executive Rob Fyfe is hanging up his captain’s uniform in December, there are rumours of Emirates changes afoot and Qantas has just announced the appointment of Mango as its public relations agency in New Zealand after a competitive pitch.
The oft-stated wonder of the online realm for advertisers is the utility it provides and the creative opportunities it affords. And while that utility isn’t often harnessed as effectively as it could be, a campaign to launch Hellers’ new range of burger patties by Christchurch agency Simpatico, which recently rebranded from UMC, shows what can be done with a bit of nifty thinking.
What message would you give the love of your life, if you had the chance for it to be displayed on a billboard over two metres high, for everyone to see? This year, Westfield is giving everyone, not just out-of-home aficionados, the chance to take part in this ultimate display of public affection. And one winner will also receive a shiny sparkly diamond ring, to the value of $5999 from Michael Hill. Yuss.
M&C Saatchi has taken recycling up a notch, hiring former Clemenger BBDO group account director Jonathan Hales as its Wellington-based business director. Hales was recently laid off after 13 years at Clemenger, where he set up its design agency, Clemenger Design, and led accounts such as ACC, New Zealand Post and the Rugby World Cup 2011.
Digital communications agency Jericho doubles in size, hires two newbies and turns a corner, Richard Buddle buddies up with Aprais, JML strengthens its arsenal by hiring a number of double-barrelled guns, and technology company Optimizer HQ makes a strategic acquisition that would make Optimus Prime proud.
Following in the footsteps of Facebook Deals, Groupon Now and other large deal-providers offering location-specific discounts in real-time, GrabOne has launched its version in New Zealand, Instant. And, on the same day, Flossie.com has also relaunched itself as “a quiet-time appointment channel for the hair and beauty industry” in an effort to tap into the burgeoning deal-hunting consumer movement.