The tributes are flowing for long-time Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington typographer and designer Eric De Vries, who died off the Kapiti Coast over the weekend after he failed to surface from a free-dive.
It’s not easy being a freelance journalist. When you’re reporting on an event overseas, the fee for your work doesn’t always meet the cost of getting you there, let alone a place to stay and a packed lunch. Award winning journalist Jon Stephenson is returning to Afghanistan before Christmas 2011 to cover a number of stories, and he needs a bit of support to get there.
Here at StopPress, we’re big fans of J&D’s, a website that proclaims everything should taste like bacon (for the special someone who has everything, its new Bacon Lube really is the perfect Christmas gift). And while we were baying for blood at the Fight For Life on Saturday night, we also became big fans of Buffalo Creative’s efforts to leverage Kiwi Bacon’s sponsorship of the event.
In the last edition of NZ Marketing magazine, BCG2’s planning director Abe Dew wrote something of an open letter to Localist and Yellow Local and put forward his views on why the ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ corporate start-ups looked likely to fall into the same category as Telecom’s Ferrit. Not surprisingly, Localist chief executive Blair Glubb disagreed. He responds to some of the claims and outlines its plans for acceleration after what he says is a strong performance in the six months since launch.
From 1 January 2012, MediaWorks Radio will be replacing Solid Gold with a new nationwide station called The Sound.
New Zealand social media agency Catalyst90’s post-election Twitter analysis reveals that some MPs missed the boat by ignoring social media as a platform for strategic campaigning and positioning.
The times they are a-changin’ in print media land. Display ads are harder to come by and publishers are being forced to come up with creative solutions to help brands spread their gospel. And, to reference the increasing amount of revenue such creative executions contribute to the magazine industry’s coffers, the MPA has agreed to a new protocol that it hopes will capture more of the spend occurring in magazines for Nielsen’s Advertising Information Services.
Rumours are rife Cudo is on the brink of closure after just nine months, with some claiming the company has already let most of its staff go.
It was announced a couple of months ago that DDB NZ’s creative sage Toby Talbot was leaving to take up a role within the DDB Network based in London where he would be working on global clients like Volkswagen and McDonald’s and doing a creative MBA. Everyone was assured it was a short-term thing and he’d be back to take up his position after his year-long overseas sabbatical. But he’s “made the most difficult decision of his business life” and instead made a clean break from the DDB Network to take up a role as executive creative director with one of the UK’s top agencies, RKCR/Y&R.
Digital activation agency Touch/Cast, bought by Clemenger just last month, and retail advertising agency Raydar have joined forces to bring a new digital offering to the Auckland market. The venture will be headed up by well-known digital evangelist, Zac Pullen.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are big days for retailers in the States—and, judging by some of the figures this year, the discounts offered up by all and sundry certainly got consumers to prise open their wallets. In times of economic stagnancy, the level of consumption is often used as a barometer for recovery. But, as this fairly brave print ad for Patagonia that ran in the New York Times shows, maybe less consumption is a good thing. Or perhaps it’s just a bit of cheeky reverse psychology in action.
Rico, the furry, double entendre-loving puppet, was a polarising mascot for Air New Zealand. Some felt his lewd conduct was ‘off’brand’ and a bad look for a premium airline that had lost its marketing way. Others felt it wasn’t aimed at New Zealanders and was a smart, fun way of gaining a heap of international attention via the airline’s social media channels. He was cerainly one of the most talked-about marketing things of the year, but now, in typically dramatic fashion—and with a smart digital tie-in to the boardgame Cluedo—Rico has been killed off.
There was a bit of a storm in a beer mug back in July when DB was given the rights to use the generic term Radler as a brand name. Corporate bullying, some indie brewers cried. Cutting off your nose to spite your face and making consumers dislike you for no good reason, others shrieked. Mwahahahah, DB laughed. So when The Boundary Road Brewery launched its Lawn Ranger brew recently it claimed it was ‘Radler-style’ and put up a cheeky billboard saying ‘Fine, we won’t call it Radler then’. Now DB has set its lawyers Simpson Grierson on the case, saying the term ‘radler style’ is off limits and telling BRB to lay off the allusions.
Flying in the face of all the election and Christmas related advertising that has been dominating our newspapers lately, November’s winning ad, by Special Group, was created for the Newspaper Publishers’ Association using an innovative full page designed to be folded so the whole newspaper could be posted to someone overseas to celebrate the Rugby World Cup All Blacks win.
DrafFCB’s had a pretty good year on the awards front. Hell, it even helped to halt inflation with its ‘What’s My Number’ campaign for the Electricity Authority. And that campaign has won Yahoo!’s Q3 Digital Strategy award, following on from a win earlier in the year for its BMW Summer Sale campaign.
Invivo has launched an outdoor poster campaign across New Zealand this month with hundreds of Invivo posters being placed around busy street locations in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. To design the poster Invivo appointed creative Tristan O’Shannessy.
Yahoo! NZ and PriceMe are combining forces this Christmas to launch a new comparison shopping service. The co-branded Yahoo! PriceMe site goes live on December 1 and can be accessed at deals.yahoo.co.nz or via Yahoo! NZ.
Y&R has won the total HRV business including strategy, creative, media, digital, and direct after a competitive tender process. The incumbents were the Brand Group and Hunter Media.
Who’s it for: Warehouse Stationery by Federation and Toybox
Why we like it: Everyone loves Powerpoint cliches. A depressingly relevant way to promote Warehouse Stationery’s Business club offering. And the levitating besuited man looks like a young Rob Fyfe.
Who’s it …
Last time we talked about AA it was related to a fairly dodgy looking RWC campaign launched by one of its subsidiaries AA Bookabach. But it’s better news this time, with chief executive Peter Blackwell announcing the formal appointment of Droga5 as its agency after working with it on various projects over the past 12 months.
Total Media welcomes a new UK import, Aegis Media announces an Activation head, Independent Liqour raids Lion’s satff room, and AWARD hunts for jury members.
Despite grim times, and gloomy forecasts for the print industry, Paper Plus has just cause for celebration. The 100 percent New Zealand owned and operated group has gone from strength to strength over the last few years, in a pretty tough market, so how did it defeat the odds?
Strategy Design and Advertising and the Christchurch City Council’s Share an Idea campaign, which involved the community piping up about the redevelopment of the Central City following the earthquakes, was the unanimous overall winner of this year’s Co-Creation Award—and it’s the first time the Netherlands-based Co-Creation Association has given it to a campaign from outside Europe.
The finalists of the direct and interactive marketing showcase that is the John Caples Awards have been announced, with Colenso on top from the local shops with 18 nods, followed by DDB and Rapp Tribal with nine, DraftFCB with seven, AIM Proximity and Republik with three, and .99, Publicis Mojo, Clemenger BBDO and Special Group on one. And in other awards news, Colenso dominated the Digital Media Awards Asia awards recently with two golds and three silvers, while Naked won silver for Powerade Challenge and Rapp Tribal won bronze for Telecom.
Each year in the lead-up to Christmas, comparison shopping site PriceMe tracks what products are searched for the most, and what are trending up or down. So, for the people in your life who’ve behaved themselves all year round, here’s the definitive list of what’s hot, and what’s not.
There is nothing quite like a magazine subscription for a gift idea and at Tangible Media, we have a magazine for everyone on your shopping list. Plus Tangible Media is offering you, the people, a deal. Not only will you be remembered all year for your thoughtfulness and generosity, you’ll also get 40 percent off the retail cover price when you subscribe to one (or perhaps a few) of the many Tangible titles before Monday 9 January.
The problem with disasters—either man-made or natural—is that those not directly affected by them and the media reporting on them when they happened often tend to forget about the ongoing struggle to recover. That certainly seems to be the case two years on from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and Fraser Grant, an expat Kiwi working in Switzerland, and his Swiss partner Gabriel Mauron have created a cool heat-sensitive postcard for the Gulf Restoration Network based in New Orleans in an effort to get a few more hands on deck.
New Zealanders voted with their remotes during Saturday’s election night coverage, with viewers in key demographics choosing to watch TV3’s ‘Decision ’11’ programme over other televised election coverage.
RappTribal, part of the DDB Group NZ, win the November BollyAward for their client, SkyTV. The banner/takeover ad encouraged users to click to their hearts content with comments from the drill sergeant egging them on.
As far as first world problems go, searching for a scoop of hokey pokey on the summer roadtrip and discovering the store you stop at doesn’t do cones is right up there. It just doesn’t feel right if it’s not dripping down your arm and smothered all over your face. Thankfully, Tip Top and Colenso are attempting to remedy this with the new Scoop app, which gives ice-cream fiends the coordinates of their closest roller.