When she’s not being a non-executive director for New Zealand Rugby League, the Cancer Society or the gang responsible for the Dunedin stadium, Jen Rolfe, the ex-director of Saatchi & Saatchi digital, is spreading the digital and direct gospel with Rolfe, the eponymous boutique agency she started last year. So, here’s lookin’ at 2011.
Who’s it for: 2Degrees Mobile by TBWA and Film Construction
Why we like it: Two words, Rhys Darby. He appeals to all demos with the trademark quirky geek style. And we want some “handy auto-writing arms” too.
Who’s it for: Axis Awards 2012, CAANZ …
As Warner Music’s Eric Morse said at the Marketing Today conference, the growth of the web is now letting brands and agencies target individuals, not just markets. And justONE’s Ben Goodale has been trying to ride that 1-to-1 wave in 2011. Here’s his take on the year that was.
There was both joy and despair when Air New Zealand announced it had killed off Rico. And whether or not you liked the fur and fang, the digital trickery employed by .99 and the cute tie-in with Cluedo was a clever way of sending the non-specific spokebeast off. Now his murderer has been found and in a merging of mascots, Richard Simmons is back in front of the camera for Air New Zealand, along with the very talented puppeteer behind/inside Rico, Tyler Bunch.
Kathryn Wills joins Reach Media. McNally blows in to APN NZ Media, while Hornblow bows out. Chris Monaghan gets more to experience. Dan’s the new man of the afternoon, and McCann’s driving Mr. Maisey.
According to Nielsen’s AIS data, Revlon spent $4.1 million on advertising in New Zealand in 2010 and $3.3 million to the end of October this year (base rate card value), largely in magazines and TV, and, as part of a global alignment, MediaCom has taken over the media planning and buying in New Zealand from DraftFCB.
It was a big year of rugby for adidas and TBWA\ was behind much of the work done to leverage its sponsorship of the All Blacks. ‘All In’ and Stand in Black were solid campaigns, but for many they were overshadowed by the PR shitstorm that ensued after the jersey price debacle. And as the global sports giant shifts its focus away from rugby and towards other sports, so the focus also shifts away from the New Zealand branch and towards the two agencies it uses in Australia.
The days of the digital wild west could be numbered, if the Law Commission has its way. In its latest paper News Media Meets New Media, the commission has proposed a single regulator across all types of news media in New Zealand. One “independent of both government and the news industry,” that will outline the standards and accountabilities that it believes should apply to all news media and bloggers, in the digital age.
Christmas is close, and this sees The Warehouse, Noel Leemimg, Farmers, Harvey Norman, Telstra Clear, Bond and Bond, Holden, Telecom, and Chrisco, all jiggling for space on the tinsel-trimmed bandwagon. Dad’s dance moves are lampooned by Microsoft. Mel B, on shedding her baby weight with Old Spice… sorry, ahem, that should read Jenny Craig. Plus BNZ, on how to ‘basically’ get a remote-controlled flying shark for free.
It’s been around one year since Andrew Holt joined Clemenger BBDO in Wellington as managing director. And quite a year it’s been, with the agency winning the New Zealand Post account, an AXIS Gold for its creative Radio NZ radios and launching new campaigns for Dulux, Mitsubishi and the New Zealand Transport Agency. Here’s what caught his eye in 2011.
The latest installment of the Countdown family soap opera sees the Colemans struggling to cope, after mum Nikki returns to work following the birth of her baby. MacDonald’s targets office girls who enjoy being engulfed in waves of runny brown stuff, and Vodafone shows how you can spend Christmas with the people you really love – your Facebook friends, while sharing Christmas dinner with your family.
Whether it be the contextual Subaru print ad after the Great Auckland snow, the cheeky billboards for Independent Liquor, the clever Adshels showing the temperature in Fiji over winter, or some of its edgier ads for Hell, Barnes, Catmur & Friends has pumped out some pretty classy work this year. Here’s what Paul Catmur made of it all.
Y&R has won a large proportion of LG Electronics business including strategy, creative, media, digital, social, and sponsorship, effective immediately. The incumbent was Punch.
The 2012 Axis Call for Entries has gone out. So get those entries in… and find out if your blood, sweat, and tears are worth any gold, silver, or bronze.
Slim picking this week, but TBWA\ and Sydney’s Saatchi & Saatchi share the spotlight in today’s recruitment news.
Aah Christmas, what’s not to love? Parties, presents, yummy treats. But gifts aren’t always what you want, take reindeer sweaters, or singing fish ornaments for example. To make up for the bitter disappointment such gifts bring, we have two $50 gift cards to give away, for Subway and GrabOne.
The price wars between the supermarket behemoths Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs is heating up, with Foodstuffs winning the latest legal skirmish. A decision by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled Progressive Enterprises guilty of presenting an artificial advantage and breaching ethics guidelines.
BCG2 Health’s Pfizer ‘FACTORy’ programme, originally developed in New Zealand in collaboration with Spitfire, and then launched into Australia, has won a Pfizer Human Health global award for commercial excellence and innovation.
In our humble opinion, Powershop’s ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ campaign is one of the best campaigns of the year. But we wondered aloud a couple of weeks ago whether its latest execution featuring Darth Vader prancing through a field like Julie Andrews crossed the IP line. Turns out it did, and the LucasFilm patent lawyers have been in touch telling them to cease and desist. They’ve done as asked, but, with a dose of challenger brand cheek, they’ve also taken a leaf out of 42 Below’s book and, with the help of its PR agency Sputnik, decided to have a bit of fun with the apology letter.
Simon Lendrum took over as the managing director of JWT in 2010 after a long stint at Ogilvy and, with solid campaigns for Ford and PlaceMakers this year, a freshly renovated office and a new creative director at the helm, there’s some excitement afoot. Here’s what he thought about 2011.
Stolen Rum is a New Zealand-based start-up rum company that wants to bring back the romanticism and history of rum to a contemporary audience. The rum itself has been judged world class, and it’s got the requisite feel good back-story, but an in-house cheeky guerrilla marketing campaign hopes to put Stolen Rum on everyone’s lips—including the spirit-making behemoth it’s competing with, Bacardi.
While all the talk in broadcasting land is about Sky and TVNZ’s Igloo, TVNZ has just announced the arrival of a new addition to its OnDemand family called Ad Hover, “a dynamic, customisable and fully interactive advertising opportunity” created in conjunction with DraftFCB that aims to give viewers a more engaging and immersive video experience and claims to significantly up the brand recall measures for advertisers.
A new free mobile application which helps make Christmas shopping easier has been a huge hit among iPhone users.
Jack Delmonte and Hadleigh Sinclair from Publicis Mojo take November’s ORCA for their ‘Low Fat’ Subway campaign, which was a real hit with the judges, and can be credited with inventing the phrase “hairy neck dumplings” as a euphemism for goatee adorned double chins.
Gamers usually like to escape reality. But, as part of a YouTube campaign for Turtle Beach, a company that designs, manufactures and markets high quality audio peripherals for video game consoles and personal computers, Droga5 NZ has reversed that scenario and taken a 24 year-old Kiwi gamer named StatiC (real name Phil) on a journey through a real warzone, Iraq.
When we asked TVNZ’s head of digital Eric Kearley in early November whether TVNZ was working with Sky and would launch a set-top box before the digital switchover, he flat out said no. But last night Sky and TVNZ brought out the big PR guns and officially launched “New Zealand’s worst kept secret”, Igloo, the mid-play TV network that offers both pay and free-to-air channels. And while there’s plenty to shout about with the new offer, there are still questions lingering about its modus operandi and whether MediaWorks will play nice.
There were a host of enthralling PR disasters this year. And, perhaps as a result of all the humans wandering the streets during the Rubber Wool Cup, there was also a noticeable increase in the number of brands using experiential marketing in their campaigns. So who better to spill the beans on 2011 than Claudia Macdonald, managing director of PR, events and experiential agency Mango and a founding member of the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group.
Much like That Difficult Second Album Syndrome, it’s very hard for companies to keep up the growth required to make it back onto the Deloitte Fast 50 list. But, perhaps not surprisingly considering it now works with big clients like IAG, ASB, Volkswagen, Frucor, NZ Lotteries and Vodafone, Auckland boutique The Research Agency managed to do that this year, ranked as the 42nd fastest growing company in New Zealand after taking 29th position in 2010. Here’s what tickled the fancies—and got the goats—of its two partners Andrew Lewis and Amber Coulter.
It’s that time of year again, the time when we’re so busy dreaming of sausages and sauvignon that, rather than write anything ourselves, we rope in some of the industry’s most vigorous cutters and dastardly thrusters to give us their $0.02 on the goods, bads and uglies of 2011. First up, TBWA\Tequila’s chief raconteur Dave Walden, whose agency has bounced back from a fairly tough ASB-related 2010 after getting its mitts on the ANZ and Tourism New Zealand accounts.
Droga5 has signed with one of New Zealand’s leading gaming businesses Fiveight. The New Zealand-owned and operated company represents SEGA, Turtle Beach, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. There were no incumbents, as the company was only formed last year.