Orcon has appointed M&C Saatchi as its advertising agency. Taryn Hamilton, general manager retail at Orcon, says M&C Saatchi was chosen on the merit of the team’s creative thinking and strong team focus.

The online realm is a rather fluid and exciting space at the moment. Companies large and small are chopping, changing and innovating in the quest to find the most effective model and close the gap between eyeball numbers and ad dollars. And MSN, with its parent company ninemsn, is set to embark on some big changes, with a new corporate umbrella brand called Mi9 that will encompass all of its brands, new ad exchange technology that basically creates a stock-market for online inventory, an increased focus on behaviourial targeting and a renewed effort to bump up online news numbers with a portal overhaul. 

Businesses are wasting time and money trying to reach people online without realising many resent brands invading their social space. This is according to findings from TNS’s Digital Life study, the most comprehensive view of online consumer behaviour available today, surveying more than 72,000 consumers in 60 countries, including over a thousand New Zealanders.

Christmas is fast approaching and The Warehouse, Noel Leemimg, Farmers, Whitcoulls and DTR all jump on the red and green Christmas bandwagon.  Already red, The Labour Party solicits themselves.  Gin Wigmore and Hayley Westenra sing their own praises, and dog whisperer Cesar Milan wants to show us how to be the leader of the pack.

You may have seen the worm on telly last night, when up to 1600 people from all over New Zealand gave their second-by-second reactions to the Leaders’ Debate on TV3 with Roy Morgan’s Mobile Reactor, an app downloadable to smartphones. TV3 compared that worm with the one provided by their studio audience of 65 undecided voters. But can the technology assist in the advertising realm? 

New Zealanders often have to wait for a bit longer than everyone else for the newest iPhone, hit TV shows and, occasionally, the latest blockbuster movie. And, as a new ad for Kia featuring three hip-hop hamsters that’s about to be launched on Kiwi screens attests, the same is occasionally true for commercials. 

Hamilton company Print House has won the rights to introduce technology into New Zealand that allows a video screen to be placed within printed material.

Fastway Couriers is targeting the online retail industry with the nationwide rollout of its simpler, more modern, logo, which replaces a logo that was almost thirty years old.

Stolen Rum has managed to gain a fair bit of attention in its short life through a combination of a good product, good branding and good PR. And it’s set up a cheeky wee competition with the help of its newish agency Pead PR that is judged by well-known columnist Steve Braunias. 

Ad agency Sugar and online DVD rental company Fatso are capitalising on paranoia about new video piracy rules with a clever new campaign. As record companies sent out warnings for people found making illegal downloads, they sent out phony warning letters with the fictitious logo of the New Zealand Copyright Authority and the message “notice of breach”.

The Marketing Association’s 2011 “Marketing Today” Conference held at The Langham Auckland began with an apt quote from William Gibson. “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” And, as well as an update on all on traditional the marketing concepts like market research, direct marketing, brand management, the conference also provided fresh insight into ‘new-age’ marketing concepts like closer integration of marketing with IT, gamification and social media marketing.

Parallel importing. That’s been legal in New Zealand for ages, hasn’t it? Well, yes and no. If we’re talking about branded goods and not music, films or software, then parallel importing has been legal here since 2003 and it’s allowed traders to import genuine goods bearing a trade mark (think L’Oreal perfume or Sony cameras) that are sourced from an overseas supplier rather than the authorised distributor in New Zealand. So what legal weapons are available to local businesses whose investment is being put at risk by cheap imports? 

Logan Brown’s Shaun Clouston last night opened the WLG pop up restaurant kitchen, where Melburnians are being treated to a flavour-filled fortnight of food flown over from the capital of cool.

The global gaming industry shows no signs of slowing down and Kiwi developers are getting their share of the pie – the local game development industry grew by a whopping 46 percent this year.

The Media Design School AdSchool (formerly Axis) End Of Year Show is on tonight from 5.30 until 8pm at the new building at 92 Albert Street. And they want you industry juggernauts to sit down in front of the fresh-faced students, grunt a bit, leaf through a few pages and then decisively and/or contemptuously slap down a special sticker or two before wafting off again in the direction of the bar.  

Hopefully you’ve already expanded your marketing mind and devoured the November/December edition of NZ Marketing from cover to cover, but in case you missed it, here’s a rundown of the joys you can behold if you get yourself a copy, including the entertaining and enlightening advertising goose chase that ensued in our quest to interview one of New Zealand advertising’s most intriguing characters, Ogilvy’s Greg Partington.