GE Capital, the mothership for brands such as GE Money, Gem Visa, Custom Fleet, Equipment Finance, Pacific Premium Funding and Distribution Finance, has appointed Y&R as its creative agency for New Zealand after a comprehensive pitch.
Whether it be at the urinal, in the elevator, at the pharmacy, at the adult concept store or even when someone is shown on the big screen for too long, ‘uncomfortable time’ is an enduring comedic device. And Sky, DDB and Flying Fish have embraced this concept wholeheartedly with a new, entertainingly awkward ad that celebrates the fact its customers don’t need to do anything when the digital switchover arrives next year—and, at the same time, parodies the prevalence of ‘non-threatening brand spokespeople’ on our TV screens.
DB went to great lengths to launch its Monteith’s Single Source ultra-premium lager last year. And now an ad for the brand has hit Kiwi TV screens for the first time in five years, with a new agency in tow and a new branded reality show soon to air on TV ONE.
Leading daily deal site GrabOne has launched its first Faceboook app ‘Gimme5’ and it’s proving hugely popular. As well as being a highly addictive game to play, there’s the chance to win prizes like iPads and a trip to Los Angeles.
Who’s it for: Toyota Hilux by Saatchi & Saatchi and Thick as Thieves.
Why we like it: Advertising is, by nature, hyperbolic. But this rather surreal spot for the new Hilux takes that hyperbole to another, absurd but entertaining level. It already appears to have split the commentators …
Rugby’s pretty close to being a religion in New Zealand. And the outwardly progressive, typically controversial St Matthew in the City and its agency TBWA\ have referenced that with its latest billboard, which uses the ‘Turin Shroud’ style of iconography and endorses David Kirk as a Kiwi deity due to his team’s heroic efforts in 1987.
Using the company vehicle for a dash of marketing is a long-practised commercial tradition. Usually it’s all fairly standard fare that blends into the rest of the melee. But this punny wee number spotted on the back of a van in Auckland got our attention. As did this personalised plate, but for another reason altogether. As a perplexed passenger said: “What does a bathroom truck have to do with a uterus?”
There are currently thousands of tourists gallivanting around New Zealand, and many of them are freedom camping. Mostly, that’s a positive thing. But in some cases it leads to the inevitable negative stories about disrespectful visitors leaving a trail of filth behind them. Over the past 18 months, a team of mobile gurus has been trying to remedy this by plugging the information gap that currently exists with a free location-based app called Campermate that offers information about nearby rubbish bins, campgrounds, toilets and other amenities. And two of them are trying to get visitors to download it by heading on the ‘2-egg roadtrip’ and bribing them with free food.
When a kitchen appliance brand launches an advertising campaign with the title ‘Rambo’s Undies’ starring Mikey Havoc and Hayley Holt you know you won’t be getting a standard appliance ad with the obligatory mud-stained children’s clothing. And that’s exactly what Kiwi owned appliance brand Parmco wanted when they signed off on the Parmco Challenge.
…as Les Mills International announces two key staff changes, Ogilvy signs up Ellison, the NBR announces a new admedia reporter, two new in the nzherald.co.nz crew and D&AD chooses its chiefs.
It’s been a difficult few months for Colenso, with Vodafone pulling the pin and moving up the road to .99 before a full pitch kicks off. But the good news is starting to filter back in: executive creative director Nick Worthington has just returned from Spikes Asia with an impressive haul of medals and it has also won the Les Mills International account.
When compiling a list of classic Kiwi TVCs, there are bound to be a few Toyota Hilux ads in there. With the likes of Bugger and the Scotty and Crumpy series, it’s a product with a rich advertising heritage, so a new campaign is always cause for a bit of excitement, both for Toyota fans and for many in the marcomms sector. And Saatchi & Saatchi has gone to great, rather surreal and comical lengths with the ‘Tougher than you can Imagine’ campaign to launch the 2012 model.
Mediaweb announced today it is “repositioning” two of its titles in an attempt to strengthen its position in the sector.
The company acquired several food industry magazines when it purchased TPL Media’s titles earlier this year.
Mediaweb publisher Toni Myers says two titles, FBT (Food & Beverage Today) and Catering Plus, are not sufficiently different from Hospitality Magazine to continue as they are.
Two staff who both worked on FBT and Catering Plus have left the company as a result of the changes.
As many law-abiding citizens know, prisons are a necessary evil. Recently our finance minister said prisons were a “moral and fiscal failure” at “$250,000 a bed, $90,000 a year to run”. The money spent by New Zealand on incarceration dwarfs what has been spent on the Rugby World …
As John Armstrong said in the NZ Herald, the Greens are on a roll in the polls, have largely shed their image as a “bunch of bicycle-clip-wearing eco-obsessives”, and “have made their strongest pitch yet to be treated as serious participants in the debate on economic policy”. The National Party don’t think much of the ‘Green Wave’, and neither does Act for that matter. But the Green Party hopes to convince the public with its new campaign, which is positioned around the primary message of voting ‘For a richer New Zealand’. The campaign was timed with the party’s unveiling of its Green Jobs Initiative, which plans to create 100,000 clean green job that will “be at the heart of a new economy for New Zealand”.
Kiwi marketing agency Traffic has muscled its way past campaigns for the likes of Hilton Hotels to triumph in the business-to-business category of the Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards in the US.
Overall, the awards received more than 600 entries, but Traffic was the only New Zealand winner among them. The …
Tongan supporters have certainly drawn a lot of attention over the Rugby World Cup campaign and riding on the back of that enthusiasm comes the unveiling of the country’s new tourism campaign ‘Tonga – The True South Pacific’. Featuring a brand overhaul, the campaign comes courtesy of agency bcg2 and sister agency Mediacom.
In a recent Idealog column, David MacGregor wrote: “User experience (UX) is a central thought for marketing today. Products are just stuff. There is no shortage of replacements for yours.” When you consider that more than a third of Air New Zealand’s revenue is generated by its global websites, and nearly half the people visiting go straight to the booking search tool, UX is an especially important aspect of the increasingly digital-centric travel industry. Those figures look likely to increase, so Air New Zealand has heeded the words of the digital soothsayers and made www.airnz.co.nz more customer friendly with the most significant changes to the site’s usability in six years.
Photo by Paul Statham
When Lotto arrived in New Zealand in 1987, Kiwis were excited, the big ads were delivering the goods and the coffers were filling nicely. But when Wendy Rayner started her role as marketing manager for jackpot games in 2003, having come from accountancy, advertising and nine years at TVNZ, jackpot fatigue had set in, the products weren’t working and sales and player numbers were in decline.
Almost like the Dan Carter of advertising, DDB New Zealand’s creative sage Toby Talbot is set to depart Kiwi shores temporarily after arranging a 12-month secondment to DDB London.
ASB has announced the addition of Roger Beaumont to its executive leadership team in the newly-created role of executive general manager, marketing and online.
Place this in the ‘always check your mailouts before you push send’ category. We received an email from a Sydney-based market research company called The Seed asking us to fill in a survey being run on behalf of a “major out-of-home media company” that needed to remain secret because knowing its identity could influence the answers and compromise the findings. Unfortunately, despite an explanation for the anonymity in the body of the email, the subject line read: Adshel benchmark survey 2010. Whoopsie daisies. There but for the grace of God go us. In discussion with Adshel, the survey has been recalled and the research has been canned. But, on the plus side, The Seed is still honouring its commitment to the prize draw of 10x $100 Westfield vouchers.
3 Wise Men is a clever company. It sells good products to men at a good price; its largely print-based ad campaign by Josh & Jamie/Assignment Group is always entertaining and memorable; and its policy of only working with good bastards is a noble business strategy. Now it’s become the good bastard by launching two limited edition Cameron Wilson shirts as part of its summer collection, with $20 from each shirt sold going to the cancer charity the range is named after.
Snapr, a Kiwi-conceived free photo sharing and geo-tagging app has made a bit of name for itself after being given some cash by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, endorsed by Microsoft and used to show the glamour shots during New Zealand Fashion Week. Now it’s added a dose of the digital marketing term du jour—gamification—to the recipe with a photo sharing game called Capture the Flag that’s captured the attention of some major Kiwi brands.
It was a 21 gun salute for Kiwi agencies at Spikes Asia, and Colenso BBDO was the sharpest shooter, taking the Digital Grand Prix for its Pedigree adoption drive, two golds, a silver and two bronzes.
Things are looking pretty rosy for Sky at the moment. Huge demand saw it briefly run out of MySky HD recorders in the lead-up the RWC and, judging by recent revenue and subscription figures, one could argue that it’s actually the national broadcaster. But, as this typically entertaining new ad from DDB and Curious Films shows, the company’s not content with its lot just yet and is adding to its product offering with ‘Guest Select’, which gives its hotel and motel customers the opportunity to put a decoder in every room.
When they’re not opening bars in Britomart, the good folk at Shine Ltd are getting themselves a bit of a reputation as one of the country’s hottest indie ad/design shops. In addition to its stellar work for Fonterra’s Mammoth and Lion’s Mac’s, it’s recently won Speight’s, Freeview and Stuff.co.nz. And where there are account wins, there are generally new staff to work on them. Enter Julian Andrews, a highly awarded and experienced creative boffin from the UK who’s just been appointed as the Auckland agency’s deputy creative director.
Independent New Zealand B2B agency BallantyneTaylor has won the CallPlus business after a strategic presentation to the company in July. The account was previously with Republik, which won it in February last year but resigned this year.
It’s full speed ahead for Rugby World Cup orientated advertising in this latest round of Ads@6, with Coca-Cola, TV1 and the Warehouse all taking a piece of the rugby pie. Elsewhere, fat green monsters make an appearance for Mucinex, Mini Countryman cars multiply and take over a city, and Pak’nSave pulls out its stickman star once again to help celebrate its birthday.
Back in June, Boundary Road Brewery, the newly rebranded Independent Liquor, launched a campaign to celebrate the launch of a ‘craft range’ that asked Kiwis to be the arbiter of taste and choose their favoured variety of beer, with the winning brew eventually released commercially. The print campaign asking for tasters took out the NAB ad of the month award and now it’s followed that up by acknowledging the 999 humans who tasted and chose the Chosen One beer with an ad in The New Zealand Herald that listed every one of them by name.