Vivaki, the Publicis-owned group charged with managing the combined resource of Starcom, ZenithOptimedia and Razorfish, has announced three significant new leadership roles across Starcom and the group, with Alex Radford, Richard Thompson and Jo Reid all getting the call up.
Over the past month we’ve rolled out our Colmar Brunton nzgirl Women’s Tracker presentation to agencies and clients and one of the key discussions from the preso has been around Twitter. While the most commonly bandied-around, unlikely-to-be-grounded-in-fact number of participators in New Zealand is around nice percent I suspect the reality is much smaller. And in an industry more likely to be exposed to new communication tools, I found only a very small number of people actively participating. In some agency meetings, often in a room of twenty media buyers, not one of them was tweeting.
The soon to be relaunched Idealog magazine has ended its galactic search for a new editor, fixing on a local human whose name many of our dear StopPress readers will already know: NBR’s Hazel Phillips.
Happy 100th birthday David Ogilvy. No doubt he’ll be smoking a pipe and spitting out acerbic one-liners wherever it is that admen go to play their harps. And if he were still alive he’d have hours of fun writing stabby, beautifully crafted columns to add to the traditional versus new media debate.
Most airlines produce complimentary inflight magazines. It’s a captive audience of bored, high-value readers and this perfect publishing storm means Air New Zealand’s Kia Ora is one of the country’s most expensive magazines to advertise in. Now the same idea is being employed on the ground, with premium cab company Corporate Cabs releasing its own glossy ‘in-car’ magazine called ME, ‘your guide to a luxury lifestyle’.
Y&R has been on the hunt for a replacement executive creative director since Vaughn Davis departed in September last year. And it’s managed to lure one of our boys back home, with Josh Moore, a Kiwi lad who has been working in Sydney for the past five years as executive creative director and partner in US Sydney, taking up the role.
Tux just wound up a big campaign where it called for entries from the public to find the ad world’s next dog star. And Amazon, a Huntaway from Ohakune, took out the title. To celebrate this famous victory, Tux have got two prize packs to give away to lucky StopPress canine lovers, including a Mr Vintage Tux t-shirt, a Tux frisbee and a big bag of mega-meaty roast lamb flavour Tux. Mmmm, baked in great-tasting flavour. All you need to do to win is come up with an entertaining name for a dog. Or a new dog food.
It’s been around since 2004, but in a bid to further stand out from its competitors on supermarket shelves, the Scarborough Fair brand of coffee, tea and chocolate has recently undergone a design makeover, courtesy of the folks at &Some, or as they refer to themselves, the creative co-conspirators for a connected world.
The stock imagery on the release might show people laughing with magazines, but there probably aren’t too many smiles in the print industry after several unexpected fieldwork issues affected the quality of readership data for Nielsen’s newly pimped out Consumer and Media Insights readership survey.
We’re taking the politically correct NCEA approach today. So we’ve chosen four winners.
Who’s it for: NZTA by Clemenger BBDO and Film Construction
Why we like it: It’s funny because it’s true. Nice to see NZTA using a bit of humour to get …
It was a brave strategy to rely on the public to come up with an idea that would form the basis of ANZ’s Rugby World Cup sponsorship. But it seems to have paid off: 6,482 ideas were submitted for DDB New Zealand’s ‘Welcome the World’ campaign, well above the 1500 hoped for.
Nestle may have found its next Milky Bar kid, but finding a cute hero to sell your product isn’t exclusively reserved to the domain of humans. Introducing droopy-eared Amazon, a Huntaway from Ohakune that beat out over 700 entries to become New Zealand’s next Tux dog.
…because Colmar Brunton’s resident yoof expert has moved up the ladder, Porter Novelli is hailing its new leaders, Alice Moros has traded Mango for a Haystac, BNZ and Duco have signed up Richard Branson to spread his entrepreneurial gospel in New Zealand, Coca-Cola has appointed a new general manager for Oceania, PPR has a new account manager and Getty Images has added few more snaps to its arsenal after the acquisition of Photolibray.
We’re not sure what you did yesterday, but APN will be hoping it included a bit of living. That’s because yesterday was the day Living, a new magazine that “reflects what Kiwis love doing on Sundays”, was launched as part of the Herald on Sunday’s offering.
Yellow Local appears to have spared no expense in splashing itself around Auckland since launching, with its new hyperlocal offerings featuring on billboards, TV, online and in print. And while NZ Post’s Localist has been promising to launch—and promising to offer something better than Yellow—since late last year, it has taken a much different approach to that of its major competitor and soft launched the site on Friday.
There was plenty of discussion on StopPress about the launch of the Z brand a few weeks ago. And the first pilot station, replete with Auckland-made muffins, Hawke’s Bay-made pies and jingoistic forecourt attendants, has opened up in Greenlane, which is a good enough excuse for us to post an animation that spells out how it turned from Shell to a letter at the end of the alphabet. Whatever your thoughts on the end result, credit where credit is due for creating a fairly entertaining explanation of the process.
Mergers can often be a little murky, but in the case of Origin Design and Insight Creative, they’re adamant it’s all about clarity. After Insight Creative purchased Origin Design in February last year, the two companies have finally aligned to reveal their new single brand, simply called ‘Insight’. And with that comes a new creative strategy that ties in with a bold and clean look.
New Zealanders love free stuff. And, blow me down, they also like being entertained. So Ticketek New Zealand has decided to tap into these primal desires with the launch of Nine Rewards, a new online market research panel that offers free tickets as the kicker to get users to share their opinions.
In this issue of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week, Apple’s iCloud and the apparent quest to create online gated communities, Groupon quickly ensconces itself on New Zealand’s e-commerce scene, what Australia’s daily deal code of conduct says about the maturing of this new commercial phenomenon, Google’s attempt at sharing and a cautionary tourism tale New Zealand would be wise to take heed of.
The Fairtrade movement has become a huge marketing force in recent years, with a massive increase in sales and a few big corporates starting to sign up to this more ethical approach to business. And Harriet Lamb, who helped kick off the UK Fairtrade Association about 10 years ago, is one of the women responsible for making this change happen. So, if you want to hear from an inspiring speaker, eat a few nibbles and drink a few Fairtrade cocktails, buy your tickets here for an event being hosted by Good magazine at Image Centre’s swanky new premises on Wednesday 22 June.
Here’s the latest sprinkling of TVCs for your Friday afternoon delight. We’re quite impressed with NZTA’s latest humorous effort, and Bacardi pipes up with a fancy animated offering about togetherness. Pams meanwhile presents its latest human sausage offering for winter and the All Blacks sell more stuff, this time for Weet-bix.
The judges have judged and 140 entries from 42 titles and 22 different companies are in the running for a Magazine Award on 23 June at the Pullman Hotel.
Ordinarily, there’s not too much to get excited when you’re talking about standard black tea. But the folks at Bell Tea & Coffee Company seem pretty chuffed with the new Bell Original tea packaging.
…as Les Mills welcomes a charitable soul to the fold, Kraft says goodbye to a couple of its senior marketers, the Marketing Association announces a few newbies, Crossmark gets a new managing director and office in New Zealand, CGI gurus Lightfarm Studios and animation house Cirkus both snap up a double, and OMANZ temporarily loses a stalwart.
Putting an account up for pitch soon after the launch of a big repositioning campaign is fairly unusual, but Massey University, which recently used successful alumni like Kate Sylvester to announce the institution’s position as ‘the engine of the new New Zealand’, has done just that. And Napier-based agency Tracta has claimed victory after a seven-way pitch, beating out the Foundry, The Church, Buffalo, Ogilvy and TBWA with its heartland agency proposition.
If there is one ‘new wave’ trend engaging retailers and businesses at the moment, it’s the burgeoning pool of knowledge, insight and digital tools that shoppers are now drawing on to shop smarter and save more. And while it’s often claimed New Zealand is 12 to 18 months behind global trends, it was staggering to learn at the recent eTail Conference in Palm Springs that retailers in the USA have more like a three to five year lead on their Kiwi counterparts.
The entry deadline has now passed, a new record has been set for most entries and an impressive collection of game changers have been secured to decide who will take their place amongst the marketing greats at the 2011 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards.
When Bluebird launched its ‘Do us a flavour’ campaign last year, in which it sought the tastebud insights of Kiwis to come up with a new chip flavour for its range, it seemed pretty obvious that this wouldn’t be the last endeavour into customer engagement territory. Enter the ‘Dear Griffin’s’ campaign, which allows you, the discerning viewing public and biscuit lover, to submit your ideal biscuit concoction.
Everyone loves a good a laugh, especially those in the rural sector. At least that’s what the creative buffs behind the new advertising campaign for the launch of Altum (previously known as Summit-Quinphos) are hoping for. As part of the rebranding and repositioning exercise, Hamilton-based agency King St has employed the use of a humorous, tongue-in-cheek campaign that likens Altum sales consultants to specialist forensics experts referred to as Farm Scene Investigators (F.S.I). And there’s a bit of swearing thrown in for good measure, even if it is muted out.
Who’s it for: Mountain Dew by Colenso BBDO and Satin & Lace
Why we like it: For many years, Frucor has been giving Colenso heaps of cash so it can bring cool ideas to life. Then people start talking about it, Frucor sells truckloads more of its stuff …