If you think a ‘like to enter’ competition on your company’s Facebook page is a cunning way to grow your follower numbers, you’re probably right in the short term. But if you treat it as a loyalty database, be prepared for some repercussions.
It’s been a fairly interesting period for the ladies mags recently. The old battle between ACP’s Woman’s Day and NZ Magazine’s Woman’s Weekly was spiced up considerably after a few big editorial switcheroos and a hearty debate about the pros and cons of brands signing exclusive deals with publishers. Now there’s even more excitement, with Woman’s Weekly undergoing its biggest change in more than a decade.
Those generous Handley brothers, who sold their share in the Hyperfactory to Meredith Corp last year, launched a scholarship to help improve New Zealand’s marketing smarts by sending them off on a jaunt in the US and giving them access to marketers working for some of the world’s biggest companies, such a L’Oréal, Kraft, Nestlé and AB InBev, as well as a few cutting-edge start-ups. And they’ve chosen their finalists, as well as the panel of six big-brained judges to decide on the winner.
With the New Zealand Magazine Awards hangovers now well and truly abated, it’s time to reflect on those who did it best in the realm of magazine design. All up ten Best Cover Design awards and nine Designer of the Year awards were dished out across several categories.
Alasdair ‘Sick Problems’ Thompson’s attempts to clamber out of the huge hole he dug himself last week was a massive PR trainwreck. And you can always rely on Tui to embrace the media zeitgeist on its billboards to try to sell more beer.
Sadly, after the annual week of Gallic hedonism and chinstrokery, it’s back to old clothes and porridge for the global advertising community because the Cannes Lions finished up on Sunday with the awarding of the Film, Film Craft, Creative Effectiveness and Titanium and Integrated Lions Awards. Here’s a round-up of all the winners from these and the special awards.
It’s the summer festival season in the south of France, with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity coming hot on the heels of the Cannes Film Festival and the Formula One Grand Prix just up the coast at Monte Carlo. But the French Riviera isn’t just a micro-climate in meteorological terms. Its status as a playground of the rich and famous inevitably means it has a degree of insulation to the economic weathering that plagues more industrialised regions.
We left the best until last, but Kiwi agencies picked up three Lions on the last night at Cannes, with Colenso taking home five of the six local Lions won in this year’s festival of creativity.
Last month the Association of New Zealand Advertisers’ (ANZA) Jeremy Irwin, announced he was stepping down from his role as chief executive to pursue more of his lifestyle interests. But while Irwin’s retirement begins at the end of this month, the former director of Unilever New Zealand, Lindsay Mouat, is getting set to step into Irwin’s shoes.
The fine folks at Getty took some snaps of people smiling with sponsors and holding certificates on stage at the Magazine Awards last night. You can read about who won here. And now you can see what they look.[nggallery id=8]
After last year’s big haul for the Kiwi agencies at Cannes, 2011 is looking decidedly average. But there’s still a chance for some late glory after DDB and Colenso picked up two nominations each in the film category.
Not satisfied with simply being the beer sponsor for the All Blacks, Steinlager has gone all gadgety with its latest venture—an iPhone app that helps All Blacks supporters find their way around town whislt keeping them up to date with real-time stream of All Blacks news. And, because ending up passed out in a gutter somewhere isn’t ideal, the app also helps ensure you get home safely.
Oliver Driver is one of the go-to guys for MC duties these days. But what many people don’t know is that he is also a publishing luminary, as this short film created for the Magazine Awards shows.
John Baker
If our office is any guide, there are plenty of bleary-eyed, slow-moving, grease-craving media folk today following the mid-winter Christmas party that is the Magazine Awards last night at the Pullman. And, after 56 awards across 14 categories were handed out, it was a night for the ruggers to celebrate, with Tangible Media’s NZ Rugby World taking home the top two awards of the night, supreme editor of the year for Gregor Paul and supreme magazine of the year.
Twenty-four hours isn’t long when you’re tasked with helping to provide water for arid African villages. But that’s all the time Pip Perkins and Jennie Ko were given at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity earlier this week in the Young Lions Press ad competition.
James Hurman is a planner for Colenso BBDO and in his book The Case for Creativity, he argues you shouldn’t do shit ads because they’re less effective than highly creative ones. Given I love great ads (the locus of the book is advertising creativity, rather than innovation in the broader sense), I should be an easy sell. But while I really wanted to like the book, it has several weaknesses.
One of Gordon Ramsay’s most popular programmes is Kitchen Nightmares, where he helps turn struggling restaurants around. Let me say right from the start, I’m no fan of Ramsay. But I believe he’s teaching us some valuable lessons when it comes to website marketing. Let me explain.
Six categories down and it’s slim pickings for the Kiwis at Cannes, with Colenso BBDO flying solo and picking up its third bronze lion for the Multiple Sclerosis Waikato campaign in the Outdoor category. This adds to the bronzes it won in the promo and activation and direct categories for Westpac Impulse saver and the Pedigree ‘Doppelganger’ adoption drive.
The public has spoken and the public will be required to participate after Palmerston North-born Pulusea Seumanu’s idea was named the winner in ANZ’s ‘Welcome the World’ campaign. Seumanu’s idea brings together clothing, cards, colour and movement, all of which will be co-ordinated in a mass spectacle created by thousands of Kiwis.
As consumers, we might not give much thought to advertisements beyond having a chuckle at some or snarling and changing channels in response to others. On the other side of the screen, it’s a different story. Stakeholders want to know campaigns are doing what they’re meant to do: making an impact and delivering commercial results. And that’s what the Effie Awards reward.
Who’s it for: Coca-Cola by Hugh Mitton
Why we like it: Coca-Cola recently ran a worldwide crowdsourcing contest on the eYeka co-creation platform and asked participants to create an illustration, photograph or video of the brand to depict ‘energizing refreshment’. The contest saw over 2,600 entries …
As the Rugby World Cup draws closer and Kiwis inevitably succumb to the ensuing mayhem, ticket to the matches are becoming an increasingly prized commodity—especially when they’re tickets to the quarters, semis and the finals. And wouldn’t you know it, Coca-Cola is planning to capitalise on that enthusiasm with a multi-channel campaign that includes what it says is its largest ever on-pack promotion.
A lot has been written about the closure of 1-dayout.co.nz in the past few days. And I’m surprised at some of the claims made by its sales and marketing manager Race Louden in his recent article for StopPress, Getting the hell out of daily deal Dodge.
Three days into the Cannes Lions, the folks at Colenso BBDO Auckland must be feeling pretty pleased with themselves, having scooped New Zealand’s only two trophies to date.
We all love the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Oh wait, we don’t. But that’s the whole point behind a comic campaign launched by Barnes, Catmur & Friends on Monday on behalf of the ASA. To raise awareness and hopefully generate more funding via the ASA’s voluntary levy scheme, the team at Barnes, Catmur & Friends, led by creatives Matt Weavers and Jesse Stevens, created a mock website called the Department of Advertising Standards and Regulations (DASR).
The weekly gossip mags haven’t had too much to celebrate recently in terms of readership. But there’s been no shortage of excitement in the rather fluid editorial ranks, with Sido Kitchin and Fiona Fraser moving from APN’s Women’s Weekly to ACP’s Woman’s Day and Sarah Stuart being brought in to replace Kitchin. Now there’s been another big shift, with Hayley McLarin deciding to step down as editor of New Idea magazine after six years at the helm for a role as communications director at CureKids.
How personal is too personal? ASB know all about that, after all its Creating Futures campaign has been centred on providing that personal touch. But it all got a little too personal recently when its In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) commercial was unveiled to the viewing public, prompting a raft of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for being too simplistic and exploiting the vulnerable, among other reasons.
In the past nine months there has been an increase in the number of group-buying websites offering vouchers for anything from haircuts to hotels to beauty therapies. These sites offer a heavily discounted, service-orientated deal, usually for 24 hours, in a variety of cities around the country. But as a marketing tactic, while successful in some instances, the group-buying model is flawed in a number of ways, primarily because it often attracts the wrong kind of customer to a business.
The wingman. When employed correctly, they’re the one person you can count on to bail you out when you’re being hit on by someone in a bar you can’t stand, or, conversely, when you need a hand to seal the deal. But ever heard of a digital wingman? As part of its new campaign to celebrate the return of the Chick’n McCheese, together with the launch of the new spicy Chicken McWings, McDonald’s has teamed up with DDB Group to deliver a campaign that employs the use of puns as well as a virtual wingman to “talk you up”.
Closed captioning has been a staple of regular television offerings for sometime now, but when it comes to infiltrating the TVC domain, Dubsat reckons it’s onto something good with its is new fast turn-around, online TVC captioning service called Captionflow.