The organisers of the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which kicks off on June 19, just couldn’t wait until the start date before handing out the first accolade, so they’ve given IKEA the prestigious Advertiser of the Year Award for distinguishing itself through inspiring innovative marketing of its products and embracing creative work.
It’s one of the publishing industry’s biggest nights and tickets to the 2011 Magazine Awards are now available. So pry open your wallet, air out your glad rags from the musty wardrobe and get ready to celebrate the best in the words and pictures business on Thursday 23 June at The Pullman Hotel in Auckland.
Megan Clark has been elected chair of the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG), replacing Claudia Macdonald, who is stepping down following her two-year term in the hotseat.
DDB NZ turns the tables to try and up the donations for the Coastguard’s MayDay appeal; Colenso releases its first TVC for Westpac and keeps fighting the good fight for Amnesty International; the eyes have it in Saatchi & Saatchi’s latest NZ Army campaign; professional meets amateur in Publicis Mojo’s print ad for Panasonic’s new Lumix camera; TAB and Sugar follow up with another bad call; and a great new Cadbury Glass and Half Full production out of South Africa.
Entries for the 2011 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards close this Friday 20 May. But never fear, if procrastination, popularity or poor time management are hampering your entry efforts, extensions to Friday 27 May are available.
Greedy old advertising behemoth DDB makes it three in a row on TVC of the Week, following on from its two new ads for Volkswagen.
Who’s it for: Cadbury by DDB and Goodlife Films
Why we like it: It’s easy to make an ad. It’s …
From wristbands to t-shirts, concerts to text donations, there’s been a bunch of generous and creative fundraising initiatives in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake. But a project led by Christchurch graphic design company Ratio is only just coming into the light.
Given the slightly difficult period youth-oriented media seems to be going through at the moment, with MTV packing up the local office, a few well-established magazines folding and MediaWorks deciding to grey up its demographics on TV3 and FOUR, there were questions about whether the decision to launch a youth-focused commercial channel called U to replace TVNZ6 was wise. Well, the first cumulative Nielsen numbers are in and TVNZ are stoked with the results, with 1,392,400 viewers—or 34 percent of Kiwis—tuning in to the new channel at some point in the four weeks ending Saturday May 14.
It was a cool idea. But yMedia, which mixed up a potent broth of industry professionals, tertiary students looking to add some experience to the CV and not-for-profits that needed some help with their comms efforts, won’t be held this year and has gone on hiatus.
The IAB and its main protagonists have become quite accustomed to putting out press releases trumpeting rising online ad spend over the past few years. And, despite an expected decrease for the first quarter of 2011 in comparison to Q4 2010 as a result of the earthquake and generally unfavourable economic conditions, the worm is still heading swiftly upwards, with a 20 percent year-on-year increase and a total haul of $68 million, up from $26 million in Q1 2007.
While we obviously enjoy the fact that the marcomms community seems to like getting its fix of marketing, advertising and media news, views and hullaballoos on StopPress, we’re still dirty old traditionalists who like nothing more than sitting back with one of those old, supposedly antiquated paper-based things known as magazines. And there’s plenty of editorial goodness to soak up in the May/June edition of NZ Marketing, which is filled with what a host of Belgian experts have said is ‘Essential Marketing Intelligence’. As such, you can probably ask the boss to pay for a subscription, but to grease the wheels you can get 35 percent off the retail price (subscribe for one year here or two years here) if you sign up before Friday. Anyway, enough of the sales pitch. Here’s what you’ll find in the latest issue.
DraftFCB may have missed out on the big NZ Post account after it was beaten to the letterbox by Clemenger BBDO, but it can take some comfort in the fact that it has just won another piece of guvmint business, taking the Maritime New Zealand account off Mission Hall after a four-way pitch.
It’s a funny old world. While tens of thousands of New Zealanders got overly excited about KFC’s Double Down late last week (if you want a real heart stopper of a meal, check this one out), over half a million Kiwis also tuned in to see two amateur cooks creating the exact opposite of that for the final of MasterChef. We’ve already talked about how much of a commercial juggernaut the show is for TVNZ and its owners, both because of its heavy commercial slant during the show and the ad dollars able to be raked in during the breaks, and with improved ratings numbers on the first season, that looks set to continue
Michael Carney on the reasons consumers pay retail prices, the results of the 2011 Film Census and their effect on the enforcement of the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act, how sentiment analysis can improve your interactions with customers and the difference a place in the organic search listings can make.
At the start of summer, Cadbury and DDB set themselves a goal: to Share the Joy with the country and find out exactly what joy sounded like to New Zealanders. This manifested itself in cool experiential efforts like the giant snowglobe in Auckland, clap-activated Christmas lights and a massive sprinkler that travelled to beach hotspots around the country and a call to fans to send in their own sounds of joy to add to those recorded for the impressive launch TVC. Now the campaign is getting close to its denouement, with a new ad that was launched last night to promote “the first song created by the joy of a nation”.
…as Image Centre Group fills up some space with a few newbies, The Research Agency appoints an associate director direct from London, Pead PR prints out four new swipe cards, Interbrand adds an exotic foreigner to the mix and Spark PR & Activate wins the Dermalogica account.
You’ve probably seen the TVC. Now the digital component of Colenso’s V paintball campaign has been set free. And it employs some pretty nifty online artistry to entertain the energy drink guzzling demographic.
Most notable this week is TelstraClear with a raft of metaphors in a rather politically directed effort to convince us that netball hoops should stay the same height at each end of the court. Countdown are still staying exclusive with One News, which means we went for the second ad slot for a few of One’s breaks. As for the rest, creepy Dan Carter continues to lounge around at precarious heights for Daikin; George Clooney, it seems, likes Nespresso more than beautiful woman (it can’t be that good); The home of eggs is Hokitika, just kidding, love Eggs throw in a weird ad; Learning Crochet sounds like so much fun and of course Mazda have a long list of reasons why zoomzooming is good.
It’s been a week filled with movings and shakings, including the fine folks at Tangible Media who have relocated offices to the mighty Mt Albert. But the movings and shakings are widespread. MSN has taken on three new hires while TVNZ’s publicity team makes way for motherhood and an appetite for travel. And although its Australian offices are already open, communications Agency The Church has only recently found its Australian general manger. There’s a new chief at the helm of mobile software and services experts, Run The Red, and Lightfarm Studios gets a touch of G-force with its new marketing and client manager.
Whittaker’s took the top spot in the April Ad Impact Awards for its fun take on good ol’ fashioned kiwi honesty in the Swear By The Slab campaign by Assignment Group.
When Shell’s fuel business was sold to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Kiwi infrastructure company Infratil in April last year (for a cool $695 million, we might add)—both of which are owned and operated by Greenstone Energy—the wheels were set in motion to replace the brand with something Greenstone Energy describes as “entirely Kiwi”. $35 million later, the new petrol stations, called Z Energy, are being unveiled across the country as part of a complete brand overhaul. And, coupled with extensive market research, the finished product comes courtesy of a number of industry players, including Cato Partners and Assignment Group.
Market research always does its best to enter every facet of our lives, but Christchurch mobile feedback start up company Texsys has taken it to a whole new level, asking Christchurch residents what they think of the recovery effort—while they’re on the dunny. They’ve done so by developing a software that allows multiple question surveys to be systematically completed via text message.
An entry that seamlessly blends two curious elements together—Amish culture and Calvin Klein undies—has won the 2011 Fairfax Media Young Print Lions competition, beating out 26 other entries. Called ‘Reach the Unreachable’ the print ad is the clever work of young’uns Pip Perkins and Jennie Ko from DDB Group NZ.
We were thinking of what approach to take when looking at KFC and their Double Down. The ridiculously effective campaign that proved any PR is good PR managed to run some stores out of bacon (we are presuming it’s real bacon), some stores to have queues outside and some stores probably with broken toilets.
But after looking at the most popular trends on Twitter in New Zealand, aside from seeing #doubledown at number four, something that stood out was the number one trend which had a “promoted” badge next to it. That trend? #McDFrozen.
For over ten years now, Tourism New Zealand’s 100% Pure New Zealand campaign has been a staple brand for marketing New Zealand to the world. But whether we ought to be laying such a pure claim at all has come under fire on many occasions, most recently on BBC programme Hardtalk where John Key was left sweating after host Stephen Sackur put some tough questions to the Prime Minister about the clean and green image on which New Zealand prides itself.
Loyalty NZ’s Fly Buys programme has captured the attention of another telco after Telecom pulled out of its partnership with the rewards programme close to three years ago. 2degrees has announced it has joined up with Fly Buys to rake in some loyalty points with its ever rising number of customers.
Smartphones just keep getting smarter and smarter. Even the NZ Hi-Tech Awards think so, hence awarding mobile voucher company VoucherMob the Ministry of Science & Innovation Best Hi-Tech Start-up category at the Hi-Tech Awards held in Wellington last week.
While the way of the woman may be a little difficult to figure out at times, Colmar Brunton is hoping to gain a little insight by working with nzgirl.co.nz. The two have teamed up to to create the Colmar Brunton Women’s Monitor, a monthly survey that nzgirl innovations director Jenene Freer says will take a unique approach to questioning on attitudes.
When it comes to wildly impressive imagery, it doesn’t get much better than National Geographic, and National History New Zealand’s (NHNZ) Moving Images knows all about it. The stock library has been selected by National Geographic Channels (NGC) Worldwide as the first and only footage sales agent for more than 20 years of accumulated footage from its blue-chip factual programming library, including hundreds of hours of HD footage.
Get your physics hat on for this week’s TVC
Who’s it for: Volkswagen by DDB and Robber’s Dog
Why we like it: As Volkswagen seeks to deliver its first ever ute into the New Zealand market, and with Toyota the dominant player in the market …