The 64th Cannes Film Festival kicks of this week in France and while we mentioned a couple of week’s back that Sweet Shop director Sam Holst’s short film ‘Meathead’ has been selected to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or, there’s another Kiwi nominee thrown into the mix.
Clients signing exclusive deals with media owners is an issue we’ve been hearing about a lot recently. And it seems to have come to a head, with ACP fronting up to the Commerce Commission to defend the practice and rumours abounding of editors not attending product launches and threatening to pull editorial endorsements for companies that have signed exclusive deals with competing publishers.
Everyone loves a good awards show and as we head into awards season, developments keep rolling in, starting off with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The new Creative Effectiveness award, which Colenso BBDO’s James Hurman is serving as a judge on, has taken in a whopping 142 entries, with five of those coming from New Zealand.
By the time you finish reading this paragraph, another daily deal or group buying site will have been set up in New Zealand—or at least that’s the way it feels at the moment, with so many recent launches overwhelming our senses. We’re reminded of the days shortly after Trade Me was sold to Fairfax, when something like 70 new auction site operators clamoured into the marketplace, hoping for a similar nine-figure payday. Where are they now, we wonder?
Omnilab Media’s online delivery baby Adsend has launched its new digital asset delivery surface for NZ and Oz, called Certified Soft Proofing (CSP). Successfully launched and well received over in the UK, the soft proofing tool is selling itself on its ability to, in the words of Adsend chief executive Grant Schuetrumpf, “accurately simulate a print ad on the desktop as it appears when printed in the magazine or newspaper publication”.
How do you make your booze brand stand out a little more? Creating a reality-type series that leverages the smart ideas generated by creatives is one way, and ratings for the Smirnoff Night Project, which made its debut just under two week’s ago, point to it being an effective concept (read all about the campaign, spearheaded by Special Group,here).
If you’re confused as to what exactly gamification is, the term refers to an industry that brings together game mechanics and marketing to create engagement and solve problems.
But don’t take it from us. Thanks to CAANZ Digital Leadership Group, world-leading authority on gamification, Gabe zicherman, is heading to New Zealand where he will discuss how game mechanics and funware can transform marketing, product development and operational processes.
Creative students at Media Design School’s AdSchool have triumphed at the 2011 Bees Awards winning the award for Best Student Brief, the only Kiwi win in this year’s awards. The international awards honour the best in social media marketing practices. Ben Andrews (art director) and Craig Douglas (copywriter), won the award for their campaign ‘Dreaming in a foreign language’, created to a special brief for client Mango Languages. The campaign shows innovative use of Facebook to market language learning software.
And the fresh TV work keeps on coming, with a new cerebral/agrarian spot for Volkswagen’s first ever ute, V takes street art to a new level with the help of Humpty Dumpty, Mitsubishi speaks the car-related, localised truth and Cirkus Animation’s TVC for Vietnamese stationery brand Thien Long.
It took a while to get there, but the official announcement has been made and Clemenger BBDO has been chosen as NZ Post’s new creative partner, beating out DraftFCB.
The automotive industry has had a rough time of it recently and there’s been a consolidation of automotive media in the local market, but the New Zealand Herald is obviously confident things are looking up, because it’s taken a fairly bold step and launched a comprehensive new motoring lift-out called Driven and backed it up with a big launch campaign.
Jeremy Irwin, the chief executive of the the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA), has announced he will retire at the end of June.
This is a synopsis of the advice I give all of my clients during our initial meeting and some of what I talk about when giving my painful lectures/presentations. It is the slow, patient, credible, organic and day-to-day way of maximising your results from social media and I have found these principles to be pretty solid over the four years I have been involved in this industry.
The good news keeps coming for Alt, which is no stranger to winning global accolades. The design agency has picked up a bronze from the Art Director’s Club of New York for its efforts on Auckland Museum’s I AM campaign, developed from an acronym of Auckland Museum, and a pattern language developed as part of the identity of the museum. And Strategy Design is also sitting pretty with a nomination in the Clio Awards.
With the rise of daily deal sites, smart phone technology and e-commerce, the way we’re shopping is changing rapidly and a discount culture has well and truly taken hold. And while New Zealand may be lagging behind slightly in comparison to other tech-savvy nations, lasoo.co.nz is hoping to remedy that slightly with the launch of its “smarter shopping assistant” on Android and Windows Phone apps, which allow shoppers to find and select the best deals while wandering in ‘meatspace’.
‘International indie’ bcg2 has picked up an account double, and they’re at opposite ends of the ad spectrum: the Tongan tourism business and Pfizer’s Avigra from Viagra incumbents M&C Saatchi.
…as TBWA\ makes a couple more significant hires; Radio New Zealand splits up its Morning Report hosts; Clemenger Group continues to nurture youngsters after its inaugural Graduate Programme proved a success; Carat hunts for a new general manager; another old hand joins The Pond’s freelance ranks; Mango adds a trio to its events team; and the Ministry of Economic Development signs up an event advisor.
Last year’s domestic box office haul of $177 million was the highest ever. Cinema ad spend also increased by $2 million in 2010. And there are plenty more big blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (3D), The Hangover Part 2, Green Lantern (3D), Cars 2 (3D) and Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (3D) set to lure the punters—and advertisers—to the movies this year. If you want to get a taste of what’s on offer, Val Morgan is extending an invite to a special cinema presentation featuring films being released from July to December, followed by some relevant trailers and the best examples of local and global 3D cinema advertising for some inspiration.
When you think of the things you’re likely to see in Albany, a violent tornado would be a very long way down the list. But it just happened and the Perceptive team recorded it destroying buildings and picking up trampolines from their office. As the description in the video says: “The Perceptive team a little rattled as a tornado rips past our office in Albany on Auckland’s North Shore. Pardon the language!!”
A virtual cornucopia of new work to choose from this week, with a double for Robber’s Dog.
Who’s it for: V by Colenso and The Sweet Shop
Why we like it: It was always going to be tough to beat V Pomparkour in the coolness stakes …
Fairtrade products are going off at the moment, with sales increasing by more than 100 percent in Australia and New Zealand in 2010. And to draw more attention to the benefits these more ethical products can provide, both for the well-being of the growers in the developing world and the inner glow of those buying them, The Sustainable Business Network, Heart of the City, Café L’affare, Kokako, All Good, Tangible Media, Oxfam NZ and Fairtrade NZ are holding a Breakfast in the City at Britomart Country Club next Thursday during Fairtrade Fortnight. Attendees will get to sample delights from All Good bananas, Caffe L’affare, and Kokako, Michele A’Court and Jeremy Elwood are on hosting duties, a Fairtrade tea producer from Sri Lanka will speak about the impact of Fairtrade on his community and everyone gets a free Keepcup. We’ve got a double pass to give away and all you have to do to win it is name a part of on orang-utan. If it’s the part we’re thinking of, you’ll get to partake. For all those who are unfamiliar with orang-utans, tickets are going for $15 from here.
The world of the consumer is an ever-evolving one and for business it presents many an opportunity, though it is certainly not without its challenges. And that commercial intimacy is something design agency DNA is keen to tap into with the re-launch of its Open website this week.
Despite the prevalence of screens in our lives, just two percent of retailers use digital signage to promote their wares. Enter n.gage, a conference in Auckland on 31 May that aims to educate marketers in the dark but increasingly important arts of retail digital signage.
TVNZ and MediaWorks are always competitive, as the rather confrontational comparative promo TV3 ran after the Japanese earthquake showed very clearly. But this was taken to a new level on Sunday when TVNZ sent out a press release saying 60 Minutes had “lost almost half its audience since March and almost 300,000 viewers per week since February”. Embarrassingly, the figures TVNZ used were wrong and, understandably, MediaWorks is none too pleased.
Given we published a story in January about the Radio Network winning the rights to broadcast the Rugby World Cup, it was slightly surprising to get another release from its arch enemy MediaWorks Radio today saying it too had won broadcasting rights for the tournament.
It seems there’s an app for almost everything now and, combined with people’s apparent fondness for sharing details about what’s going on in their lives, New Zealand Post-run directory and social media service Localist has launched what its chief executive Blair Glubb describes as a “visual Twitter stream”.
NZ Post has taken its sweet time choosing a new agency to replace long-time partner Saatchi & Saatchi, which decided not to repitch for the business when the expressions of interest were called for in December. The pitch was thought to have finished more than six weeks ago and it seems a decision on its new agency has been made. But no formal announcement has been released and the lips of the Posties and the two agencies thought to be battling it out for the win—Clemenger BBDO and DraftFCB—are staying sealed.
When it rains it pours. After a brief dry spell on the new ad front, numerous newbies have recently been set free. So, for your viewing—and possibly even critiquing—pleasure, a selection of the freshest TV cuts, including Mitsubishi’s new brand ad by Clemenger BBDO, Meridian and Assignment Group’s polar expedition, TVNZ’s new patriotic promo for its news and current affairs offering, State Insurance and Colenso’s fireproof box promo, Sealord and Saatchi & Saatchi’s wonderous condiment contraptions, DraftFCB’s latest work for Genesis Energy and Gregg’s and Lumino and Wag the Dog’s extended, nationwide tonsil hockey tour.
DDB’s powerful water safety message for the Coastguard has taken out the NAB’s April Newspaper Ad of the Month, with M&C Saatchi’s ‘Spilt Coffee’, the latest in its series for Warehouse Stationery, receiving a Highly Commended to add to wins in the March and September rounds.
There’s no denying the print sector has suffered at the hands of the digital revolution and recession double whammy. But as everyone goes gaga over new technology and predictions about the death of anything that isn’t the internet continue to spew forth, it’s easy to forget that good old-fashioned paper-based publications are still holding on and, in many cases, going great guns. Promoting the vitality of magazines as a medium was the basis of a huge ‘Power of Print’ campaign in the US. And now the Magazine Publishers Association and Y&R have just launched a localised version of this message with a new trade campaign called ‘Magazines Add. Add Magazines’.