It’s the world’s biggest and fastest auction, it handles more micro-payments than all of the world’s stock exchanges and it was deemed fairly risky when it was launched almost exactly ten years ago, both by those responsible for coming up with it and by others. So bow down and give praise to (or, if you’re in the newspaper business, swear at) the game changing advertising system known as AdWords, a system built by a team of Google engineers and salespeople who bet big on a few core insights and won. 

Dunedin’s well-received new campaign tapped into its local networks to try and discover some of the region’s quirks and secrets. And Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism has taken a similar approach for its new tourism push, although instead of crowd-sourcing ideas from the hoi polloi, it’s using “global TV star” and proud Cantabrian Phil Keoghan as its ambassador.

Helen Souness is the Kiwi marketing director responsible for managing SEEK, the hugely successful online trans-Tasman employment brand. She’s based at the company’s Melbourne HQ but regularly returns to New Zealand to develop and test campaigns and jumped back across the ditch last week to host a series of local marketing workshops and forums for SEEK’s diverse bunch of large and small advertisers, where she provided plenty of insights around how it became a celebrated employer and consumer brand.

Behold these vespertine delights! Bluebird’s ‘Do us a flavour’ experiment reaches the stores; Vodafone’s new brand campaign is the pick of the always competitive telco bunch; the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder spots out of DDB Sydney hit the mark; Honda embraces Michaelangelo for its new Insight ad; the National Bank follows up its big brand relaunch with a suitably quirky home loan spot; Sam Neill multiplies for Kiwibank; the rise of Wilson continues; and Dan Carter strips off and goes extreme unicycling for Rexona.

Of note in this collection of commercial messages, the Groove Armada track is changed in the Fresh n Fruity ‘wrecking balls’ ad; Goldstein’s final fling hits the screens; Marmite celebrates its 100th birthday; Burger King takes a comical approach to comparative advertising by using shock tactics; Len Brown takes the political TV ad title over John Banks’ very rushed effort; OPSM gets busy with a new global campaign; and is the old chap in the Colour Steel ad actually a puppet?

Time is running short for your shot at 2010 RSVP and Nexus Awards glory. So make sure you get your entries in to the good folk at the NZMA by 5pm this Friday. Or else.

Listen to any social media evangelist yabber on for a few minutes and you’re likely to hear the words honesty, authenticity and openness mentioned. The thing many of them seem to overlook is the fact that as long as there is competition, many companies will presumably continue to be dishonest, fake and secretive. After all, it’s what business was originally founded on (oh, and greed). There are exceptions, of course, and, to be fair, the rise of social media has forced a number of previously PR-driven, corporate speaky companies to get real with their customers. Which is a very roundabout way of getting to Fisher & Paykel’s new campaign, Inside Stories, a feelgood marketing initiative that aims to show what really goes on behind the scenes with stories that are told through the eyes of its staff, rather than through its appliances.

TelstraClear, as we wrote in the cover story of the May/June edition of NZ Marketing, is something of a quiet yet consistent achiever among the major telcos. And, to celebrate its 20th year in New Zealand, show off its network and tell Kiwis what the company is all about, it has sent its ‘mascots’, the modern TC and his misanthropic old partner Bill, on a journey around the countryside.

Regional branding efforts and their associated tourism pushes often have a whiff of desperation about them. But there seems to have been a coming of age in New Zealand recently, with some solid and distinctly uncringeworthy new marketing initiatives from Wellington, Christchurch and, most recently, Dunedin, which has just launched its new brand with an outdoor and online campaign.

In this edition of Ads@6, the iPad shows its stuff, the Vogel’s campaign keeps hitting the mark, the House of Travel inspires plenty of holiday envy, Telstra Clear and 2degrees face off with their respective monthly mobile plans and there’s even an ad for Lancaster Bomber magazine. 

Three men, three very different presentations and a multitude of ideas about what could be around the marcomms corner … for your viewing pleasure, Pure Productions has released recordings of the sage words of Colenso BBDO’s planning director James Hurman, TVWorks chief executive Jason Paris and Image Centre Group’s Mike Hutcheson from the Future of Television Advertising event it held recently. So, if you weren’t cool or important enough to actually be there, they’re certainly worth a gander. 

The up-until-relatively-recently New Zealand-owned mobile marketing company The Hyperfactory has managed to get four finalist nods in the 2010 Mobile Marketing Association Global Awards. And Tui Blond’s consumer sampling campaign for the brand’s launch by POCKETvouchers is also in the running.

How does $15,000 of free advertising from the New Zealand Herald and Easy Mix 98.2 sound? Pretty good if you’re the Prenzel Shop in Botany, which snatched the winners loot after beating out 121 other finalists at the 2010 TOP SHOP Retail Excellence Awards. The Prenzel Shop, which retails New Zealand made foods and liqueurs, was described by the judges as “a store that compels you to buy things you never dreamed you needed”.

In anticipation of another year’s worth of world-class entries, the New Zealand Marketing Association (NZMA) has secured over 50 big brained experts, specialists and industry virtuosos to determine who will take home the metal at this year’s RSVP and Nexus Awards.