The internet is celebrating its coming of age in New Zealand this year and downtothewire.co.nz, a very cool website dedicated to telling the story of a “connection that revolutionised the nation and finally laid waste to our fear of geographical remoteness” went live this morning, Monday 11 October.
Recent research shows that gaming now takes up more of people’s time online than email, video and auctions combined. It’s certainly a fast growing and deeply engaging market, but it’s still often misunderstood. And Pursuit PR is aiming to change that and help organisations apply gaming’s engaging and persuasive powers to marketing, training and social change with InGame, which director Stephen Knightly is touting as New Zealand’s first video games consultancy.
One of the most successful people in New Zealand social media was on telly last week. On 60 Minutes, even, a little global current affairs franchise you may have heard of. He doesn’t have an American accent and he doesn’t have an iPhone. You’ll all know him but not all of you will like him: Cameron Slater aka Whaleoil.
We’ve had Yahoo!, Google, Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, Snapr, Foursquare and numerous other strange made-up words making waves in the online/social media space in recent times. So whatever next? We’ve got two day passes to Social Media Junction 2 to give away, one to the ‘Social Media Marketing ROI’ course on 16 November and one to the ‘Social Media Content Strategy’ course on 17 November. So you could save yourself $595 and fill your brain with knowledge, and all you have to do is devise a suitably trendy, preferably ridiculous name for the next big social media tool.
Michael Fox set up online shoe company ‘Shoes of Prey’ after leaving Google in April 2009. Like many others, he believed he had a compelling business idea: to sell customisable women’s shoes and do it entirely online. And to level out the playing field against all the major retailers, Fox crafted a way of creating huge online buzz.
The process of makeovers isn’t always pretty, as the plethora of road cones that have littered the surrounding streets of Eden Park during its redevelopment are testament to. But while it may have not been such a pretty affair on the outside, it’s a different story on the inside, as those attending the unveiling of the new look park this Sunday will see. The makeover includes a new look ground and revitalised logo, all set to “put on a distinctively New Zealand face” for the half a million visitors expected to visit the park over the course of the Rugby World Cup.
It was revealed by the Herald yesterday that New Zealand Post seems to have designs on the directories business, after it snaffled Yellow’s ex-director of sales Greg Murphy and three other national and regional sales managers. But, not one to lie down in the face of adversity *ahem, Google, ahem*, Yellow is still trying to up the ante and has announced the launch of its new, locally developed iPad and iPhone apps.
It’s represented on the breakfast table in more than half of New Zealand households and it’s been the country’s number one breakfast cereal for over 70 years. And now Weet-Bix has a new, more contemporary communications campaign, courtesy of its new agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
In just one month New Zealanders became marginally less satisfied with their banks, according to the Roy Morgan New Zealand Banking Customer Satisfaction Survey for the month of July. But there are some improved performances to report.
This year’s Effies tagline was ‘the best ad for advertising’. And it was certainly a pretty good advertisement for Colenso BBDO, which won 12 awards and became the only agency to ever win Most Effective Agency of the Year two years in a row, as well as the only agency to win Most Effective Agency of the Year and Best in Show in the same year. It was a close run thing, however, with DraftFCB nipping effectively at its heels with nine.
Colenso’s big new heritage-based push for DB Export goes live today. You can read about the gradual decline of the brand and the rationale behind the campaign to try and reverse it here. And you really should take five minutes to check out the short film that was made by Revolver (and also features the dulcet tones of none other than Colenso’s co-founder and Image Centre Group director Roger MacDonnell) on the DB Export website.
It’s certainly not pretty. But M&C Saatchi’s press ad for Warehouse Stationery obviously has a good personality, because it has been awarded the September Newspaper Ad of the Month award.
NZ Fashion Week has finished for another year. And, away from all the preening, strutting and Blue Steeling on the catwalk, a new Kiwi-conceived social media tool was making a name for itself behind the scenes, with the free iPhone photo app Snapr being employed to stream and geo-tag live photos from the runway straight to the NZFW website.
More than 2300 votes were cast and the team from Interbrand New Zealand has been crowned the winner of the ‘I wrapped it my way’ Mini design competition for its ‘Mend a Broken Heart’ entry.
Auckland creative agency Shine has had a pretty stellar year so far. It nabbed the RaboPlus account in May (and has recently released its first rather well-received campaign for the bank). And, while it’s been working with some of the local Fonterra Brands for a while now, it has been given a few more to play with.
Who’s it for: Lotto ‘Lucky Dog’ by DDB and The Sweet Shop
Why we like it: We laughed, we cried, we cried a little bit more and then we laughed again. The latest Lotto campaign is certainly a big, expensive-looking cinematic journey. And it’s nigh-on impossible …
Part of Paul Henry’s broadcasting appeal is that he usually treads a very thin line. But he well and truly crossed that line yesterday after suggesting to Prime Minister John Key on Breakfast that Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand’s successor should look and sound more like a New Zealander. And TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis has taken action over his comments, suspending Henry without pay until October 18.
Independent Liquor’s marketing manager Adam Maxwell, who won the TVNZ-NZ Marketing marketer of the year title a month or so ago, says the company has doubled its beer business in the last two years. And it intends to repeat that performance. Cue the first ever TV campaign for its Ranfurly beer brand and the release of two new mainstream varieties, Ranfurly Frontier Lager and Ranfurly Station Pale Ale.
The industry is gearing up for its Effie fest on Thursday night. And for those lucky/immensely talented enough to have made it through to the finals, as well as all the other tag alongs present for the festivities, there are plenty of extra-curricular activities on offer from the event sponsors, including the official post-awards shindig that’s being put on by The Radio Bureau (TRB) and New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ slightly mysterious mobile-phone related tomfoolery.
It lasted 196 issues, 18 years, was close to folding on a number of occasions and has been holding on for dear life for a while now. But Real Groove, a publication that long time contributor Gary Steel calls “New Zealand’s only serious music magazine”, couldn’t hold on any longer, so the October issue featuring Leonard Cohen on the cover will be the magazine’s last in its current format. It’s not all doom and gloom, however, because the best of Real Groove is set to move sideways into a pimped out version of its free weekly street press publication The Groove Guide.
It’s the Oscars of the New Zealand design world, where discerning Kiwi designers don their flashest ensembles and rock nervously back and forth as they wait to hear their name called out as one of the winning entries in the Designers Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. And here’s a run down on the work—and the agencies—deemed to be the best in New Zealand’s design business.
DDB NZ has just launched its latest campaign for Lotto. And it’s an epic, expensive looking tale of joy, disaster, loyalty, danger, exotic locations, canine tenacity and heartbreaking betrayal.
Mike Hutcheson, one of the founders of Colenso and executive director of the Image Centre Group, is a well-renowned raconteur, gadabout and occasional oratorical stuntman. But no matter how many times you may have heard his anecdotes, he tells them so well and so humorously that you don’t actually mind hearing them again. And, as his holistic, semi-philosophical presentation on the future—and the past—of television advertising showed, telling stories is what advertising is all about—and, in his opinion, television is still the best way to tell them.
Wammo, Pound & Mash adds some vegetables to its diet. And the All Blacks get tricky in a campaign for the Rugby Channel.
It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘meat pack’: AIM Proximity and TVNZ have teamed up to deliver one of the largest, and almost certainly the meatiest, direct mail campaigns in New Zealand history after sending a packing crate filled with a 60kg hindquarter of Angus beef to the nation’s leading creative directors in an effort to educate ad agencies about the creative ways the Ondemand platform can be used.
More ads than you know what to do with, including a televisual push for the Super City mayoralty from Len Brown.
The unofficial word was out a while back that Dean and Bridget Taylor were heading back to New Zealand with some big plans. And now the official word is out: the couple have taken up the reins as directors of a new outfit called Contagion that will, from October, partner with Vivaki to lead the Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) business won by Razorfish in moderately interesting circumstances back in May.
…new PR accounts, the success of an ex-Telecom employee, an attempt to inspire some enthusiasm for the local body elections, New Zealand’s biggest free concert, digital braaaaiiinnnnns, the dynamic international retail market, MTV keepin’ on truckin’ (kind of), the country’s most popular tech websites and videos of tiny humans.
When Colenso picked up DB’s Export account off Saatchi & Saatchi in July last year, the family of beers was losing relevance and needed a fresh approach. So, to try and reverse the decline, the new coupling went back in time and found the solution sitting right in front of them.
When Pacific Magazines New Zealand handed over the licences for three of its print babies to APN News and Media a few weeks back, the quarterly NZ Weddings magazine was the one remaining orphan. Apparently, it was offered as part of the package, but, presumably because it was a local publication and was an outright purchase rather than a publishing licence, APN chose not to take it on. Tangible Media had no qualms, however, and has added the magazine to its growing specialist stable.