Yet more proof, if any were needed, that the indie agencies are now too legit to quit after Special Group’s creative director Tony Bradbourne was appointed as the convenor of judges for the 2011 Axis awards, the first time the honour has gone to anyone from an independent agency.
DDB NZ is making a name for itself for breaking the international rules. In a good way, of course: first it was Freida the dancing bovine, the first Glass and a Half Full production that didn’t come out of London. And now it’s another piece of milk-related work for Volkswagen.
The fine folk of sunny seaside suburb Devonport can now buy a $20 ‘carbon neutral meal’ from their local New World supermarket, and CarboNZero’s marketing and communications manager Kathryn Hailes says this initiative is a long-overdue acknowledgment of the growing number of Kiwi consumers who are now more discerning about their purchasing decisions.
The fund-raising ball is well and truly rolling for LifeWise’s The BigSleepOut. But it’s not too late to send a few dollars the way of some of your fellow marketing/business types who are sleeping rough for a night on 14 October and raising awareness and money for homeless people.
There were entries from over 20 countries in the 2010 edition of the Pentawards, a show dedicated exclusively to the best packaging design in the world, and three Kiwi entries made the cut.
It was beaten by cat food at the EFFIES. But the DraftFCB trio of Antony Wilson, Iain MacMillan and Kate Murchison have eased the feline-related pain slightly by taking out the first monthly Art of the Envelope Award for their transparent effort called ‘the Naked Letter’.
Who’s it for: ASB by TBWA\Tequila and Paul Middleditch
Why we like it: Ira Goldstein has been a feature of New Zealand’s advertising landscape for about 10 years. And this is his final swansong for ASB. So let us bow our heads and give thanks …
The lazy susan spins, bringing with it a couple of big creative departures at Rapp/Tribal, a few new arrivals at OMD, a promotion at nzherald.co.nz and a timely lesson in goat farming.
Every six months, about 15000 radio listeners scattered across the country take pen to paper—or pen to diary as the case may be—and share their most intimate of radio listening habits as part of Research International’s Research Audience Measurement Survey (RAMS). And the results for the second half of the year are out.
First it was naked staff. Then it was naked old ladies. Then it was blow up dolls. And the latest campaign from Air New Zealand to promote its new 777-300 planes, which take flight later this year, is also a bit raunchy, featuring as it does a budding travel author/furry lothario called Rico who has an entertainingly poor grasp of English and a talent for unintentional innuendo.
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.