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News
Heroes, villains, history and beer
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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.

News
Happy Snapr: Fashion Week spreads the photographic love
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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.

News
Shine ups its dairy intake
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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.

News
In dog and beer we trust
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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 …

News
Ellis gives Henry ten in the bin for ‘unacceptable comments’
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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.

News
Independent Liquor floats down the mainstream with new Ranfurly offerings
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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.

News
The cup runneth over for Effie revellers
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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.

News
Real Groove calls it a day, but finds its new Groove close by
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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.

News
Grand Kiwi designs recognised as Best awards dished out
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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.

News
Stories from the near future: Mike Hutcheson on television advertising
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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.

News
AIM Proximity and TVNZ butcher latest Ondemand campaign
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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.

News
Contagion sweeps through Tourism New Zealand offices
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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.

News
At the marcomms altar we bow down and give thanks to…
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…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.

News
How do you solve a problem like DB Export? Ask Morton Coutts
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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.

News
Tangible Media increases engagement, says ‘I do’ to NZ Weddings
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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.

News
Round and round she goes…
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No sooner has the last staff merry-go-round post gone live than a host of other rotations come to light, including the departure of OMD Auckland’s managing partner Rosanne Robinson, a few big snafflings by the Clemenger gang, TVNZers heading to APN Online, a new NZRU comms gatekeeper and a fresh big cheese for PMP.

News
TVNZ cuts rates, robs Peter, pays Paul
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TVNZ has announced it will be reducing the January rate card by 11.1 percent from its 2010 rates to reflect the controversial drop in agency commission from 20 percent to 10 percent on 2 January 2011. So, according to mathematical sources who apparently know how to use calculators, that appears to be an overall rate increase of 0.1 percent.

Opinion
Behind the scenes and on the hoardings
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If you’ve seen the recent Vodafone ads New, Mobile and Naked Broadband and wondered ‘that’s cool, but how the hell they’d do that?’, you’re probably not alone. And while it was a fairly simple goal for Colenso BBDO and Flying Fish director Wade Shotter to try and position the brand as cutting edge, this behind the scenes video shows that it certainly wasn’t a simple task creating the ads.

Opinion
Tuning in to Twitter
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As someone who works on the strategic side of design, I’ve taken a keen interest in the rise of social media as a marketing tool. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading up on other people’s experiences and on the various benefits they have had (or not). And for some, it would be useful to know when there will be regular conversations around a topic of interest to tune into. Just as with TV or radio, we should tune in at specific times when we know we will find relevant, interesting content.

News
Harsh new world claims another victim as Brave New World closes doors
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The unfortunately all-too-common combination of a troublesome client and the cool recessionary winds have forced Parnell indie agency Brave New World to shut up shop. But it hopes to go out in a blaze of glory and highlight a serious issue with shelf companies that the agency’s general manager David Brash believes is currently going under the radar of the authorities.

News
Battle of the banks
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Who’s it for: RaboBank by Shine and Assembly.

Why we like it: As the only online specialist savings and investment bank in New Zealand, RaboBank has a relatively unique tale to tell. And that relatively unique tale has been told in a fittingly unique and …

News
Nielsen gets licence to print’s money
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The Nielsen Company has been signed up for another five years as the preferred provider of research services for the print media industry. But all is not as it once was: Derek Lindsay, chairman of the snappily titled Print Media Industry Research Review Group (PMIRRG) and managing director at DraftFCB media calls the new deal a complete relaunch of the consumer insight and print readership research service in New Zealand and he believes the host of new innovations soon to be on offer will prove to be a bit of a fillip for New Zealand’s publishers.

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