The New Zealand marketing community was in celebration mode at the 2010 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards at the Langham Hotel in Auckland tonight. And, after months of trawling through a huge number of entries, some rigorous judging and a fair bit of finalist back-patting, New Zealand’s newest, quirkiest mobile network 2degrees came away with the most back pats on the night, winning three of the big gongs.
As I’m sure you’re all aware, this week is SMEG Awareness Week. Social media expert guru (SMEG) numbers have been increasing in New Zealand in the last 12 months due to a combination of the tidal impacts on the Orinoco river and the recession. So here’s a handy field guide to help you spot them.
OMD Auckland and TVNZ have developed what they claim is a New Zealand first and almost certainly a world first: an ‘Ad on Pause’ for Fonterra’s Primo brand.
In this instalment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: In the supermarket, it’s all about the shopping list. And it’s being made before going inside. Sky TV releases its annual numbers. And gets back into internet TV. Kiwi bucket list shows we’re really pretty boring. The numerous business opportunities of the iPad explained. Networks squeeze through football broadcast loophole across the ditch.
The humans are digitising. And the adspend is following suit. Hell, you can even get fridges that connect to the internet these days. So, given that it’s still considered by many to be a rather intimidating, mysterious realm, it’s not surprising to find that the marcomms community can’t get enough of that educational digital stuff. As such, the Marketing Association/Jericho’s Brainy Breakfast gathered together a few of the country’s successful digital exponents to offer some of their insights and tell marketers how they can convince their corporate gatekeepers to fully embrace digital marketing.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of dealing with corporates, government departments or academic institutions presumably knows there are an almost limitless number of seemingly ridiculous rules that have to be obeyed. Many of these rules fly directly in the face of common sense and are generally frustrating time-sucks. But StopPress can’t recall a rule that seems quite as ridiculous as this one from Apple.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have released the online advertising expenditure figures for Q2, 2010. And whaddya know, yet more massive growth, especially—and surprisingly—in the often-lambasted display advertising category.
It was less than two years ago that BNZ released its cute, fluffy, cloud-like logo into the wild. Some thought it was fresh, different and looked like toothpaste. Others thought it was too fresh, too different and too toothpastey and, therefore, lacked history and gravitas. And it seems the BNZ brand boffins agreed with the latter, because it’s gone back to its astronomical roots and changed its logo again, adding the classic Southern Cross back in, reducing the fluffiness and chopping that cheeky vestigial tail off the B.
Pauline Hanton has announced her departure from Adshel after three highly successful years as the company’s New Zealand sales director in exchange for a role helping to set up a new media company specialising in instore.
It’s a mysterious realm for most, but in this digital world, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is also an extremely—and increasingly—important one. And New Zealand-based SEO specialists now have a chance to showcase their talents in the inaugural SEO Challenge.
Who it’s for: Dairy NZ by Josh & Jamie and Automatic Films
Why we like it: Kiwis are suckers for a bit of good-natured jingoism. And, whether it be rugby, advertising awards or, in this case, milk production, we love nothing more than claiming mostly humble victories over …
Every winter, New Zealanders suffer from coughs, colds and a host of other ailments. And, as a consequence, every winter the New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) struggles to find enough healthy donors. So, with the help of Insight and Automatic Films, it has launched a new campaign to try and get those who can still donate to open up their hearts, almost literally, and hand over some of the precious red stuff to bump up supplies.
The almost constantly shifting marcomms sands claim a few more victims, and StopPress is reeling from the staff carnage.
Given the way all things green swiftly lost prominence during the recession, it’s fair to say many Kiwi consumers could be classified as ‘fair-weather environmentalists’. But the results of a nationwide online ShapeNZ survey of 1811 consumers by the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development show that while price is still easily the biggest single factor when it comes to the purchasing decision, big numbers of New Zealanders are considering how sustainable products are before handing over the cash.
The Australasian Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD) has put its call for entries out. And the collaborative campaign affectionately known as ‘Ian’ is equal parts strange and intriguing.
After more than 200,000 votes from the public were tallied for this year’s People’s Choice NetGuide awards, the winners have all been crowing, with Stuff.co.nz picking up the top prize and tvnz.co.nz winning best media site.
This week on Ads@6, a bravura performance from the smarmy kid in Tower’s ‘Poochi’ spot; Michael Schumacher goes upside down for Mercedes; MYOB hits the target; Al Brown gets dirty in Persil’s ‘Have a Go’ campaign; Tena has a bit of a laugh at the hilarious realm of female incontinence; the All Blacks get slurpy with Up&Go; and the much-loved Spray and Walk away guy returns.
It opened with a bright young thing and closed with a grumpy old curmudgeon, and inbetween Semi-Permanent once again delivered a host of designy inspiration. Thankfully, for those unfortunate enough not to have been exposed to all this inspiration in the flesh, our friends at Design Daily picked the brains of the stars of the show, a couple of whom had some very wise words for Kiwi marcommers.
The TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards are taking place next Thursday at the glorious Langham Hotel. But it’s still not too late to come along and hobnob it with the marketing glitterati. So book your last-minute tickets here. And all those who buy within the next hour will receive a free Nelson Mandela.*
Forget your EFFIEs and Axis Awards, this was the one that really counted: the 2010 Battle of the Ad Bands.
We love statistics here at StopPress. And, given our heritage, we’re also fairly big fans of magazines. So imagine our immense cerebral delight when we were sent ‘The 20 truths about magazines in New Zealand’, a compilation of statistics that clearly shows how potent a media force magazines are in this country.
Air New Zealand and Fly Buys have snuggled up together with a new mutually beneficial partnership that creates a range of benefits for members of both the Air New Zealand Airpoints programme and Fly Buys loyalty programme, which together adds up well over half of the country’s population.
The big agencies all seem to be talking about killing off their digital silos and moving them closer to the central nervous system. Yet there are still plenty of new, small digital shops offering their specialist services. And now there’s another new player on the local digital marketing scene after Market United (MU) announced its arrival on Auckland soil, adding to its offices in Sydney and Perth.
A host of students, creative marcomms boffins and not-for-profit community groups gathered at the floating pavilion at Auckland’s Viaduct last night as the yMedia Challenge gongs were handed out. And Massey University’s ‘Designasaurs’ took home the $5,000 prize after its work with Natural Health Practitioners New Zealand was awarded top honours.
Given the fact that well over six million humans watched Air New Zealand’s ‘The Bare Essentials of Safety’ video on YouTube, it was always going to be a tough act to follow. But the new safety video, which launched today on its branded YouTube channel and aims to show how crazy the airline is about rugby in the lead-up to next year’s Rugby World Cup, certainly doesn’t seem to be suffering from second album syndrome.
Our obviously extremely wealthy, remarkably tech savvy and very trendy stablemate DesignDaily is giving away a fancy new Apple Jabscreen (slightly more commonly known as an iPad) to one of its lucky readers. So simply sign up (with your real name and email address) here to receive the weekly email newsletter from New Zealand’s new design and architecture blog and you’ll go into the draw. And if you’re already a subscriber, tell your friends and family to sign up and, if they win, demand custody of the marvellous device in the weekends.
The yMedia awards are set to be dished out tonight. And Simon Pound is fighting the good fight on the frontlines.
Sue Worthington announced her departure from the helm of creative talent representation company The Pond a few weeks back. Now she’s made another announcement, and this time it’s about the structure of new “collaborative boutique agency” Indiego, which she will run alongside strategist/project manager Rose Cron and design/brand developer Mikkel Johannessen.
Matt Bale, self-proclaimed media junkie, digital zealot, part-time fictional gangster and general manager at OMD Wellington, has confirmed he will be leaving the agency in September to take on “new challenges, etc.”
Twelve days, three countries, several stomach bugs, one sand-burned foot, sweaty pits and an encounter with Indian riot police aren’t events you’d usually associate with a TVC about New Zealand’s dairy industry. But the new spot for Dairy NZ, which chronicles the epic journey of an agrarian Kiwi warrior riding his trusty steed around the world, included all these things. And plenty more by the sounds of it.