News
Ecostore to get extra special treatment
Ecostore wants to take on the world. So it’s appointed Special Group as the design and communications agency to help do it.
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News
Green business gets its own media, government provides gift
Sustainable business just got whole lot hotter, or cooler, with the launch of Celsias Weekly, a newsletter and daily new service and social media website for green business.
Awards
Direct marketing goes postal, plays with tools in workshop
The next round of New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ hugely popular (and free) direct marketing workshops is upon us and marketers are urged to book their places as soon as possible to avoid a lifetime of bitter regret, low self esteem and other forms of emotional damage.
News
New Zealand agencies hit with moderate dose of awards fever
There have been a plethora of announcements about finalists and nomination lists for international advertising awards in the last few days. And just a select few Kiwi agencies have garnered accolades and praise for their handiwork.
News
More stories than there are sticks to shake at them
Another day, another dollar, another story, another story after that, and then a few more stories to finish. Who said story-telling is dead.
News
DDB turn it up and bring the noise
Today is Noise Awareness Day so, in an effort to draw attention to the perils of ‘loudocity’, DDB has created a nifty campaign for the National Foundation for the Deaf that aims to alert Kiwis to some of the DIY tools that could cause permanent damage.
Opinion
Web boffin eyes paragraph to his left suspiciously
Questions were asked and the answers were given by Julien Smith, the keynote speaker at the upcoming Social Media Junction and New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, which was singled out by Amazon.com as one of the top 10 business and investing books of 2009.
Opinion
Law Commission to booze marketers: “Woooaaaah, Nelly”
A sobering report released today by the Law Commission on the sale and promotion of liquor recommends significant changes to how it is marketed in New Zealand. So, marketers in the liquor industry and agencies with liquor and supermarket accounts need to prepare themselves.
News
Colenso gets gold with Auckland Festival sponsorship
Not content just being the chief executive of the Clemenger Group, Jim Moser will also take up a role on the Board of Trustees for the Auckland Festival, with Colenso BBDO becoming a Gold Sponsor of the 2011 event in return for advertising services.
News
Škoda New Zealand goes Big
Škoda New Zealand has appointed Big Communications as its strategic and creative agency, with James Yates, general manager of Škoda New Zealand saying that the agency presented a compelling strategy for the brand in a three-way pitch.
News
DDB banks on universal truisms
DDB’s brand TVC relaunch campaign for ANZ empathises with everyday New Zealanders and aims to demonstrate the bank “lives in their world”. Awww, those caring banks. The ads were shot by local director Adam Stevens from Robbers Dog and were filmed in and around Auckland (check out …
Opinion
How much is your fan worth?
Mashable recently published an article highlighting research done by a social media management firm called Virtue, which looked at the value of a Facebook fan. According to its research, a fan was worth US$3.60 per year. Bear with me as I get mathematical.
News
Media Counsel gets its liquidators, but the liquidators are still locked out
It’s been almost four months since Glenda Wynyard and her company The Media Counsel ceased trading. And on 22 April Boris van Delden and Iain McLennan of “insolvency and business recovery experts” McDonald Vague (MVP) were finally appointed as liquidators.
Opinion
Mobile whizzbangery still lying dormant on most phones
In this edition of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: Feature creep: how we really use our phones (and brains). Radio: now online and maybe even with pictures. The perils of mobile stalking via GPS. All hail the Super Marketer. If you’re going to spoil your kids, at least do it properly
News
The internet: it’s popular
In case you hadn’t noticed, that digital internet thingee has become relatively popular of late. And the second bi-annual survey by AUT’s institute for culture, discourse and communication (ICDC), along with a few other esteemed research outfits, have offered up a range of percentages to prove it.
News
Disgruntled designers endorse themselves, but not Super City logo
Following the release of the winning Auckland Super City logo last week, the Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ), which was already fairly bitter about the whole crowd-sourced process, doesn’t think it’s too late to salvage some respectability, but only if the new Auckland Transition Agency engages a professional design agency to ensure it is developed as a “sophisticated, contemporary and effective” visual identity and subsequent brand for the city.
The chosen ones (via nzherald.co.nz)
Opinion
Super City logo fails to support Auckland’s commercial creativity
So, we got what we expected from the Super City logo competition: a rather staid, traditional, old fashioned, unimaginative mark that looks like the old Regional Parks emblem. From the Super City I wanted a logo that expresses the modern, dynamic, diverse, creative, vibrant, commercial city that is Auckland. And I don’t get that from this.
News
Ads@6: 15 April – 21 April
A virtual cornucopia of televisual commercial messages for your perusal. In the tick category, the new ANZ campaign has a bit of a laff at the expense of others (and also gets empathetic, claiming to understand what its embattled customers have to put up with); McDonald’s push into the family dinner market with a lying father; and, advertising a product that’s renowned for fairly boring adverts, Panasonic’s heatpump ad is a breath of fresh fantastical air. In the cross category, South Australia tourism decides to bore its audience into coming for a visit.
Awards
Media Mingle: the musical
Following the success of the last Media Mingle, with an enormous turnout of mingling media seen busily snapping up delectable slices of pizza, downing free drinks and posing for glamour shots, the next Media Mingle will return to Sale St. Over 150 turned up last month and the event is continuing to grow in popularity, which means you got to get in quick. It’s not far away, either: the next installment is Tuesday, 27 April from 6pm, so don’t live with a lifetime of regret. Register at www.mediamingle.co.nz.
News
Adshel dances the Charlton
Adshel has announced the appointment of Peter Charlton as its new sales director, Australia and New Zealand, replacing previous sales director Adam Butterworth who was promoted to chief executive officer of Clear Channel Singapore early this year.
News
TVNZ delves into supply and Ondemand
TVNZ Ondemand is coming to a PlayStation3 (PS3) near you, with gamers now able to watch TVNZ programmes through their consoles in their living rooms, rather than through their computers in a dark hovel surrounded by empty chip packets and coke cans.
Opinion
Keepin’ it brief
The old theatre line “if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage” rings true whether it’s David Mamet’s latest taut masterpiece, or Tracy the acccount manager’s brief for new improved Wheaty Bites. But take a look at the majority of ads around you. Any memorable lines? Resonant insights? Emotional journeys? The results suggest all is not well in creative brief world.
News
Get down with OMD (yeah you know me)
OMD New Zealand, standing tall and gazing across the country’s media landscape, is planning for the future, announcing a strengthened senior management team with the creation of a new managing director role in the Auckland agency that will be taken up by OMD’s director of digital, Chris Riley.
News
Staying friends with Facebook
Facebook updated its terms of service in December 2009 and in doing so incurred a user backlash against some of the changes. This backlash largely related to ownership of material posted onto users’ and brands’ Facebook pages, with the new terms of service suggesting that content posted on Facebook pages becomes the property of Facebook.
News
Shoemack now on the other foot
Hot off the heels of his win in the ‘Geon Rookie Marketer of the Year’ category at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards last year, Dave Shoemack has been promoted to Export marketing manager at DB Breweries.
News
Saatchi & Saatchi shores things up with two big signings
Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand has continued its frenetic period of hiring, this time managing to lure top London creative Angus Wardlaw and ex-DDB suit Simon Wedde to the Auckland office.
News
TVNZ to NZ Herald: “Good on ya’, mates”
The geeks inherited the Earth (well, the StopPress comment wall) after the nzherald.co.nz announced a “strategic change in direction by moving away from page impressions as a predominant measure of a site’s success and towards metrics that provide greater transparency to advertisers”. The comments flowed, the debate raged and the acronyms came thick and fast. A few doubts were raised about the motivations behind the site’s new approach to measurement, but the Herald also had plenty of friends, including a few in high places, like the national broadcaster.
News
Snowberry snaffles silver for package design
New Zealand brand and design company Interbrand has been recognised for its work on Kiwi luxury cosmetics brand Snowberry after its package design was awarded silver in the Bath, Beauty and Health category at the first ever Dieline Awards.
News
Bacon saved, brought home at Josh & Jamie
New independent agency Josh&Jamie will be adding their unique creative stylings to the Premier and Beehive bacon and ham brands after winning the business without a pitch, a victory that may or may not be related to agency co-founder Josh Lancaster’s insatiable passion for swine (speaking of swine passion, this has to be the perfect gift for the pig aficionado that has everything).