’Tis the season to be jolly.
Jolly silly, that is. Stoppress heard the story of an Auckland banker who this week staggered back to work after a night on the tiles, without his wallet and his phone and soaked through by the rain. Intending to doss down at the office …
This week from the Media Counsel: Which businesses do Kiwis trust? And why are trust levels so low?
New Zealand-born international advertising executive Nicola Bell has been appointed chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, replacing the outgoing Andrew Stone.
Christmas is a time of family, binge-eating and falling asleep in the ambrosia at 3pm. But for some of our fellow beasts, as you can see in the Save the Children fund’s top-notch stop motion Animal Love dating video, Christmas often just enhances their crushing loneliness.
Auckland gelato store Giapo is “in business to put a smile on children’s faces”. But Gianpaolo Grazioli, the store’s founder, is attempting to raise $10,000 for 300 kids who can’t make it to the store this year because they have to spend Christmas in the Starship Hospital.
Auckland multi-disciplinary design company Alt Group walked away from one of the design industry’s largest and most prestigious international competitions last week with four red dots and a red dot grand prix in their luggage. And it’s the first time a New Zealand design company has received this coveted prize.
Who it’s for: Fruju Fruit Whip
Why we like it: A moderately depressing, tongue in cheek look at the domestic reality of the modern day whipping boy. Unashamedly sexist, yet, at times, remarkably accurate.
This quirky, artsy Kapiti ice cream TVC …
Just over a year ago, The Wine Vault would have been categorised as your traditional, conservative, small New Zealand business. Its marketing tactics consisted of leaflet drops, direct mail campaigns, a monthly email to the customer database and a few fairly unsuccessful radio ads. But owner Jayson Bryant changed all that when he decided to dive head-first into the then-nascent world of social media retailing in New Zealand.
‘They’ say it’s never been done in New Zealand—a wedding planned entirely via social media. But Orewa bride-to-be Pauline Stockhausen has vowed to use only suppliers she has met through Twitter, Facebook and the like for her March nuptials, and Waiwera Thermal Resort has jumped on board, offering a reception venue and spa makeover in return for frequent mentions on her blog.
Sochi 2014 recently launched its new brand, emblem and tagline (‘Gateway to the Future’) for the winter Olympics, introducing the first ever Olympic Games emblem that also forms a web address.
Clemenger’s Alphabet Soup will merge with Raydar, starting January 2010.
Monteith’s new website Worth Talking Over aggregates all the things Kiwis are yakking about online, making it easier for you to figure out what to discuss at the dinner party.
In a move likely to bring plague, pestilence and horrible smoting upon the land (but a smile to the dial of Richard Dawkins), an atheist group has launched a campaign to raise $10,000 for “ads carrying atheist and humanist messages on buses in major NZ cities, encouraging Kiwis to think critically about their beliefs”.
DNA design have just launched the first issue of their new online publication Open, “a forum for exploring what’s happening in the evolving world of consumers”.
In this week’s edition of eBuzz from the Media Counsel: The arrival of real-time Google search means whatever the twittering classes are saying about you or your company now has the potential to make it on to the front page.
Good, old-fashioned, tree-based magazine-lovers claimed a famous victory over their digital cohorts/opponents at last night’s inaugural Magazine Publisher’s Association Christmas stoush. But the mag-debaters had to call on some visual aids to get them across the line.
Westpac Australia recently raised the interest rate on its variable mortgages by nearly twice the level of the Reserve Bank’s increase, to the chagrin of many of its ever-poorer customers. So, it decided to release a patronising little animation entitled Cool Bananas to justify the decision.
DDB Group New Zealand has appointed Steve Kane to a newly created position of creative director, experiential, an appointment the agency claims is a first for a Kiwi ad agency.
Ian Audsley, formerly the chief operating officer of the Nine Network in Australia, has been announced as the executive director of television for MediaWorks NZ TV. He will join the board and commence work in January.
Michael Bay, the typically over the top director whose filmic style is probably best described as oversexed soap-operatic with explosions has taken it to a new level of cheese with his new Victoria’s Secret commercial, tongue and cheekily (we hope) referencing the teasing movie trailers he’s so adept at creating.
Is all that planet-killing commercial detritus getting you down this Christmas? Of course it is. You need some knowledgeable greenfingers to guide you through the environmental maze. And our sustainable cohorts at Good magazine have just launched the first edition of The Good Shopping Handbook to help you out.
When two worlds collide, bad/cringey/entertaining things usually happen, as the exclamation mark-laden, uber-tech geek Christmas message from HP and its PR agency Acumen Republic shows.
First there’s a press release from TV3: “November has seen Nightline pull away from its competitor TV ONE’s Tonight in all key demographics.”
Then there’s one from TVNZ: “The latest news numbers show Sunrise lost a quarter of its audience in November while NZI Business and Breakfast continued to edge ahead.”
The Newspaper Advertising Bureau’s ‘The Kiwi Consumer’ retail report for November 2009 shows how much consumer behaviour has changed since 2001 and how it has impacted on the retail and advertising sectors. And it makes for some rather interesting reading.
Rejoice anachronists! It’s 8 December, much more commonly known as pretend to be a time traveller day, so be not afraid if you happen to come across any Victorian gentlemen, dystopian warriors, robot butlers or maybe even workers flying home on their jetpacks this evening.
The latest glorious edition of our sister/brother/cousin publication (does it always have to be a sister publication?) Idealog is on the shelves soon. And woe betide any businessperson, inventor, entrepreneur or captain of industry who misses out on the nice surprise included within its extremely knowledgeable and good-looking pages.
The official release has been sent and no-one’s particularly surprised with its content: Clemenger Group has appointed Nick Garrett as managing director of Colenso BBDO, beginning 1 March 2010.
The 30th anniversary of the AXIS awards next year is sure to be a nostalgic shindig. But it will also be referencing the future.
Eighty Kiwi marketing heavyweights (and a few lowly journalists) ventured to the floating pavilion in Auckland yesterday for a cup of tea and numerous pearls of wisdom that were delivered by a host of marketing thought leaders as part of the Marketing Association’s inaugural marketing forum.
In this week’s Consumer Counsel:
Physical distance matters not. Digital tribes rule the roost. And KPMG International has put together a white paper that examines the need for marketers to target customers in a completely different way.