Tourism New Zealand will have a new chief executive for the first time in a decade when Kevin Bowler takes over in January. He’ll have the big shoes of George Hickton to fill, but he’s looking forward to sinking his teeth into the new role, in which he will be responsible for overseeing the international marketing for New Zealand in over 15 countries.
Whatever the atheists can do, the ecclesiastics can do better. Auckland’s St Matthew in the City, a church that has made quite a name for itself as a result of its provocative billboards, has ruffled feathers again, this time with a rather risqué yuletide number that lampoons the literalism of the omnipotent lovin’ supposedly dished out to Mary by the cosmically virile Yaweh.
Humans love lists (especially at the end of the year). And humans also love videos (particularly of cats, funny dances and fellow humans injuring and/or embarrassing themselves). So there’s almost no better combination – aside, of course, from raspberry and coke – than the annual most-watched YouTube video list.
The Advertising Standards Authority has given Telecom a smack on the hand, partially upholding a complaint that was laid by its feisty new competitor 2degrees about misleading advertising in its XT brochures.
News that Colmar Brunton’s Croftfield Lane call centre in the North Shore would close before Christmas with the loss of 50 jobs surfaced today after Unite Union national director Mike Treen blabbed to the media. But chairman Dick Brunton and field services manager Donald Carter say the union has jumped the gun and, strictly speaking, the call centre’s closure is still a proposal.
The second installment of Media Mingle, Mingle Bells, took place last week in the dark, underground lair at Clooney. There was quail in spoons, there was champagne in flutes, there were nametags on chests and there were numerous jovial media types engaging in some hearty festive mingling.
It’s not too often you see the words colon, poo and bowel-movements on a press package. And it’s particularly rare when that press package relates to a new breakfast cereal.
As the Christmas retail season gets into full-swing, retailers hoping to get their share of the consumer spending action are ramping up their online advertising activities, with a 31 percent increase in the number of advertisers on the Internet and a 26 percent increase in the number of campaigns in the two months from September to November 2009, according to Nielsen data.
This week from the Consumer Counsel: Nielsen’s Media division and ANZA have launched a new Attitudes to Advertising segmentation that follows on from a 2008 study. According to the research, Kiwi consumers can be split into nine distinct ‘aditude’ categories. And it turns out that levels of trust in traditional media advertising in New Zealand were higher than the global average.
Fun was had by all at the Magazine Publishers Association inaugural Christmas debate last week, with the pro-paper proponents claiming a famous victory over their digital counterparts.
’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.