Taxi Impact went live a few months back and, at the time, its director Tim Dove promised to create the country’s first professional—and fully national—taxi media network. And if its first major client is any guide, it’s off to a pretty good start, with 2degrees employing the services of its taxis and taxi vans in Auckland and Wellington to spread the message about its mobile broadband offerings.
Eric Hertz
The last time 2degrees released its customer numbers in February 2010, it had managed to attract 206,000 New Zealanders with a combination of attractive pricing, smart marketing, a much-loved frontman and a giant ‘log-oh’. Just over one year later—and 19 months since it first opened its doors in August 2009—that figure has more than doubled to 580,112.
Following a fairly good showing from the Kiwi agencies in the last batch of AWARD finalists, only Colenso BBDO, DDB, TBWA\, Clemenger BBDO and Tourism New Zealand made the cut in the film and video categories. Behold the finalists.
With a combination of effective, unashamedly jingoistic advertising, a solid product offering and consistently high rates of customer satisfaction, Kiwibank has performed the role of challenger brand brilliantly and given the big boys plenty of grief since it was set up in 2002. Hell, ASB even took aim at it last year in the misguided ‘We’re a Kiwi bank’ campaign and Sam Neill signed on to be the bank’s mascot, so it must be doing something right. Sadhana Raman, Kiwibank’s general manager of brand and marketing communications—and a finalist in last year’s Marketer of the Year awards—goes back in time.
2010’s been a mixed bag for TBWA\, losing the massive ASB account to Droga5 yet doing very well with 2degrees. To his credit, chief executive Dave Walden held his tongue and acted very professionally following what he calls the “ASB debacle” (and he also takes the prize for year’s best quote with “you’ve got to look at the silver lining in every fucking cloud”). As for the future, the agency has some big plans to bring digital to the centre of the agency offering and, given it seems to have missed out on a couple of pitches recently, it will be gunning for some more business next year. So, take it away Devo.
Clare Morgan, the general manager of marketing at DB Breweries, has been busy ‘inspiring good times’ in 2010, presiding over a massive refresh of the DB Export family, the launch of a new ultra premium beer called Monteith’s Single Source and the efforts to leverage Heineken’s Rugby World Cup sponsorship. And here’s what piqued her interest in the world of marketing this year.
In the just released January/February edition of NZ Marketing magazine, we looked back on the year’s biggest events/campaigns/achievements/flops/stoushes and compiled an obligatory—and extremely definitive—end of year list. But we figured it would pay to ask a few more industry high-rollers for their thoughts on the year in marketing. We’ll be posting their responses to our questionnaire over the next week. But to get the ball rolling, watch the opinions fly as Courtney Lambert offers her take on 2010’s goods, bads and uglies.
…Media Design School students win thing; a magical mystery store opens its doors in Auckland’s High St; The Documentary Channel is no more; social buying site GrabOne celebrates a milestone; the hunt is on for New Zealand’s Next Top Bookshelf; African adventurers and other charities look for assistance; Air New Zealand’s Christmas auction kicks off; ex-Fonterra boss Roger Boyd launches the ‘beverage of the well-travelled’; InComm arrives in Australasia; 2Degrees, now in 3Dimensions; NZ Post gives everyone a hurry up; and marvel at the glamour of the IAB/Facebook Xmas party.
I got three main insights from this week’s Marketing Forum, an annual assembly of New Zealand’s top marketers. Hats off to the Marketing Association which once again pulled in 100-plus of our most senior marketers to compare notes, share war stories and drink modestly. Well mostly.
This week on the telly, Rhys plays with his baubles; find out who wins in a fight between the Warehouse family and Countdown Colemans; look at all the pills, potions and lotions on offer for hayfever season; Farmers, Briscoes, Harvey Norman and pretty much every other retailer get into the festive spirit; the return of James Blunt leads to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being sick in their own mouths; and, having already launched online, ASB’s new ads finally reach the TV screens, which, if you believe the front page story on the Sunday Star Times yesterday, led to “a flurry of complaints” to the ASA about the IVF assistance ad (in media land, it seems seven complaints constitutes a flurry).
This week on Ads@6, a cool car ad from Lexus; another mascot family hits the screens, this time for The Warehouse; Rhys Darby dangles worms for the 2degrees Xmas push; BP is back (with a robo-dog); Jetstar greys up; and who can resist the Magic of Mantovani?
In this edition of Ads@6, the iPad shows its stuff, the Vogel’s campaign keeps hitting the mark, the House of Travel inspires plenty of holiday envy, Telstra Clear and 2degrees face off with their respective monthly mobile plans and there’s even an ad for Lancaster Bomber magazine.
This year’s Effies tagline was ‘the best ad for advertising’. And it was certainly a pretty good advertisement for Colenso BBDO, which won 12 awards and became the only agency to ever win Most Effective Agency of the Year two years in a row, as well as the only agency to win Most Effective Agency of the Year and Best in Show in the same year. It was a close run thing, however, with DraftFCB nipping effectively at its heels with nine.
It was a night that had almost everything: surprisingly loud and seemingly dangerous explosions; a fair bit of rowdiness from the 2degrees/TBWA tables; a hilarious mad scientist poking fun at everyone; strange glowing beakers; an array of confusing acronyms; polite clapping; attentive listening; and prodigious amounts of inter-company sexy dancing as big names from big and small Kiwi companies got dolled up for last night’s TVNZ-NZ Marketing awards at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. And the general consensus was that the quality of the winning work was world-class and that the awards themselves just keep on improving.
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.
In July last year 2degrees launched its mobile network in New Zealand, utilising funny man Rhys Darby to front its campaign. And it is fair to say the campaign has been successful so far. We managed to sneak a quick moment with 2degrees head of sales and marketing Larrie Moore to ask him a few quick fire questions about the last seven months.
Ah, new stuff. How we love the way you always bring a little bit of excitement to our dull, repetitive, meaningless lives. Of course, new stuff is a big part of the marcomms industry, so what better way to disseminate some of this newness than by making a gigantic melange.
2degrees Mobile has given Telecom a gloveslap and is set to lodge a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority over two newly issued Telecom brochures because it believes the claims are “misleading and deceptive”.