With the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games mere weeks away, the official New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ, with the help of Assignment Group and TVNZ Blacksand, has launched the first phase of its campaign.
Persuading half a million Kiwis to go online and opt-in sounds like Mission Impossible, especially when the track record’s not that good and the benefits are marginal. But that’s what Spark managed to do.
Fresh-up, Colenso BBDO and OMD are calling on real mates with real rivalry to take each other on in a ‘Beat Your Mate, Smash Your Thirst’ campaign, set to be broadcast on TV through a partnership with TVNZ.
TVNZ has launched its countdown to the Paralympics with a new interactive ‘Built Different’ campaign, via Blacksand, that celebrates the determination, strength and the achievements of New Zealand’s Paralympians.
TVNZ and Kiwibank are calling for nominations for the 2016 New Zealander of the Year Awards and showing off a refreshed visual identity developed by Assignment Group in a new TVC made by Blacksand.
It used to be so simple. Find an audience (usually from someone or something with enough money to own mass media), put an ad in front of that audience and roll around on a bed laden with cash, laughing maniacally. These days, there is huge media fragmentation, constant distraction (AKA ‘obesity of the mind’), more good content on offer than ever before and numerous ways for consumers to dodge ads. That makes reaching audiences much more difficult, but the rise of digital technology and the rapid changes in the way people are consuming media has meant broadcasters and advertisers have had to embrace more creative methods of storytelling to maintain the audience’s attention, something Blacksand’s senior digital producer Amie Mills discussed recently at the first TVNZ Outtakes event.
The Make-A-Wish foundation has made history by releasing its first ever TVC, with TVNZ Blacksand’s Our Little Heroes campaign celebrating the heroic nature of children suffering life threatening medical conditions in the hope of gaining further reach to grant more wishes.
A doffing of this week’s cap to Skinny, TVNZ, James Hardie and Red Bull.
In the new Kia Sportage spot by Work Communications, New Zealand’s green landscape and pristine waters serve as a foil to office-based captivity and the screen-staring that often comes with it. And while driving to a desolate swimming beach and diving in seems like a liberating idea, it probably isn’t quite as pleasurable as what it seems. What the footage shot by TVNZ’s Blacksand fails to tell the viewer is that the spot was shot at the onset of winter and that lead talent Sophie Baragwanath had to endure frigid swims during one day of shooting.
Up against an international field of broadcasting heavyweights at the Promax Global Excellence awards in New York last week, TVNZ Blacksand and Sky TV have both walked away with gold and bronze gongs.
Following on from last year’s elaborate faux real estate campaign for Agent Anna’s first season, TVNZ’s in-house agency Blacksand has again tapped into the fake reality theme for the promotion of the dramedy’s second season. Shot in an actual rental home, the stunt features Robyn Malcolm in character as klutzy Anna Kingston showing real visitors—and potential tenants—around a home, which has been set up with a variety of booby traps that result in some awkward interactions.
It has been talked about for years—and experimented with from time to time—but, in what could be seen as the opposite of pull my finger, mall wanderers who push a button on a billboard will get to sample the smell of homemade cooking as part of a new campaign by oOh! Media and TVNZ to promote the new season of My Kitchen Rules Australia. PLUS: the numbers for the show’s first week.
Around the world, broadcasters are using their talents to make more than just promos for their own shows or idents for their own channels. And TVNZ’s Blacksand is no exception. So should agencies be concerned by the multi-skilled employees, the quick turnaround, the increasing interaction with clients and the improving output of this inhouse creative department? Or can everyone get along?
TVNZ Blacksand’s microsite for the Step Dave show could be the forerunner to further efforts to complement on-screen viewing. The site has character information, video, extra scenes and a virtual version of the fridge that features on the show.
Fair Go is one of the great survivors in the world of TV and it kicks off its new season tonight at the new time of 8pm. But while the ratings remain solid, not everyone’s enamoured with the show, with Brian Edwards writing a scathing piece and offering some advice to those who come in for some unwanted attention.
Sky, Vend and TVNZ each leave a memorable imprint on another week in adland.
Generally speaking, humans try to steer clear of anything related to exploding number twos. But TVNZ has fully embraced them in a series of new channel idents for TV2 via Blacksand.
For most New Zealanders, there’s been a high rate of food consumption over the past few months. And the nation’s broadcasters are hoping there will be plenty of food-related TV consumed this year as well, with TVNZ’s MasterChef NZ making a few changes to its format and MediaWorks hoping for big things with its new show The Great Food Race.
Media companies around the world are increasingly trying to cut out the middle men and profit from clients’ thirst for content. TVNZ’s in-house production team at Blacksand is no different and, as well as doing plenty of quality work for the mothership, like the launch of and promotional campaign for Seven Sharp and the Shortland Street end of year campaign, it’s doing a lot more work on production partnerships, like Telecom’s ‘Tech in a Sec’ and Mitre 10’s ‘Easy As’. Here’s Blacksand’s executive creative director Jens Hertzum’s highlight reel for last year.
In an effort to maintain viewers’ curiosity levels while Shortland Street is on hiatus, TVNZ has devised an interactive crime mystery that will give fans a daily fix until the show returns on 13 January. The campaign is based on the premise that one of the characters died during the 11 December finale. And since the identity of the deceased is still unknown, TVNZ aims to keep fans interested by posting one revealing clue each day before the premiere of the 2014 season. PLUS: see Jono and Ben’s parody.
Saatchi & Saatchi, Blacksand and Trade Tested clink eggnog glasses in the last round of 2013.
TVNZ has made its first foray into using the dating app Tinder as a marketing tool, but it was with a dark twist befitting a promo for zombie horror show The Walking Dead. Unsuspecting love lorn guys were served up hotties who eventually turned out to be walkers.
Since 2009 three dresses made from Kleenex Cottonelle toilet paper have been chosen by judges to walk the runways at New Zealand Fashion Week. And three more designs have made the finals in this year’s competition, although this time the stage isn’t a fashion catwalk, it’s a documentary-style series of television commercials and the pages of Next magazine.
Who’s it for: TVNZ by in-house agency Blacksand Why we like it: It’s just a little bit odd and quirky, much like the show it’s trying…
There’s been plenty of ink dedicated to Seven Sharp over the past few months—a bit too much in the opinion of TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick. But far from free-falling, the more informal, magazine-style current affairs show has stabilised to an average audience of around 375,000 viewers. And, in an effort to get more New Zealanders to give the show a go, it has launched a new campaign via its inhouse agency Blacksand.
There still seem to be a few holiday tumbleweeds out there in marcomms land, but we managed to find a few contenders, with TVNZ’s colourful Seven Sharp promo, Animates’ accurate Doomsday prediction and nzgirl’s raunchy ‘regretgasm’ spot featuring in the year’s first round.