Browsing: Contagion

Movings & Shakings
Contagion recruits a pair of replacements for Thompson
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The departure of former partner Richard Thompson to KPEX earlier this year left a significant gap in the executive team at Contagion, but the agency has now announced a pair of replacements. “It’s been a long search,” says Contagion managing partner Dean Taylor. “Richard hasn’t been an easy man to replace. In fact, it’s taken two people to replace him.”

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Polygamous or monogamous? Harmoney appoints Contagion after playing the field with project-based partnerships
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Peer-to-peer lending site Harmoney has appointed Contagion to its advertising account after a pitch understood to have also involved Goodfolk and Problem Child. This news follows on from a period of relative polygamy for Harmoney, with the company taking its marketing business in-house last year and handing out project work to a range of agencies, including True, Goodfolk, JustOne and Latch Digital.

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Barnes, Catmur and Friends takes ‘more of a backseat’ as Southern Cross Health appoints Contagion
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Southern Cross Health Society has appointed Contagion as its lead agency. The appointment means Contagion will now help develop and implement Southern Cross’ marketing strategy, creative, social and media work. Southern Cross Health society head of product and marketing Chris Watney says that Contagion will now be responsible for the day-to-day agency tasks and that Barnes, Catmur & Friends (the lead creative agency for the last eight years) “would be taking more of a backseat.”

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Fonterra Brands calls on the power of Annabel Langbein—and the power of the table—to get Kiwis cooking
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The holy grail of content marketing is to create a win-win-win: something that’s good for the consumers, good for the brand and good for the ambassadors/publishers. And Fonterra Brands, Annabel Langbein and Milk reckon they’ve done just that with a new content-led campaign/’inspiration platform’ called ‘We Are What We Eat’, which aims to provide Kiwis with the tools to cook more often and more simply—and, at the same time, promote the surprisingly large benefits of getting the family around the table.

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In memory of dial-up tones, frozen faces and broken links: Contagion and Chorus put early internet moments on display
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The stuttering dial-up tone of a modem typified the internet experience in the 1990s and early 2000s. And in those early online days, there were no guarantees. The line could be dropped any moment. YouTube clips buffered for longer than they played. And video calls were reduced to an unimaginably awkward series of frozen snapshots of family members. Lest we forget how far we have come since these struggles, Contagion has released a new campaign for Chorus, which shows iconic early internet moments on display in what appears to be a museum.

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Home is where the Harcourts agent is: the real estate company gets emotive with first national brand campaign in nearly a decade
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Ads for real estate companies have long been filled with happy families, keys and smiling real estate agents and while these same tropes still apply, recently real estate companys’ ads have become a lot more heartwarming. A campaign for Harcourts via Contagion called ‘With you all the way’ illustrates this, and follows a young family and their experience as time passes and they move from house to house through a longstanding relationship with Harcourts.

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Energy Online and Contagion repel door-to-door salespeople with an angry doorknocker
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We’ve all had it. You’re having a nice relaxing evening at home after a busy day, and then you hear it. The dreaded door knock. You think, ‘But I’m not expecting anyone’. Then you open the door to see someone standing there, smiling nervously, clipboard in hand before they start awkwardly or over-enthusiastically bumbling through their speech on how you should switch internet provider, switch power company or switch religion. As you stare at them trying to look earnest, nodding and lapping up a healthy dose of second-hand apprehension and embarrassment you think to yourself, why must doorknockers exist? Power company Energy Online, which has vowed not to have doorknockers, has released an ad showing the most ideal doorknocking scenario.

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The Harcourts ‘he said, she said’
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While the era of managed corporate communications and non-disclosure agreements means pitching is far less public than the days of clients announcing how much their business was worth and which agencies would be fighting for it, the process is still all about competition. There is a winner (and occasionally winners) and there are losers. And in the recent Harcourts pitch, which was won by Contagion, it seems no-one wanted to be a loser.

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Tasti draws attention to kiwi preservation with human reunification
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Where brands used to simply advertise, now they’re regularly ‘creating content’—and often hoping to inspire warm fuzzies. Vodafone and True nailed it, Air New Zealand did it over Christmas, Samsung made a very special delivery in Australia and to show how it is helping to preserve our national icon, Tasti has got in on the act with ‘Project Nest’.