After two delightfully insane adverts that illustrated that retail advertising doesn’t always involve the same tropes, the New World marketing team has reeled it in bit for its Christmas campaign, which features a mild-mannered employee named Noel, who may or may not be Santa in an admittedly average disguise.
Earlier this year, Pedigree and Colenso BBDO tried to monetise slacktivism with Share for Dogs, a campaign that, as the name implies, asked people to watch videos of cute dogs and send them on so that a portion of the profit generated from the pre-roll advertising on each video could be shared with the charity. Now, extending a test campaign it ran last year, .99 and the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand have also created a way for Kiwis to help by doing, rather than paying.
Mergers and acquisitions have been fairly rare throughout These Difficult Times, but the Clemenger Group has made a significant addition to its communications coterie and is hoping to create a formidable advertising force by fusing .99 and direct/CRM/1-to-1 agency justONE.
.99 is often thought of as a retail shop. That is its main area of expertise, of course, and there’s no doubt its production processes and studio facilities are a big part of its appeal to clients—and one of the major reasons it won five out of five pitches in recent months and managed to recover super quickly from a horror year in 2012. But it has had its creative moments as well, perhaps none more so than the inflight videos for Air New Zealand, and it’s shown its creative stripes once again for one of its new clients Genesis Energy, with a brand refresh that centres around a split-screen TVC that shows how the company is ‘in it for you’.
.99’s win of the Tower business was a much-needed fillip for the embattled agency. And the good news has continued after it was handed the reins for a range of through-the-line communications for Fairfax Media’s Sunday Star Times newspaper after winning a pitch against Y&R Auckland and Christchurch agency Simpatico.
After a pretty intense rough patch, where three of its big clients—Vodafone, Air New Zealand and Westpac—went west in quick succession, .99 has been on the hunt for a few wins and it’s received some welcome good news after being appointed as the full service agency for Tower following a recent head to head pitch against M&C Saatchi.
Overseas, interactive catalogues are well-established and many large brands such as Tesco and Morrisons in the UK are complementing—and usually reducing the cost of—their printed material by producing something akin to a regular digital magazine. Some local retailers have already dipped their toes in this water, but .99 and Farmers believe their new interactive catalogue is something unique in the New Zealand market.
Questions are hovering over the Telecom account as a result of its planned demerger, and there’s some fresh uncertainty surrounding one of its main rivals, with Colenso BBDO’s hold on the Vodafone account seemingly up in the air.