If the results of the 2011 Pentawards are anything to go by, Kiwis seem to have it wrapped when it comes to creating effective and innovative packaging design in the designer food side of things.
In news that’s sure to warm Don Brash’s libertarian cockles, it turns out we’re leading the rugby world when it comes to smokin the ‘erb, as this wee infographics.co.nz ditty shows. If the IRB gives out a $10,000 fine to Samoan player Alesana Tuilagi for wearing a branded mouthguard, one can only imagine how much it’ll cost the All Blacks when Graham Henry makes a bong out of the Webb Ellis trophy on October 23 for a celebratory toke with the team.
As many law-abiding citizens know, prisons are a necessary evil. Recently our finance minister said prisons were a “moral and fiscal failure” at “$250,000 a bed, $90,000 a year to run”. The money spent by New Zealand on incarceration dwarfs what has been spent on the Rugby World …
Kiwi marketing agency Traffic has muscled its way past campaigns for the likes of Hilton Hotels to triumph in the business-to-business category of the Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards in the US.
Overall, the awards received more than 600 entries, but Traffic was the only New Zealand winner among them. The …
As all regular pub-goers know, alcohol often acts as a performance enhancing drug when it comes to playing darts, pool and, on rare occasions, ‘the field’. And while it’s generally accepted that it’s the opposite of a performance enhancer for practically everything else, and particularly rugby, infographics.co …
You marketing types can’t resist pulling out a blue steel or two in a photo booth after a few wines. Click the expand button on the bottom right to see all the glamour shots/compromising evidence up close. And if you want the wonderous machine to come to your next event, check out the Amazing Travelling Photobooth website here.
We could tell you about the e-gremlins that meant Fairfax failed to deliver some of its papers yesterday, or the bombshell that Tourism New Zealand’s PR company in the US helped get John Key on the David Letterman show. But we decided this supposed world-first from Wellington digital agency Resn, which brought a whole new, ridiculous and very interactive meaning to the term Twitterfeed, was much more important.
In May this year Mike Mizrahi, one half of the world-class, New Zealand-based event and production company, Inside Out Productions, presented an inspirational show reel of contemporary brand engagement to a packed marketing fraternity house at Orams Marine. And, due to popular demand, the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group has brought him back for a breakfast event at the Northern Club where he will enlighten those present about his experiences as a judge on the design jury at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The world of creativity is all about shaking things up and upcoming art, design and creative technologies event We Can Create is no exception. And among the shakings is an amended and expanded line-up of inspirational speakers.
Young person’s cancer support organisation CanTeen has named M&C Saatchi as its marketing partner and, just yesterday, it launched the first of its new fundraising concepts.
If you want to sway the discerning public’s attention to your product, there’s nothing quite like involving them in the development of the product, risky as it may be. And, in a bid to celebrate its first year of business, that’s exactly what daily deal site GrabOne did. Harnessing the pull of its GrabOne Bottle site, Facebook fans were invited to vote on three designs by Media Design School graduate Allan Wrath, the top design earning itself prime position on an anniversary edition wine bottle.
The cover. Proudly sitting there on the newsstand in amongst all the other covers vying for the attention of passersby with enticing images and catchy lines. It’s the art—some might say science—of the tease. And The Maggies, which has once again opened the gates for entries for its second year, aims to celebrate the best examples of this in New Zealand.
Last week BrandWorld’s David MacGregor let his opinions be known about James Hurman’s new book The Case For Creativity. Now it’s ex-Colenso bod and adman par excellence Mike Hutcheson’s turn.
Last year New Plymouth-based manufacturer Howard Wright’s M8 Intensive Care bed took out the top nod at the Australian International Design Awards, and with the finalist list for the 2011 awards recently revealed, Kiwi products have once again made the prestigious design cut.
Being in the South of France right about now sounds pretty good, but for NZ/Korean director Stephen Kang it just got even better with news his short film Blue last night won a Grand Prix at Critics Week (La Semaine De La Critique), part of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.
From wristbands to t-shirts, concerts to text donations, there’s been a bunch of generous and creative fundraising initiatives in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake. But a project led by Christchurch graphic design company Ratio is only just coming into the light.
When Shell’s fuel business was sold to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Kiwi infrastructure company Infratil in April last year (for a cool $695 million, we might add)—both of which are owned and operated by Greenstone Energy—the wheels were set in motion to replace the brand with something Greenstone Energy describes as “entirely Kiwi”. $35 million later, the new petrol stations, called Z Energy, are being unveiled across the country as part of a complete brand overhaul. And, coupled with extensive market research, the finished product comes courtesy of a number of industry players, including Cato Partners and Assignment Group.
The 64th Cannes Film Festival kicks of this week in France and while we mentioned a couple of week’s back that Sweet Shop director Sam Holst’s short film ‘Meathead’ has been selected to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or, there’s another Kiwi nominee thrown into the mix.
Creative students at Media Design School’s AdSchool have triumphed at the 2011 Bees Awards winning the award for Best Student Brief, the only Kiwi win in this year’s awards. The international awards honour the best in social media marketing practices. Ben Andrews (art director) and Craig Douglas (copywriter), won the award for their campaign ‘Dreaming in a foreign language’, created to a special brief for client Mango Languages. The campaign shows innovative use of Facebook to market language learning software.
The good news keeps coming for Alt, which is no stranger to winning global accolades. The design agency has picked up a bronze from the Art Director’s Club of New York for its efforts on Auckland Museum’s I AM campaign, developed from an acronym of Auckland Museum, and a pattern language developed as part of the identity of the museum. And Strategy Design is also sitting pretty with a nomination in the Clio Awards.
Yukfoo Animation’s first short film Preferably Blue, which tells the story of an embittered, reprobate Easter Bunny, made its rather appropriate New York premiere at the 10th Tribeca Film Festival on Easter Sunday. And it’s also off to Germany after being chosen to screen at the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film in May.
Last year Alt Group sent out chocolate keyboards as Christmas gifts for its clients. Pffff, chocolate keyboards, Whittaker’s probably said, because at the time it was in the middle of a lengthy mission to create the world’s first ‘chocolate website’.
It’s often said ad agencies need to get rid of the mirrors and work more closely with their clients to understand their business. Well, Auckland design and interactive shop Fracture has taken that to another level with one of its new clients after taking out first prize for Most Creative Trolley in the recent Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix.
New Zealand’s design students have been putting in quite the winning performance as of late, hauling in some top international awards. First up, Media Design School. Having recently picked up a double-whammy at the 2011 Honolulu Film Awards, the school continues its winning streak with four of its students each winning a gong in the ‘Comprehensive Identity Program’ category as part of the Brand New Awards in the U.S.
BurgerFuel has once again hopped on the interactivity campaign train, starting a location based social media promotion with L&P and location-based digital platform for nerds, Foursquare.
Australia’s CREATIVE magazine has swung its steel-capped boot and connected with Resn’s soft exposed junk for a third consecutive year at the Hotshop Awards, with the Wellington agency beating off stiff competition from interactive luminaries like Pusher, Three Drunk Monkeys and Whybin/TBWA/Tequila to once again take the illustrious title of best Digital and Interactive Agency in all the lands Down Under.
In 1993 Malcolm Rands, together with his wife Melanie, launched a small mail-order business supplying green every day household products, all with the aim of creating a healthier, more sustainable world. 19 years on and the ecostore brand has come a pretty long way from its roots in the Rands’ basement of their eco-village property in Northland. But with a range that spanned over 100 products as of last year, and with complacency a known enemy of innovation, ecostore has undergone a massive formulation and design makeover, the results of which were revealed at an event at the company’s home base in Auckland last night.