Online revenue figures show no signs of abating at the moment, and one of the newer players in the local ad network scene, PostClick, is aiming to get a bigger slice of the pie by launching a new multi-unit online video product called Play, which national sales manager Ben Osborne says simplifies the fragmented online video industry and makes it easy for agencies to buy pre-roll ad space.
Looking for number-based sneakiness and selective/creative use of statistics comes with the territory in this job. Whenever audience data for magazines, newspapers, radio, TV or online is released, we can generally look forward to a host of releases from proud media owners that, understandably, aim to portray the results in a positive light—and, by extension, portray their competitors in a negative light. And, with the battle for online eyeballs heating up, MSN NZ and Yahoo! NZ are currently engaging in some data-related fisticuffs.
15-29 year olds make up 25 percent of New Zealand’s total visitors. And while they may not spend as much as the older folk, they stay here for a longer and are an important chunk of revenue for the industry. Due to a combination of new, exciting and probably cheaper destinations coming into fashion and a lack of activity directed at the youth market over the years, New Zealand has fallen off the radar slightly for this demographic, but Stories Beat Stuff, a digital campaign launched by Contagion last year that asks potential travellers to give something up in exchange for a trip to New Zealand, is helping to change that.
Hudson has released its latest salary and employment insights document for 2012. And, with modest optimistic hiring intentions across the sales, marketing and communications (SMC) profession in both Australia and New Zealand, it’s picking plenty of competition in the quest for talent this year.
There were 300 entries from 33 countries for the Google-sponsored IxDA Interaction Design Awards. And Xero has beaten corporate giants Nike and Windows Phone 7 to take out the “best in class for global interaction design” award.
BCG2 Health appears to be revelling in its niche at the moment after a couple of good wins and it’s toasting to more good health because, after a competitive pitch, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare has shacked up with the agency to launch a digital consumer and trade campaign in the US, a key market for its range of sleep apnoea medical devices.
Increasing uptake of portable devices, faster broadband speeds and the convenience factor while watching TV are all creating a perfect storm for advertisers. The challenge now is to embrace digital technology to create two-way conversations in what has previously been a one-way street.
When she’s not being a non-executive director for New Zealand Rugby League, the Cancer Society or the gang responsible for the Dunedin stadium, Jen Rolfe, the ex-director of Saatchi & Saatchi digital, is spreading the digital and direct gospel with Rolfe, the eponymous boutique agency she started last year. So, here’s lookin’ at 2011.
While all the talk in broadcasting land is about Sky and TVNZ’s Igloo, TVNZ has just announced the arrival of a new addition to its OnDemand family called Ad Hover, “a dynamic, customisable and fully interactive advertising opportunity” created in conjunction with DraftFCB that aims to give viewers a more engaging and immersive video experience and claims to significantly up the brand recall measures for advertisers.
It’s tough finding the perfect gift. And time is running out to find it before Christmas. But Colenso and Heart of the City have joined forces to make it slightly easier—and to promote the shopping districts of the Auckland CBD—with the launch of the Gift Guru, a festive addition to the Big Little City website that offers hints and tips from “super stylist and shopping extraordinaire” Charlotte Rust.
In the last edition of NZ Marketing magazine, BCG2’s planning director Abe Dew wrote something of an open letter to Localist and Yellow Local and put forward his views on why the ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ corporate start-ups looked likely to fall into the same category as Telecom’s Ferrit. Not surprisingly, Localist chief executive Blair Glubb disagreed. He responds to some of the claims and outlines its plans for acceleration after what he says is a strong performance in the six months since launch.
Strategy Design and Advertising and the Christchurch City Council’s Share an Idea campaign, which involved the community piping up about the redevelopment of the Central City following the earthquakes, was the unanimous overall winner of this year’s Co-Creation Award—and it’s the first time the Netherlands-based Co-Creation Association has given it to a campaign from outside Europe.
For the first time in IBM’s C-suite surveys, chief marketing officers were included in the mix. And the results show many of them feel unprepared to deal with the volume and complexity of information available through social platforms.
The online realm is a rather fluid and exciting space at the moment. Companies large and small are chopping, changing and innovating in the quest to find the most effective model and close the gap between eyeball numbers and ad dollars. And MSN, with its parent company ninemsn, is set to embark on some big changes, with a new corporate umbrella brand called Mi9 that will encompass all of its brands, new ad exchange technology that basically creates a stock-market for online inventory, an increased focus on behaviourial targeting and a renewed effort to bump up online news numbers with a portal overhaul.
Google released its take on the modern consumer consideration process recently and called it the Zero Moment of Truth. And, judging by the latest online advertising revenue figures for New Zealand, marketers are paying attention, with search and directories cash rising by 53 percent year on year.
It’s been a tumultuous time for our Christchurch friends of late. But the team from UMC advertising is feeling pretty positive about the future after a surprisingly good year on the business front and a recent rebrand to Simpatico.
New Zealand’s passion for the RWC has already been shown through the massive TV ratings. And, not surprisingly, the major online publishers are also sitting pretty, with Nielsen Market Intelligence data showing the aggregate average daily unique browser numbers for all New Zealand websites in the sports category in September increasing by 58 percent to 332,837 compared to September 2010 (210,408) and 62 percent compared to March this year (205,688).
As a kid, I used to love playing Where’s Wally (although in Germany we’d call it Where’s Walter). But every now and again, I just couldn’t find that red-striped shirt, hat and nerdy glasses. It would drive me crazy. I knew he was there somewhere on that jam-packed beach, but I just couldn’t see him. Today I don’t play Where’s Wally anymore. But every so often I play a variation of it: ‘Where’s the login’ or ‘Where’s the email address’ or ‘Where’s the link’. And just as back in the Wally-days, it can get very frustrating.
Once upon a time, newspapers were rivers of gold. But, as everyone knows, those rivers have started to dry up recently as readers went online and got their news hit for free. Now publishers around the world are embracing visual media—and competing with broadcasters—to try and fill the financial void. And Fairfax has joined that brigade with its soon-to-launch local IPTV arm.
We all know what happened with Telecom’s last attempt to leverage its sponsorship of the All Blacks. But its Backing Black roadshow has kept on trucking, the HQ was launched at the Viaduct a few weeks back and now TOUCH/CAST has launched a new online campaign in the lead-up to the semi-final that puts users at the centre of the All Blacks.
It’s been a tough year for the Christchurch-helmed Strategy Design and Advertising. But last week was a well-deserved good one, with its first Effie (one bronze for Christchurch City Council’s Share an Idea) and five golds at the Best Awards. Now it’s getting international attention for its brand development work for new foreign exchange trading website MahiFX—and particularly for an online gimmick that allows visitors to compare their income to renowned supertrader John Paulson.
…as Clems hires an experienced digi-boffin, Designworks adds another senior string to its management bow and Reach Media and Positively Wellington Tourism both announce new business development managers.
Young & Shand, a digital agency that flicked the switch at the end of 2009—and at the height of the recession—has gone from three staff to nine in the past year, has recently added Jasons Travel Media, Lucky Rentals and Goodman Fielder brands Puhoi Valley and Kiwi Bacon, and now has a total of 45 clients on its books. But, not content with mere digital domination, it’s now moving into bricks and mortar by attempting to create a creative hub in an office it has secured in Auckland’s Britomart.
In a recent Idealog column, David MacGregor wrote: “User experience (UX) is a central thought for marketing today. Products are just stuff. There is no shortage of replacements for yours.” When you consider that more than a third of Air New Zealand’s revenue is generated by its global websites, and nearly half the people visiting go straight to the booking search tool, UX is an especially important aspect of the increasingly digital-centric travel industry. Those figures look likely to increase, so Air New Zealand has heeded the words of the digital soothsayers and made www.airnz.co.nz more customer friendly with the most significant changes to the site’s usability in six years.
The News International phone hacking saga put the cosy network of media and government in sharp focus and showed how powerful media organisations can extert undue pressure on lawmakers and law upholders. And, according to a report by AUT University’s Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD), similar trends—and their associated dangers—are also evident in New Zealand.
As you may have noticed, there are a host of rugby-themed promotions and, for the sponsors, RWC ticket giveaways being offered at the moment. And nzherald.co.nz and M&C Saatchi have come up with a good’un by asking Kiwis to send in their best rugby-related words or phrases, along with their definitions. And, thanks to official sponsor ANZ, the best ‘rugbyism’ added at rugbydictionary.co.nz and then voted for by the people will get tickets to the final. But wait, there’s more. There’s an extra special treat on offer for all you creative boffins in adland.
Grabaseat is known for its slightly risque promotions, such as last year’s Cougar Army at the NZI Sevens, and, with the arrival of Rico on the scene, the naughty child’s sense of marketing humour even seems to have rubbed off on its more staid parent Air New Zealand. Grabaseat has continued that trend for yet another pseudo RWC campaign called the World Trophy of Fun.
Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) has announced its intention to review its Australasian creative and media agency support to manage its Australian advertising and global brand work.
Direct and digital specialist Affinity ID has a proud history of boxing above its weight—both in its home market and internationally. And it’s now helping a trio of new internationally focused clients—Les Mills International, publisher PQ Blackwell and magazine stable Trends—do the same by taking their ideas into the global marketplace.
Media and entertainment organisations need to sort out their digital strategies, according to the inaugural Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2011-2015 report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But, as always, it’s a matter of figuring out new ways to turn a profit online, something that will require traditional media organisations to ‘shed conservatism’ if they hope to get with the digital times.