Following the launch of Ecostore’s first brand campaign last year, we sit down with director of marketing Jemma Whiten to discuss its latest campaign strategies, how it’s tracking in local and offshore markets and how its unique proposition has it positioned in the face of new competition.
Ecostore has branched out of cleaning and personal care products to launch its new skincare range with the help of Special Group.
The country’s most innovative companies are due to be celebrated next month at the New Zealand Innovators Awards. And a number of businesses from the marketing, media and digital realms will be gunning for a prize.
Consumers—especially the younger ones—are increasingly checking out whether companies have been naughty or nice. And research shows an average of 55 percent of global online consumers are willing to pay more for products and services from companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact. So, as Kath Dewar writes, it pays to keep it clean.
Melissa Fletcher goes it alone, Y&R adds a host of humans and Guy Kawasaki heads for New Zealand.
From the start, Ecostore has had social and environmental responsibility at its core. And even though it has undergone a complete marketing transformation over the past three years, its ethical DNA remains firmly in tact.
2012 marks the 21st anniversary of the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. And, in keeping with the traditions of the land, it emerged into adulthood this year with a new central theme of Everything Marketing and eight new categories, including financial, technology, automotive, utilities/communications, lifestyle/travel/leisure and sponsorship. And coming out at the head of the field with the supreme award was Volkswagen, with ex-Westpac and soon-to-be BNZ head of brand Ian Moody named as marketer of the year, Whittaker’s Jasmine Griffin named as rookie marketer of the year, Air New Zealand taking the marketing excellence award and Pfizer, Z Energy and Red Witch both picking up multiple awards.
As Tequila\’s creative director Ross Howard wrote in a past issue of NZ Marketing, there’s a fine line between creative theft and creative inspiration. And a recent release from Kimberley-Clark’s Huggies brand about a campaign offering new parents personalised OHBaby! magazines got us wondering about the rather thorny issue of creative IP.
The November/December round of voting for The Glossies has come to an end and the creative campaign concocted by ecostore, Special Group, Naked and Salt Interactive that ran in ACP’s Little Treasures and allowed parents to turn their children into cover stars has claimed first place with 22 percent of the 574 votes received, beating out Alt Group’s Fisher & Paykel ad in Cuisine (18 percent) and Tourism Queensland’s multi-page execution (EBOOK_LTQG_2011_LR) in Let’s Travel Golf edition (15 percent).
While the mass-market weeklies continued to struggle last year, ACP popped a few corks when Woman’s Day finally edged out Woman’s Weekly in both circulation and readership after a very long wait. Elsewhere in 2011, special interest magazines largely seemed to hold firm despite the gloomy economy—and the predictions of death from the digitally-focused doomsayers. Sales manager Paul Gardiner goes to town on 2011.
… as Countdown’s marketing doyenne departs for the Aussie mothership, MediaWorks looks inside to fill the sales manager role in its integration department, DNA’s Aaron Carson changes tack, Miranda Gregg says goodbye to AJ Park, bcg2 welcomes a New York import, ecostore’s not-for-profit arm Fairground Foundation appoints its first employee, Tourism Australia finds a New Zealand marketing manager, Lily & Louis joins Kim Kardashian after winning the local Skechers business, and online/social media agency VeNa appoints a New Zealand country manager.
Ecostore’s latest campaign has been pushing the ‘I’m not a guinea pig line’ to encourage consumers to opt out of using nasty chemicals often found in other baby, beauty, body and household cleaning products. Now, in what it claims is a marketing first, it’s taking that idea a step further by trying to get consumers’ entire Facebook networks to do the same.
Sadly, it’s something of a rarity to see examples of creativity in the world of print, especially when compared to the raft of nifty online gimmicks spewing forth. But ecostore, Special Group, Naked, Salt Interactive and ACP appear to be onto a winner with what they believe is a first: a mass-personalisation campaign that allows parents to make their child into a cover star on Little Treasures magazine.
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.
As part of its Better Business, Better World study, Colmar Brunton probed over 2500 New Zealanders to see what they thought of—or knew about—sustainability. And when it comes to the brands Kiwis perceive as being the most sustainable, ecostore, Toyota, Meridian, Air New Zealand and The Body Shop were named as the top five.
The last billboard ecostore put up outside its flagship Freeman’s Bay store in Auckland was an image of what looked like a dog covered in spaghetti sitting in front of a curtain. And it has followed up the ‘un-billboard’ with another artistic and environmentally friendly effort, an ‘eco-billboard’ created by Special Group and DDB’s ex head of art Mike Davison to advertise its spring sale.
Special Group’s print ad for ecostore ended up sparking off a rather heated discussion about the exciting realm of PH levels in washing powder when we wrote a story about the whole malarkey a few weeks back. And the swift response obviously tickled the fancies of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau’s Newspaper Ad of the Month judges, because it’s been awarded the gong for the July round.
It seems the print media’s dastardly scheme to get aggrieved companies to take out full page ads is working: after Air New Zealand responded to a Listener editorial with a cheeky video featuring Rob Fyfe, a dedicated website and a few full-pagers, ecostore has decided to follow suit, joining the reactionary party last weekend after an article in the Herald about washing powder ruffled its eco-feathers.
Ecostore wants to take on the world. So it’s appointed Special Group as the design and communications agency to help do it.
Some billboards bleed. Some offer diamond earrings. And almost all shout a call to action. But the Fairground Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that was set up and funded by ecostore founder Malcolm Rands to create a healthier, more sustainable world, has taken a different approach to grabbing people’s attention after unveiling what it likes to call the “un-billboard”.
Eco-friendly Kiwi cleaning brand ecostore has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Duane Reade of New York, which, with more than 250 outlets, is the biggest drugstore chain in city.
Set your alarms for 3pm NZ time on Thursday 1 October: ecostore founder Malcolm Rands, also known as Eco Man, will be hosting a one-hour party in cyberspace via Twitter. This is your chance to chat tweet-to-tweet and get some sustainable living tips from this successful and insightful eco-entrepreneur. His …
ecostore has won the Large Business Trailblazer award and named the Sustainable Business of the Year for the northern region in the Sustainable Business Network Awards held this week.
This follows the results of the Creo/Perceptive Corporate Trust Survey in July, in which ecostore was viewed as the top …