In days gone by, the only thing a plastic beer bottle at the rugby was good for was throwing in the air during a Mexican wave (and making your beer warm). But Steinlager and DDB have found a way to make the bottle more useful with a social media campaign called #AllBlackSnap that’s running during the three test series against England.
After around 18 years of fusing art with commerce, events and media company Madant has morphed into Uno Loco. And with clients increasingly looking to create experiences, not just ads, and with events companies increasingly dabbling in other areas, the planets appear to be in alignment for this successful yet under-the-radar business.
In the past few years, the innovative marking teams behind Coca-Cola’s campaigns throughout the world have put our names on cans, created bottle-powered arcade games and taken a cheer-collecting bus across Argentina. And this inventive trend now continues with Bogota-based Leo Burnett’s introduction of the friendly twist bottle, which features a unique lid that can only be opened when paired with another.
Unitec has done a good job of bringing academia to life in recent years, with its reality-advertising campaign Change Starts Here, GPS-enabled buses that turned Auckland into a media platform for ‘We make the people who make it’ and, most recently, the personalised Umag. And it’s once again taking the school to where the potential students are: the mall.
There was plenty of excitement about the Share a Coke campaign, which offered punters a personalised can and tapped into the powerful narcissistic tendencies of the modern age. And Pernod Ricard brand Jacob’s Creek is offering something of a grown-up equivalent, with a pop-up winemaking experience in Auckland where customers can taste and combine up to four of the label’s most popular varieties to make their own red or white blend.
Foursquare, Memphis Meltdown and Freedom Farms all got some decent brand exposure in front of 80,000 people at this year’s instalment of the Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix. PLUS: Red Bull wins friends and influences companies with its cool factor.
The last time Ford and JWT got together to promote a Ford Fiesta, they spiced up proceedings considerably with a few strategically placed bottles of bespoke Culleys chilli sauce. Now, to promote the arrival of one of the first all-new Fiesta Sports models in the country, it’s signed on as a major sponsor of Ponsonby’s popular Art in the Dark festival and partnered with artist Jon Baxter to create an original installation at the event.
Sometimes you just can’t escape lining up. The portaloo at the festival, the cashier at the supermarket, the coolest new bar. But no-one really likes doing it, so it is fairly hard to fathom why anyone would do it for a new phone. Plenty do, of course (even though they don’t actually know why). And the companies selling them go to great lengths to butter these strange tech fiends up and ensure they don’t get queue fatigue, as evidenced by Vodafone and Telecom’s launch festivities for the new iPhones.
Rekorderlig Cider has brought a piece of Scandinavia to Auckland’s Shortland St with the arrival of a Swedish-themed bar and restaurant that will be open to the public for just ten days. All up, around $400,000 was spent on constructing and promoting the tree filled, wood-panelled Winter Garden. And when you look at the growth of cider in New Zealand and around the world, that seems like a pretty good investment.
‘Collaborate or die,’ ‘If you can’t pitch your company in 140 characters or fewer you have a problem,’ ‘A long video these days is six seconds,’ ‘Marketing as we know it will never be the same.’ These are just some of the messages that came through loud and clear to Robert Bruce at last week’s CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group event.
There’s always a whole heap of creativity on display when the amazing outfits competing for the World of Wearable Art Awards hit the stage in Wellington every year. And now there’s some creativity on the streets as well, with Adshel and True joining forces to create a specially built shelter on Ponsonby Road to promote the ‘Off the Wall: Wearable Art Up Close’ exhibition currently featured at the Auckland Museum and drive ticket sales for the 2013 show from 26 September – 6 October.
As another busy summer of brand activation looms in New Zealand, EMANZ chair Mark Pickering reflects on the state of experiential marketing in New Zealand.
Andy Warhol’s iconic image of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most influential pieces of modern art ever, can now be seen at Queen Elizabeth II Square in downtown Auckland. As part of Art Week, 3,944 Resene test pots in four specially chosen colours – Princess, Smitten, Shooting Star and All Black (actual Resene paint names)—were commandeered to create a 4x4m mosaic.
They say you can’t buy experience, but you can buy experiential agencies and that’s what Professional Public Relations has done with the acquisition of specialist experiential marketing brand SublimeNZ, an offering it hopes to grow in Australia across PPR’s six state offices.
There are a few things you can expect from a New Zealand summer: torrential rain, sunburnt tops of the feet and sausage and booze-related weight gain. You can also expect a campaign from Tip Top, but this year’s effort is a bit different—and more logistically challenging—than normal, because it’s launched a big new brand platform and is “on a mission to make New Zealand Feel Tip Top this summer, one ice cream at a time”.
Lindauer and DDB’s recent tear jerker created a bit of a stir when it was released, with some seeing it as low hanging fruit and others (particularly the female target market) seeing the hyperbole as spot-on. But the piece de resistance of the over the top campaign was a champagne tower that was filled with salty male tears* during the 30 Days of Fashion and Beauty Style Weekend at the Cloud.
Along with the main ‘every time you swipe something a little bit good happens’ TVC featuring a bunch of playful animals, the idea of creating little moments of joy has been brought to life in the real world with some nice experiential executions, like swipe-activated bubble gum billboards, bubble blowing Adshels and even a seat and a magazine on the Wellington waterfront. But for its latest trick Fly Buys has got the Wellington City Council on-side and is trying to bring some joy to an eight-year-old boy named Elijah.
Fly Buys’ new motto ‘Every time you swipe, something good happens’ became quite literal recently, with some interactive Adshels in Auckland and Wellington injecting some fun into the city streets.
A few weeks back I ventured to Turners Auctions with a friend who was on the hunt for a new steed. If a car caught our eye, we’d kick the tyres, push a few buttons inside, lift the bonnet, check the oil, and stand back and say ‘yep, she looks pretty good’. The engine could have been inserted upside down and we probably still would’ve said that, so, given this complete lack of mechanical knowledge, it was perhaps slightly ironic that a few days later I was invited to venture to Central Otago to take some beefy new BMWs for a few frosty donuts in the snow. But, as a freeloading journalist with a rich boganic Invercargill heritage, it was an offer too good to refuse.
Back in May, Mercury Energy sent its experimental ‘Good Energy Taxi’ onto the streets of Auckland. At the time, Tequila’s main brains Ross Howard said the motorised version of a karma bank was a bit of a double whammee, with the experiential element meaning a range of Kiwis came into contact with the taxi—either in person or via social media—and the footage taken from inside the cab being made into a short documentary that captured some of the Kiwi good sorts. And now you can check that documentary out.
It’s been featured in Wired, the Huffington Post (“a virtual reality explosion”), The Daily What (“a prototype for Skrillex’s inevitable 2017 Super Bowl half-time show) and a fair bit here on StopPress. And the V Motion Project has started its experiential journey into the public domain, with a surprise in-cinema activation showing the technology in effect on the big screen.
For the first time in a long time, Jack Daniel’s has launched a new product: a combination of its whiskey and a “proprietary honey liqueur”. And what better way to get the new Tennessee Honey variety some attention than by inviting Kiwi revelers to rummage around in a bee hive.
We wrote about the launch of Colenso BBDO’s very cool V Motion Project a few weeks back. And after an “epic journey to create music using the body’s movement”, the creators took their bootleged technology and a projector to an Auckland carpark on Saturday night to show the people what happens when the power of dance is harnessed.
I was lucky enough to recently attend the largest Event & Experiential Marketing summit in the world in Chicago. I immersed myself in three days of learning with over 500 others from around the world and came away feeling a whole bunch of things: inspired (absolutely), brain whipped (definitely), and connected (in a myriad of ways). But mostly I feel charged up about the future of the industry in New Zealand.
Kelly Bennett, the founder and managing partner of Eleven PR New Zealand, has been tapped on the shoulder and will lead the expansion of brand activation, experiential and PR services for the TBWA\ network throughout Asia Pacific.
Just four Kiwi agencies were in the running for Clio Awards, one of America’s most prestigious ad industry awards ceremonies, and only one ended up taking anything home, with Alt Group winning a silver for Fisher & Paykel’s Social Kitchen in the environmental design section.
Aside from being a perennial favourite in the most hated jobs list, another peril of being a journalist is what some may call ‘income disparity syndrome’. Those from the fourth estate often liaise with successful types who earn too much, eat at nice restaurants and drive nice cars, before heading home to eat gruel for dinner, keep warm by hovering around the fire in the 40 gallon drum and wrap up lumps of coal in newspaper to give to their children for birthday presents. So it was with a mix of excitement and depression that I ventured out to Hampton Downs last week to test my driving skills in an array of magnificent German machines that I will probably never be able to afford. And in a new move for Audi, it’s opening up its Driver Experience Days to corporates and individuals.
As brands try to rise above the rabble and somehow etch themselves into the minds of consumers in a positive fashion, experiential marketing—and the associated brand generosity—is becoming much more prevalent. And, as the multi-faceted Great Pascall Road Trip campaign shows, these experiential elements are increasingly becoming the glue that helps bind major promotions together.
The WLG pop-up restaurant in Fitzroy, Melbourne, is now into its second week and it’s proving fairly popular with the locals, just as the first incarnation did in Sydney. And Air New Zealand has jumped on the bandwagon by getting a few of its cabin crew to perform an in-restaurant safety video and dishing out free return flights to Welly to 60 lucky diners.
Over the years it’s evolved under many different names, from field marketing, brand experience and even experimental marketing. But experiential marketing is finally beginning to establish itself as both a name and a discipline in its own right in New Zealand marketing circles. And this is giving rise to the trend for guerilla marketing techniques, live stunts and a variety of other non-permission based campaigns. As these become more commonplace, we’ll see these activities get closer and closer to the mark of what is and isn’t acceptable. So is self-regulation the right answer?