…as the Herald on Sunday does the APN staff shuffle, Beat Communications brings in new blood by way of former Ogilvy PR lass Jane Finch. Gabrielle Troutback bids farewell to NZ Post, Omnigraphics NZ brings in a non-human hire, Kiwi dairy company The Collective picks up some chunky and prestigious culinary awards in the UK and Fairfax adds another option to the local content offerings.
… as Colenso group account director Lou Kuegler heads for Asia, DraftFCB makes a surprising hire, Los Angeles calls for one of the Resn crew, Kiwi copywriter Cam Brown joins Arnold Furnace and Sunday Star Times reporter Jonathan Marshall leaves Fairfax.
Who’s it for: Sky by DDB and Prodigy
Why we like it: On first viewing, it seems like just another over earnest rugby ad. Turns out it’s one of the funniest instalments of the Match Fit series so far. Taking rugby advertising cliches and poking some …
With the New Zealand Magazine Awards hangovers now well and truly abated, it’s time to reflect on those who did it best in the realm of magazine design. All up ten Best Cover Design awards and nine Designer of the Year awards were dished out across several categories.
It’s the summer festival season in the south of France, with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity coming hot on the heels of the Cannes Film Festival and the Formula One Grand Prix just up the coast at Monte Carlo. But the French Riviera isn’t just a micro-climate in meteorological terms. Its status as a playground of the rich and famous inevitably means it has a degree of insulation to the economic weathering that plagues more industrialised regions.
John Baker
If our office is any guide, there are plenty of bleary-eyed, slow-moving, grease-craving media folk today following the mid-winter Christmas party that is the Magazine Awards last night at the Pullman. And, after 56 awards across 14 categories were handed out, it was a night for the ruggers to celebrate, with Tangible Media’s NZ Rugby World taking home the top two awards of the night, supreme editor of the year for Gregor Paul and supreme magazine of the year.
Twenty-four hours isn’t long when you’re tasked with helping to provide water for arid African villages. But that’s all the time Pip Perkins and Jennie Ko were given at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity earlier this week in the Young Lions Press ad competition.
Last time we talked to the Fairfaxians about the situation with their creative agency (Josh &Jamie won the account a while back, took it with them to Assignment Group when they were bought out and then launched the Find Out More campaign), we came away slightly confused. But the confusion is over, because Stuff.co.nz has appointed hot-to-trot indie Shine.
The judges have judged and 140 entries from 42 titles and 22 different companies are in the running for a Magazine Award on 23 June at the Pullman Hotel.
It’s been an unusually exciting few months in the world of magazine distribution, and the 2011 tit-for-tat has continued apace, after Netlink re-signed its agreement with Tangible Media, New Zealand’s largest independent magazine publisher.
…as Jim Tully and Peter Bush take their place among New Zealand’s media greats; Freeman’s Bay indie Republik opens an Australian office; the Saatchi & Saatchi regional HQ shifts to Singapore from Sydney as Chris Foster takes on a big new Asia Pacific role; Fairfax looks for some creative, integrated inspiration in its new Auckland offices; and Method Studios is acknowledged for its digital work at the New York Communicator awards.
A galaxy of industry stars gathered at Sky City on Friday night as the country’s most important and highly sought after print media accolades were dished out at the Canon Media Awards. And there were a few sore heads among the APNers on Saturday morning after they walked out with what they’re calling the ‘Grand Slam’: best website, newspaper of the year, best daily newspaper and best weekly paper.
Youngish advertising whippersnappers have just three days left to enter the Fairfax Media Young Print Lions competition. And past winner Brent Colliver suggests entrants would be well-advised to spend the last few days polishing their entries.
There’s now one big dominant player in New Zealand’s magazine distribution scene after CourierPost, Fairfax Media NZ and Netlink announced a new partnership, which kicks in from 1 July.
Over 10,000 entries were submitted from around the world and the nominees for The Webby’s, AKA the Oscars for nerds, were announced this week. And Special Group’s ‘Living Office’ web banner, New Zealand-based Drugs.com and Supply’s ‘Scam Machine’ for Netsafe are the only local contenders up for an award, while Resn, DraftFCB, Alt Group, Oh Baby, Fairfax and APN all received the next best thing, official honoree status.
In what could either be seen as another blow to journalism in New Zealand, or a smart business decision that will put an emphasis on exclusive content for the major publishers—and lead to more competition between them—Fairfax has announced that it has discontinued its subscription to the NZPA service, a decision that looks set to bring more than 130 years of news gathering from the press agency in New Zealand to an end.
The Fairfax Admedia Agency of the Year awards were dished out at 1885 in Britomart this week. And while there were the usual mutterings about the decisions—and some other mutterings about changes to the judging criteria—DDB New Zealand came away with the biggest haul after being handed three of the top awards, including Agency of the Year, CEO of the Year for Sandy Moore and Rookie Suit of the Year for Zoe Macfarlane’s work on McDonald’s.
Image: stuff.co.nz
The historic Press building was badly damaged in last week’s earthquake and, sadly, Fairfax lost one of its staff members in the disaster. But, as The Press editor Andrew Holden’s story details, even when surrounded by death and destruction, journalistic duty kicked in and, with the help of the other Fairfax hubs, the team somehow managed to get a paper out the next day. And as the rest of New Zealand watched and listened to the broadcasts, many Christchurch residents were still without power, which meant the local papers became the main source of information. Sandra King, group sales and marketing manager, Fairfax Media, sent this note to agency partners and clients about the state of the Christchurch paper, which is set to celebrate its 150th anniversary in May.
The launch of the iPad and the expected ‘tablet revolution’ has put some wind in the sails of publishers who have been beaten down by the internet. But as everyone goes gaga over the new technology, it’s easy to forget that good old-fashioned paper-based magazines are still putting up a very good fight, with the most obvious trend from Nielsen’s latest readership figures and Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers being that Kiwi consumers are still willing to pay for good-quality specialist magazines.
The indies weren’t just nipping at the heels of the big boys last year, they were occasionally biting off their legs. And, with many clients recognising that the big shops don’t have a monopoly on creativity or international quality work, a number of sizable accounts ended up in unexpected hands. Friday O’Flaherty, one of the all-powerful leaders of Running With Scissors, wields his mighty pen on 2010.
StopPress was quite partial to Fairfax Media’s recent ‘Find Out More’ campaign, so we found it quite surprising when a reliable little birdie told us that Fairfax and Assignment Group wouldn’t be working together anymore. Perhaps Fairfax has developed a case of the Orcons, we quipped, laughing at our hilarious marketing in-joke. As per usual, Assignment Group wasn’t talking (Josh &Jamie won the account and took it with them when they were bought out) and, when we asked Fairfax digital platform and channel development general manager Nigel Tutt about the situation, things got a little confusing.
…Federation adds a big name and a few newbies to the full-time roster; Christchurch’s Carter Price Rennie says hello to two new senior consultants; Pead PR sends one of its own to set up a Sydney office; another change in the TVNZ marketing department; and the resignation of Fairfax chief executive Brian McCarthy is linked to a mysterious Kiwi newspaper executive.
Fairfax Media has announced it will be making some sizable changes to its organisational structure in an effort to adapt and prosper in a world where convergent, digital and multi-platform media rules the day. But the New Zealand media operations, it seems, won’t really be affected.
The Nielsen newspaper readership survey year on year comparative results are black and white and read all over: APN’s NZ Herald and the Herald on Sunday are the only newspapers that have improved their readerships nationally, and Sunday News, Dominion Post and Sunday Star-Times, all published by Fairfax, have each lost readership of 10 percent or more throughout the country.
The nabbing of a few big contracts has put some wind in the sails of PMP New Zealand, which has announced the future-proofing of its New Zealand operations with a $19.5 million investment in new plant and equipment and a new print and distribution facility.
The NBR gave Stuff’s digital billboard promotion a bit of grief this week after it suffered from a few technical difficulties. But the glitches have obviously been ironed out and Fairfax is now using arbitrary capitalisation to trumpet the arrival of “New Zealand’s First Interactive News Billboard” in Aotea Square in Auckland.
Pfala via Flickr
Stuff.co.nz dominated the digital categories at this year’s Qantas Media Awards and it appears as though the advertisers have responded, with Fairfax Media claiming it has “significantly outperformed the market” in terms of its display advertising revenue, “almost doubling” the 38 percent increase achieved by the market since last quarter. But there are a few Fairfax figures that aren’t quite so forthcoming.
After more than 200,000 votes from the public were tallied for this year’s People’s Choice NetGuide awards, the winners have all been crowing, with Stuff.co.nz picking up the top prize and tvnz.co.nz winning best media site.
If you were reading the papers over the weekend, you may have noticed a few column inches were devoted to illustrating how well the publication in front of you had done in the latest Nielsen Readership Survey. Whether the readership changes were statistically significant or not doesn’t seem to matter, because every quarter you can guarantee the big players will be focusing on the silver linings in the print media cloud.
Small, very New Zealandy and not very old agency Josh&Jamie is steadily becoming not so small, continuing its solid run of victories after taking Fairfax Media’s online news-site Stuff.co.nz off incumbent Big Communications in a competitive pitch.