The New Zealand Herald is trumpeting growth across both its print and digital readerships this week. We speak to NZME managing editor Shayne Currie about how its managing print growth in a digital era.
As the All Blacks depart to defend the Webb Ellis cup in the UK, the nation is gearing up for a few weeks of early morning code watching. It’s obviously a pretty big deal for a rugby-loving nation and, as we saw during the Cricket World Cup, the clicks are likely to follow. But the Herald might be taking it a bit far with the branding of its rugby hub, which is sponsored by—who else?—Steinlager. Syrian refugee crisis? Pfffffff.
After the Blackcaps play in the Cricket World Cup final on Sunday, you can be sure there will be a host of print ads congratulating or commiserating the team the following day, as there was when the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup in 2011. But Ford has got in early with a full-page ad featuring in today’s Herald celebrating the glorious victory over the South Africans and warning Melburnian Mrs Mavis Madrigal to cover her gnomes and azaleas to protect them from flying round objects.
From Paul the octopus, to Paulo the octopus, to Futnik the pig, to Citta the elephant to Nicholas the llama to our own Richie McCow, supposedly psychic animals predicting the outcome of sports games is like catnip to media. And the Herald has introduced a new soothsaying creature to the list, with Cricket the cricket so far nailing three out of four games in the Cricket World Cup.
Content marketing is on the rise, but it’s not a shift that’s easy to make for all organisations. Here are three takeaways from the recent Content Marketing Conference that might help.
150 years ago today, the first edition of the New Zealand Herald was printed. And APN NZ has gone to great lengths to celebrate the milestone, with one of its biggest ever promotions, a range of special editorial products and some significant changes to its digital properties.
There are a lot of words in a newspaper, most of them spelled right and grammatically correct. But a few grammar nerds were up in arms on Twitter yesterday after the Herald committed a cardinal sin and used the words ‘might of’ in a headline.
Not content with the attention it receives in the trade media after an award win, Special Group has made a habit of paying to get a bit more of it by placing full-page ads in the Herald, making it one of a rare few ad agencies that actually advertise. And it’s done some more showing off after winning Best in Show at the Media Awards alongside Naked/Open for Unitec’s ‘We make the people who make it’ campaign.
In John Drinnan’s media column last Friday, one of his topics was the rumoured move of Saatchi & Saatchi and the Media Design School’s offices to the Wynyard Quarter’s innovation precinct. That’s not happening and a correction was printed, but it is yet to appear online.
There were plenty of naysayers when Kiwibank was launched, but, after ten years, few would argue it has done a stellar job of facing up the big Australian-owned banks on the personal banking front (it announced a tripling of profits recently and now has around ten percent of the retail market). But now it’s aiming to bump up its business banking credentials with a campaign by Ogilvy and Ikon that aims to demonstrate how the bank can save SMEs time and money and let them get on with running their businesses.
While the magazine sector recorded its third consecutive overall readership increase in the latest Nielsen CMI figures, the newspapers haven’t fared quite so well, with an overall decline in total readership for all dailies and metropolitan titles that has been deemed significant by Nielsen and almost universal declines in paid circulation. But there are a couple of diamonds in the rough—particularly The Herald on Sunday and The Waikato Times—and, for the optimists, the numbers are still holding up much better than they are in comparison to many other markets.
Following a story in the Herald over the weekend about increased competition leading to a drop in broadband prices and increases in data allowances, new player Flip, a business in the CallPlus group of companies, and its agency Sugar&Partners decided to take the opportunity to link itself with the news and promote its offer of free* broadband with an ad in yesterday’s Herald.
We’ve already written a fair bit about the strangely unusual approach of DraftFCB, that rare breed of advertising agency that actually advertises. And the agency behind APN’s campaign to launch the new compact Herald took an opportunity to put itself out there once again with another good full-page print ad in the ‘collector’s edition’ yesterday. And, not one to miss an opportunity for a few laffs, Pak’n’Save’s spokestick Stickman also got involved with the relaunch and featured in three contextual ads, which were also created by DraftFCB.
When Todd McLeay shifted from NZ Lotteries to the role of chief operating officer at APN NZ, one of the first things he did was go and talk with a bunch of ad agencies and media buyers to see what their feelings were about newspapers. The general consensus was that there was a lot of sparkle about digital but there wasn’t too much love for print, mainly because “no-one was making a good case for it”. And so the campaign to launch the compact version of the NZ Herald and redesign the website was born, and with the big launch day on Monday, the piece de resistance, a TVC by DraftFCB that shows the important role the paper has played in New Zealand’s history, goes live tonight.
The magazine sector had some pretty good news to report in the latest round of readership and circulation figures and, given what’s happening internationally, the New Zealand newspaper sector should also be fairly pleased with the results, which show there’s still plenty of life in the old dogs yet.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of dealing with corporates, government departments or academic institutions presumably knows there are an almost limitless number of seemingly ridiculous rules that have to be obeyed. Many of these rules fly directly in the face of common sense and are generally frustrating time-sucks. But StopPress can’t recall a rule that seems quite as ridiculous as this one from Apple.
Tanning kits, kettles and wine have now joined political scandals, gruesome homicides and pictures of crocodiles being attacked by hippos on nzherald.co.nz after its new shopping section was released this week. And it’s just in time for Chrissy!
If you believe the hype, print is an anachronistic curmudgeon unsuccessfully fighting against an online onslaught of Twits, Tweets and Twats.
But if you believe the latest readership numbers, print – in New Zealand, at least – appears to be in fine(ish) fettle.
Seven Media Group’s 2009 annual report reveals profit dropped to AU$12m from AU$142m last year, a fall of 91.2 per cent. This is due to its writedowns—reducing the book value of its media assets because they were overvalued compared to the market value. A company …