Online users have long suffered from social media messaging overload. But Kiwis have wizened up to the power of the mute button at their disposal, says Katie Byrne.
Kiwibank has been beating the drum of independence since it was founded in 2001 and it made it very explicit in its last ad when it printed out a bunch of bank records, made them into a huge banner and shouted it from the rooftops. That ad featured a range of proudly independent staff and its next effort, also via Assignment, features proud customers dancing a dance of financial independence.
Kiwibank, Mons Royale, AMI and Samsung get an early Christmas present this week.
What would you do with the print outs of all of the letters from your bank? Perhaps make a bonfire? Kiwibank is so proud of its communications with its customers it’s printed them out and hung them off its headquarters in Wellington.
Twitter is an amazingly fluid and responsive medium for brands. But understanding when it’s appropriate to join the conversation is the difference between a good brand and a great one, says Katie Byrne.
TV shows are increasingly trying to keep the audience’s attention after broadcast—and, with much of the population seemingly unable to keep their eyes off their mobile devices for more than ten seconds, often during it. Sponsors associated with shows also want their share of the eyeballs. So, following on from Kiwibank’s attempt to increase audience engagement with its Block Out Live Bingo-style game for The Block NZ, Genesis Energy has added another string to MKR NZ’s bow with an online quiz called Guess the Ingredients.
In May, New Zealand Post and its subsidiary Kiwibank announced that they would merge their media accounts and appoint a single agency to take care of the media side of the business. This announcement came with the consequence that at least one of the long-time account holders for the respective businesses—Ikon (Kiwibank) and Starcom (NZ Post)—would lose its account. And now, after a pitching process, Kiwibank’s head of marketing communications and content Regan Savage has confirmed that OMD has won the account, leaving both incumbents’ ledgers a little barer.
In a world where ad blockers—and ad fatigue—are on the rise, embracing digital design thinking can create benefits for brands and consumers, say Josh Barr and Ben Glazewski.
Design, said Apple founder Steve Jobs, is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Or, put in a commercial context, whether it helps a company make money. And the Best Design Awards’ ‘Best effect’ category, whose finalists were announced this week, celebrates design that has produced a measurable effect on the success of an organisation or product, whether it be productivity, staff engagement, sales growth, bottom line or customer experience.
Being the one to tell people they’ve crossed the line is an unenviable responsibility at the best of times. But, despite having forged a career out of doing just that, Hilary Souter, the chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, is still smiling. So how does she keep it all together at the ASA?
Having cash in the wallet is an increasingly rare phenomenon for many Kiwis. So is throwing your wallet into the bin in favour of using your phone or a digital currency an option in New Zealand? And what’s ‘coming soon’? We’ve cherry-picked a few interesting developments in the payment space.
Where once social media was seen as a harbinger of doom for traditional media, the enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat in recent years as algorithms have changed and questions have been asked about the return on investment. But there are still plenty of success stories, often from a customer service point of view, and Amanda Sachtleben went along to the #NZSOMO conference to find out about a few of them from New Zealand.
New Zealand Post and its in-house subsidiary Kiwibank have announced plans to bring their media accounts together, and several agencies are currently involved in a pitch for the new combined account.
Kiwibank and Assignment Group got out the craft knife last year for a quirky Welcome Home Loan promotion featuring a couple that lived in a cardboard house. And they’ve continued that crafty theme with a stop-motion ode to dough that aims to draw attention to its insurance products.
Kiwibank has centralised some of the key details about the property market in a new app that’s designed to enable prospective homebuyers to access all the information they need in one place. The app can be used to obtain pre-loan approval, peruse available houses, track the number of sunshine hours a home receives and check which homes are available in a neighbourhood.
Saatchi & Saatchi’s crowd-sourced action shots, Cirkus’ fantastical motorbike mission, Kiwibank’s take on box living and safe.org.nz’s star studded PSA wear the crown this week.
Kiwibank has released a new promotional video to show prospective homebuyers that they still have options in spite of the recent legislative limits that increased the minimum deposit to 20%. The hilarious video, which features a quirky script and home made out of cardboard boxes, could easily double as a parody of a Campbell Live case study.
Kiwibank has added business functionality to its consumer mobile banking app in an offering that lets users switch between accounts when they’re using mobile banking.
Since DraftFCB took over the Air New Zealand account at the start of last year, its work has been fairly retail focused, with the airline’s deals being promoted on TV and online. But it’s finally got a chance to have a bit of fun with a campaign to promote the launch of the new Airpoints credit cards.
Kiwibank, Otago Uni and Telecom get a street parade in Hamilton this week.
It’s not often you see an ad that mentions the brand’s competitors more than the brand that paid for it. But that’s exactly what Kiwibank and its new agency Assignment Group have done with its ‘Every revolution needs a leader’ campaign, which puts the spotlight on some of the 800,000 New Zealanders who have switched to the bank since it kicked off 11 years ago.
For the second year in a row ASB Bank has topped Canstar’s Online Banking report for providing the best online banking experience to customers.
Tampons are difficult to advertise without offending some people. The Advertising Standards Authority’s 2012 annual report shows two feminine hygiene products in its top ten most complained about ads list for last year.
Kiwibank has split up with Ogilvy in an effort to, as general manager of marketing Nicky Ashton says, stay fresh and vibrant. And to do that it’s given the business to Ogilvy’s STW stablemate Assignment Group without a pitch.
Last week BNZ Bank sent members of the media blue cakes in the shape of a brain, prompting us at StopPress to theorise the upcoming launch of a youth orientated product based around zombies. It seems we were half right.
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.
Revolution Fibres, an Auckland company that uses nanotechnology to make super strong fibres—in particular, for air filters for household ventilation systems, high strength fishing rods and fabric to enhance skin healing—claimed the supreme prize at the 2012 New Zealand Innovators Awards. And in the categories most relevant to the marketing community, Syrp’s Genie, Kiwibank’s online relationship management, The Gibson Group’s TouchHistory innovation, audio/text fusion Booktrack, virtual world SmallWorlds, paperless receipts company Paperkut and The Nutter’s Club also took home prizes.
TSB managed to get itself on TV remarkably quickly after the announcement of the National Bank/ANZ fusion with a message aimed directly at the customers who see the rebrand as an opportunity to switch. And, as expected, the rest of the banks were close behind with their own various overtures.
Switching banks is such a hassle almost nobody bothers. But by triggering change to the system and then creating a category-breaking campaign to let everyone know how easy it was to do it, new customers came flooding in to Kiwibank.
