Last night, Auckland’s Langham Hotel was taken over by advertising and marketing folk eager to celebrate the country’s most effective marketing campaigns at the 2017 NZ Effie Awards. Near 200 entries had been whittled down to 100 finalists before the best of the best were invited to the stage to bask in bronze, silver and gold. Here’s the low down of who won what.
Browsing: Lion
Last night, under blue lights and a surrounding of ice sculptures, New Zealand’s marketing community came together to uncover the marketing strategies that lie beneath impressive results and celebrate the winner of the 26th TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards.
Vice Media’s sales and marketing director Jamie Brewer says his team has an internal mantra that they try to apply regardless of what type of content they’re producing. “We always tell each other, ‘don’t be shitty,’” he says. And recently he’s put this mantra to the test in a three-part documentary series for Tokyo Dry.
Shortly after starting at Lion in 2014, Lana Blair performed well beyond what her limited experience should have allowed, taking two of its key brands from strength to strength. This is one young marketer to keep an eye on.
Following on from the recent controversy regarding Lion’s funding of research conducted by anthropologist Dr Anne Fox, we take a look at whether we can trust research funded by coroporations (or anyone for that matter).
Earlier this year, Speight’s introduced Kiwis to Little Henry, the not-so-little Kiwi bloke who gathered his friends together to build a glorious shed featuring masculine decor, a dartboard and pull-out barbecue. This ad no doubt created envy in the hearts of many loyal Speight’s drinkers and the brand has now responded by launching an online competition that will give ten* lucky Kiwis a similarly legendary shed.
Back in December, the blood alcohol limit was lowered from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams per millilitre, and while every human is different, that equates to about two standard drinks over two hours before drivers blow the bag. NZTA and Clemenger BBDO announced that change with a simple informational campaign. But, as they have been doing for years, they’re now playing the emotional card. PLUS: How the changes have impacted the booze business.
Industry happenings at Whybin/TBWA, Lion, Strategy Wellington, Destination Queenstown and The Sweet Shop.
A record 32 golds were handed out at the AWARD Awards last night. And of the Kiwi agencies, DDB, Clemenger BBDO and Colenso BBDO had most cause to celebrate. PLUS: local talent acknowledged at the Young Guns.
Lion and DDB’s Steinlager Deep Dive campaign seemed to get the tick of approval from the marketing community (and a few questions in an interesting piece on MediaWatch). And many also seem fairly taken with the pair’s very literal pun-based ‘That’s Dry’ campaign for Speight’s new alcoholic Ginger Beer, which has charted the journey of Karl Burnett squaring off against a forlorn ginger bear for mascot duties. Now it’s released a few more entertaining clips.
DDB New Zealand has had a few good account wins recently, including Icebreaker and the Auckland Council. And it did pretty well at Spikes Asia over the weekend too, winning enough trophies to be placed second in the agency of the year category behind Dentsu Tokyo.
After a competitive pitch, Lion has decided to shift its digital business away from its agency of over seven years, Digital Arts Network, and hand it to Young & Shand, with its pitch partner Tailor taking care of .net web development.
Scandinavia is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that when Lion decided to launch its new range of low-sugar sodas, the company chose an old Skaldic word thought to mean ‘connected’ as the name of the product. Dubbed Hӧpt and sold in bottles that that seem more suited to beer or cider, Lion’s new range of non-alcoholic drinks is currently being advertised via billboards as a soda alternative that “contains less than half the sugar of leading regular soft drinks”.
Lion has put its digital business up for pitch, with the incumbent DAN, Gladeye and Young & Shand/Tailor thought to be in the running.
Only a few weeks after suffering dual account losses, DDB seems to have turned things around and it looks as though the agency will be ending the year on a high. In addition to recently returning to the driver’s seat by winning the BMW/Mini account, DDB has been announced as New Zealand’s leading creative agency for 2013 at the annual Campaign Asia Agency of the Year Awards. PLUS: there are rumours that the agency will be toasting with a Speight’s in-hand at the end of the year.
The second instalment of Lindauer’s “national girls’ night out” took place on 15 November at various nightspots across the country. And to ensure that the blokes didn’t feel too abandoned on this night of feminine revelry, Lindauer and BBD arranged a few celebrity man-sitters to entertain the sullen couch dwellers at home.
Steinlager recently launched a fairly brave and entertaining responsible drinking campaign called ‘Be the artist, not the canvas’ that showed some creative/violating uses for marker pens, aimed to poke fun at those who over-indulge and marked a slight change in strategy for the brand. And, as brand manager Michael Taylor says, it’s gone down a treat with the punters.
DB’s new marketing director, changes at Lion, DraftFCB recognised as one of the country’s best workplaces, Cooney heads for Swaytech, Media Design School grads go fulltime at Sugar & Partners, Marc Ellis swaps More for less and Auckland Airport brings a digital boffin into the fold.
In these fragmented, digital times, the allure and impact of big, expensive brand ads is on the wane. Content marketing is increasingly filling the void and the industry is starting to recognise that substance is more important than style when it comes to advertising. And it’s about time, says Mike O’Sullivan, executive director at BrandWorld and recent inductee into the TVNZ Marketing Hall of Fame.
Beer drinkers who want to take a step towards becoming beer connoisseurs can now look forward to Lion’s latest content marketing campaign on TVNZ.
It’s certainly not the best of times for mainstream beer, with volumes generally decreasing due to changing tastes and the proliferation of other booze options. But there are still strong loyalties to certain drops. And Lion’s Waikato Draught and Hamilton agency King St have devised a regional outdoor and radio campaign to tap into that.
Beer is fragile and precious cargo for many Kiwi blokes and blokesses, so Lion’s beer insurance campaign for its Crafty Beggars range isn’t nearly as absurd as it might sound.
According to the latest figures, Kiwis consumed 20 million fewer litres of beer in 2012 than the year before, something put down to a combination of average summer weather and a general shift away from the brown stuff towards wine and spirits. But there is growth in craft beer and Lion is continuing to get in on that act with its new Crafty Beggars range, “a craft beer you can actually drink”.
Waikato-based advertising agency King St is feeling pretty chuffed with itself, having snapped up the business for Lion’s Waikato Draught brand, in a move pitted as restoring the brand “to its glory days”.
The Southern Man has been a feature of Speight’s advertising—and a prominent feature of Kiwi pop culture—for many years, so any major change to the much-loved advertising figure is obviously fraught with danger. But times have changed. And, while New Zealand might not have too many skyscrapers, the new Speight’s campaign aims to show that we’ve got our priorities right.
It’s pretty tough going for the mainstream beers at the moment, with all the growth coming from the craft category and the old stalwarts struggling to keep up as palates change and new tipples tickle fancies. Speight’s Gold Medal Ale is still the country’s most popular beer brand by volume, however, and the brand has recently tried to become more craft-like and even branched out into—block your ears Southern Men—cider. So, in an effort to create a more cohesive family unit and ensure the flagship variety continues its reign, the brand has been given an overhaul by Dow Design.
In the world of advertising, the portrayal of men often tends to be split into two major categories: the hyper-masculine, sex-fuelled, beer chugging, sport-loving creature or the hapless, helpless dunce incapable of doing even the simplest of tasks without the help of a female. Of course, there are many exceptions to that stereotypical rule, but both ends of this spectrum are often seen as being low hanging fruit. But, as part of Lindauer’s Girl’s Night Out campaign, Lion and DDB have picked that fruit, put it into a bottle and given it a good shake with a 90 second TVC by the Roadmap Institute called ‘Don’t Worry Boys’.
We broke the story about Andrew Stone leaving Droga5 on Friday to spend more time with his family and do some consultancy work. And that high-profile departure, combined with the recent loss of its foundation client ASB to Saatchi & Saatchi, led to a fair bit of speculation that Droga5 was in a bit of trouble. But Mike O’Sullivan, who has stepped up to fill the leadership role, says the doors are still well and truly open and, with a few new clients and a new management team, the agency is poised for growth.
Since Steinlager Pure was launched in 2007, Lion has used big name American actors to endorse the brand, with the likes of Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe and Vincent Gallo gracing our screens and stroking our egos in the past campaigns made by Publicis Mojo. But after a hiatus from Kiwi TV screens as its big brother’s white cans took over during the RWC—and with DDB now as its lead agency—it’s ready to launch its next campaign on Sunday. And for the first time the new mascot is a Kiwi: successful director, actor and all-round funny man Taika Waititi.
The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a church billboard proclaiming “Jesus Heals Cancer” that was erected by the Equippers’ Church in Napier and an ad for Waikato Draught that linked itself with the Chiefs in a Waikato Times supplement have crossed the line.