Finding commercial partners is a cost-effective way to reach a wider, or desired audience. When a brand pairing works well, it can garner great results and high engagement. But what makes a good partnership? One brand that has paired wisely and has the results to show for it is Spark. Spark’s general manager of marketing Clive Ormerod talks us through some of the thinking behind its brand alignments.
Idealog’s Henry Oliver talks to Spotify’s global creative director Alex Bodman on how the music streaming service is relying less on the old marketing rule book and turning to data to connect with its audience in a more authentic way.
The advertising landscape is changing constantly as marketers need to come up with new ways to attract an audience that will no longer respond to your classic 30-second TVC and a billboard. The AdRoll 2015 ANZ State of the Industry Report is out and reveals what marketers think of their ever-evolving profession as well as what their views are on the future of digital advertising.
While many of us probably take the honey sitting in our pantry for granted, mentally placing it in the same family as the marmite, jam and peanut butter, if you really think about it, honey is a small miracle. There are so many vital variables that make the production of the golden sweetener possible. Newly launched honey brand Lumojo has attempted to reflect honey’s value as a premium product through strong design, creating minimalist and streamlined packaging with Alt Group to, as it says, pay homage to the “natural designers” aka the bees. PLUS: we delve into the apparent increase of ‘premium’ products and take look at the honey industry in New Zealand.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to step a few hundred years into the past for just a couple of hours? Well, a to-scale replica of the second Globe Theatre (1614) erected in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death is about as close as it gets for the playwright’s fans, and it’s popped up right in Auckland city. The masterminds behind the Pop-up Globe have themselves labelled the experience as a kind of time travel, and given that tickets are selling like hot cakes, it fits with a recent shift in spending behaviour, where consumers are increasingly spending more on experiences over material items.
For the first time (for the most part) in eight years, government-funded RNZ has invested in paid advertising in Auckland, collaborating with Rainger and Rolfe, as part of its goal to double its audience by 2020 and promote the ‘RNZ’ insignia.
Fullers and Burger Burger have teamed up to play cupid for a match-making campaign via Motion Sickness Studio. Hoping that burgers and wine are the perfect aphrodisiac, the two companies will host dates for lucky entrants looking for love.
While a collaboration between a burger restaurant and ferry service may seem a bit unconventional, creative director and founder of Motion Sickness Studio Sam Stuchbury says the companies have a cross over in their target demographics.
OgilvyChange business director Renee Jaine looks at how marketers can use behavioural science to start this year on a good note.
Last year, the Global Mode legal battle provided a feisty introduction to the competitive banter that would unfold as the SVOD market started to mature in New Zealand. And although, we are only a few weeks into January, there are already a few jabs being thrown in this space. Following on from news that Netflix was going to clamp down on backdoor users accessing its US version, Neon has been quick to play its first hand with a responsive media release titled “Never fear NEON is Here”.
The traditional perception of golf usually evokes images of diamond-patterned shirts, cheese cutters, pastel sweaters, loafers and affluent white men. This long-standing myth is so entrenched that it even led to the urban myth that the word golf was in fact an acronym for ‘gentleman only, ladies forbidden’. This, of course, isn’t true, but the stereotype has long prevailed in golfing, leading to it being seen as a rich man’s sport or a hobby for retirees.
Since the craft beer industry started booming over the past few years in New Zealand, we’ve seen some beautiful labels adorning supermarket shelves and bar taps. These labels are often less about trumpeting the brand and more about celebrating the distinctive personality of the beer, often expressed through creative illustrations and inventive names. We had a chat with The Wireless’s Toby Morris about his experience illustrating for beer brands, and look into why illustration has become a popular promotional tool.
In celebration of Quentin Tarantino’s latest film The Hateful Eight, and coinciding with the launch of a beer dedicated to the film, a Ponsonby pub transformed itself into a rendition of the film’s set, a Wyoming log cabin in post-Civil War America.
Spark is continuing to utilise its younger, cooler post-rebrand persona by venturing into target market territory. Its most recent effort is its summer Instagram campaign, developed with its PR agency Sherson Willis, which rewards the most creative fans with credit (or as Spark calls it, ‘social currency’) if they capture and share Instagram shots (based on trending images on the platform) with the correct hashtag. And halfway through the campaign, the telco has already given away thousands of dollars of credit, increased sign ups and seen a growth in its Instagram following.
While there has been a long-held perception that beer increases confidence, wit and the attractiveness of other people (okay, maybe this part is still true), the comforting alcohol blanket has gradually been pulled away over the years to reveal the sobering truth, that too much beer is more likely to make the drinker stumbly, belchy and obnoxious. The Health Promotion Agency and FCB have played on this with the year-old campaign ‘Not Beersies’, which champions the benefits of switching that beer for a water, launching a new ad to coincide with the beer-heavy summer period.
On Monday morning, widespread speculation that WPP would up its stake in STW was confirmed by news that it had increased its shareholding from 23.6 percent to a controlling 61 percent. This merger sees the 70 STW-owned and part-owned companies, including Ogilvy & Mather, Ikon, JWT, Designworks, Assignment Group, pulled further into the WPP family of businesses, creating the largest marketing group across Australia and New Zealand. So what does this mean for the local market?
New Zealand’s Asian population is growing in both the main centres and the regions, but are retailers and marketers missing their opportunity to turn them into customers due to a lack of understanding, stereotyping and homogenisation? Nick Siu and Peter Doyle offer some advice.
Last week, Stolen Spirits raised a toast after selling a controlling interest in the company to US-based venture capital funds Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for NZ$21 million. Before this premium vodka 42Below became a global brand when it was sold to Bacardi. And a number of other Kiwi craft spirits appear to be following close behind.
Humans love a good origin story. And, in the business world, the power of the overnight success narrative often means the extremely difficult period of starting and growing a business is conveniently overlooked in the mythology. The latest Kiwi business to join that club is Stolen Spirits, which was started around five years ago in a bedroom in Mt Eden and this week sold a controlling interest to US company Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for $21 million. And it’s another great example of a Kiwi business that has understood the power of marketing to create a huge amount of value in a short amount of time.
For years brands have been at ‘arms length’ and somewhat out of touch with the reality of the customer experience, says Jenene Crossan. But influencer marketing, which is driven by brands shifting away from push-style ads towards ‘an enhanced word of mouth strategy’, has the ability to change that.
As Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball shows, the clever use of data and technology can mean the difference between winning and losing in sport and, with massive broadcasting rights being signed here and around the world and a range of brands hitching their wagons to professional athletes, there’s plenty at stake. And VX Sport, a Kiwi tech company, is quietly revolutionising the way sport is played—and, maybe, how it’s watched.
Despite the initial controversy surrounding Daniel Craig as the new 007, the blonde Bond has proven to be extremely marketable whether it be Land Rover, Heineken or Omega as these Spectre-related promotional spots demonstrate.
As the founder of a few companies, Jenene Crossan often gets asked to explain the traits required to succeed. She’s given a range of different answers, from bravery to persistence to bossiness. But she says you can’t underestimate the importance of just starting blindly and being comfortable with your own vulnerability.
Every year, Canada’s Strategy Magazine asks local agencies to indulge in some creative self-flagellation to celebrate its agency of the year awards. Last year, there were riffs on vending machine stunts, the industry’s culture of long hours and many other advertising-specific issues. And this year is no different, with fun poked at everything from brands co-opting female empowerment to the ridiculousness of “spec” work to the benefits of early targeting.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
The holy grail of content marketing is to create a win-win-win: something that’s good for the consumers, good for the brand and good for the ambassadors/publishers. And Fonterra Brands, Annabel Langbein and Milk reckon they’ve done just that with a new content-led campaign/’inspiration platform’ called ‘We Are What We Eat’, which aims to provide Kiwis with the tools to cook more often and more simply—and, at the same time, promote the surprisingly large benefits of getting the family around the table.
After Craig Herbison was appointed as BNZ’s chief marketing officer in 2011, his first big act was to launch the new brand platform in the form of a polarising, existential teaser campaign that asked whether money was good or bad (answer: neither, it’s what you make of it that counts). Since then he’s made ‘Be Good with Money’ a central pillar of the business and around one year ago, he was promoted to director of retail banking and marketing. So, after saying goodbye to the Airpoints scheme and launching another confronting campaign about the perils of not planning ahead, are the marketing efforts paying dividends?
Burgers are so hot right now and weirder and more wonderful offerings at popular events like Wellington on a Plate’s ‘Burger Wellington’ competition have shown the levels of experimentation burger eaters are willing to indulge. These gentrified consumer tastes have given rise to the ‘better burger’ movement, a niche occupied by chains like Burger Fuel and Burger Wisconsin and popular restaurants like Auckland’s Burger Burger. Even that bastion of standardised beef and cheese, McDonald’s, has announced moves to posh up their burgers by allowing customers to create their own. But ‘bourgeois burgery’ has now moved to the humble Kiwi BBQ, if the entries to Tip Top’s ‘Build a Better Burger Challenge’ are anything to go by.
Garage Project, a Wellington-based craft brewery, has taken the number one ranking on this year’s Deloitte Fast 50 with a three year growth rate of 664%.
Typically, finding a surprise in your food is a Very Bad Thing and whether it’s a mouse in a loaf, a cockroach in a Big Mac, or a wasp in a block of chocolate, media outlets take great pleasure in heaping shame on those responsible when it happens. But to promote its new range of real fish, Sealord has embraced that and given unsuspecting shoppers a bit of a fright in the frozen food aisle.
BurgerFuel currently has 82 stores strewn across six countries, and there isn’t a single agency lucky enough to officially call it a full-time client. Damien Venuto sits down with the company’s marketing manager Alexis Lam to find out why he keeps most of the work in-house.