Most of Tourism New Zealand’s sizable marketing and comms budget now gets directed towards digital channels in an effort to get ‘active considerers’ on the plane. And its latest work via Contagion is trying to tempt the Gen Ys back for some backpacking with Storiesbeatstuff.com, something the agency believes is “possibly the largest social media campaign a New Zealand agency has produced”.
1-1, CRM and loyalty agency justONE is on a bit of a roll at the moment and, following on from the big launch of the long-awaited Farmers Club, it has picked up two new juicy bits of below-the-line business: Ziera shoes and Mercury Energy.
Amid all the global economic carnage, Deloitte Fast 50 was almost like an island of business optimism. Powershop took out the top-spot with the competition’s highest ever growth rate of 5280 percent, 2degrees was next on 3761 percent and many impressive smaller, often under-the-radar businesses from across the spectrum were recognised. But Special Group and The Research Agency stood out in the marcomms sector after being ranked as New Zealand’s 16th and 42nd fastest growing companies respectively.
When it comes to valuable marketing commodities, celebrity chef, food writer, publisher and TV star Annabel Langbein is basically the Dan Carter of cooking. And Silver Fern Farms has signed on to use Langbein as its meaty ambassador for her property Fresh Everyday.
…as another senior Adshel staffer departs, Val Morgan welcomes a new national sales director, the Newspaper Publisher’s Association announces a new business and marketing manager, and GrabOne adds to the family.
Not surprisingly, the All Blacks’ celebrations with Old Bill in the changing rooms was the most popular photo gallery of the tournament on nzherald.co.nz. But, given the marketing battle royale that has played out between Steinlager and Heineken, we couldn’t help but notice one photo in particular. If you look closely you’ll see some members of the team—and the Dear Leader who never misses out—drinking the team sponsor’s product (good to see Andrew ‘The Seal Killer’ Hore rocking a white can) in the supposedly ‘clean’ stadium. But, blow me down, Piri Weepu is supping from a bottle of Heineken. Someone call the IRB. A fine must be dished out.
From a marketing perspective, the battle between All Blacks sponsors Steinlager and RWC sponsors Heineken was one of the most enthralling. Steinlager played the local card very well with its savvy ‘We Believe’ and Heineken played the international card with ‘This is the Game’. And both parties are keeping the marketing momentum going.
Put 16 November 2011 in your diary folks, because the Marketing Association reckons the list of big brains on the bill means the Marketing Today conference is shaping up as the biggest marketing event of the year.
Tourism New Zealand put out a call for entries for a new agency in early September and, while TNZ’s Justin Watson made a commitment not to disclose the pitch list as “some of them might have conflicts”, it’s thought to have been whittled down to four: Clemenger Group, Droga5, Publicis Mojo and TBWA\.
In the latest example of the ongoing hostage swapping drama between DDB Group and Clemenger, DDB Group’s direct and digital arm Rapp Tribal has appointed AIM Proximity general manager, Colenso head of integration and ‘reality hacker’ Andy Bell as its new general manager.
NZ Lotteries has given the digital signage sector a big fillip with the roll-out of LCD promotional screens to 600 of its top Lotto stores around the country, the biggest roll-out of its kind in New Zealand. And so far, the enticing new technology is doing the business.
Carlson Marketing, a proprietary loyalty programme company that has 27 offices in 15 countries, including branches in Auckland, Sydney, and Melbourne, and claims to be New Zealand’s largest loyalty programme provider, is soon to be no more due to a rebrand that will align it with global parent company Aimia.
It’s been a tough year for the Christchurch-helmed Strategy Design and Advertising. But last week was a well-deserved good one, with its first Effie (one bronze for Christchurch City Council’s Share an Idea) and five golds at the Best Awards. Now it’s getting international attention for its brand development work for new foreign exchange trading website MahiFX—and particularly for an online gimmick that allows visitors to compare their income to renowned supertrader John Paulson.
All Good Bananas won the Sustainability prize at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards recently. And, according to its entry, it managed to gain four percent market share and sell its Fairtrade bananas at a premium. But not everyone is singing its sustainable praises, as evidenced by an email we received from Steve Barton, the New Zealand representative for Dole Asia, that questioned the assertions made by its smaller competitor.
Using the company vehicle for a dash of marketing is a long-practised commercial tradition. Usually it’s all fairly standard fare that blends into the rest of the melee. But this punny wee number spotted on the back of a van in Auckland got our attention. As did this personalised plate, but for another reason altogether. As a perplexed passenger said: “What does a bathroom truck have to do with a uterus?”
Kiwi marketing agency Traffic has muscled its way past campaigns for the likes of Hilton Hotels to triumph in the business-to-business category of the Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards in the US.
Overall, the awards received more than 600 entries, but Traffic was the only New Zealand winner among them. The …
Photo by Paul Statham
When Lotto arrived in New Zealand in 1987, Kiwis were excited, the big ads were delivering the goods and the coffers were filling nicely. But when Wendy Rayner started her role as marketing manager for jackpot games in 2003, having come from accountancy, advertising and nine years at TVNZ, jackpot fatigue had set in, the products weren’t working and sales and player numbers were in decline.
3 Wise Men is a clever company. It sells good products to men at a good price; its largely print-based ad campaign by Josh & Jamie/Assignment Group is always entertaining and memorable; and its policy of only working with good bastards is a noble business strategy. Now it’s become the good bastard by launching two limited edition Cameron Wilson shirts as part of its summer collection, with $20 from each shirt sold going to the cancer charity the range is named after.
Snapr, a Kiwi-conceived free photo sharing and geo-tagging app has made a bit of name for itself after being given some cash by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, endorsed by Microsoft and used to show the glamour shots during New Zealand Fashion Week. Now it’s added a dose of the digital marketing term du jour—gamification—to the recipe with a photo sharing game called Capture the Flag that’s captured the attention of some major Kiwi brands.
Photo by Paul Statham
AUT became a university just ten years ago and while its compelling consumer-facing brand was doing the business, its 14 Research Institutes had grown organically until 2009 and had no overall marketing, brand or strategic direction—even though research success plays a big role in establishing a good reputation. Enter 30-year-old Max Woodhead, who worked in marketing for sport and recreation and applied sciences and whose job it was to help build a research brand from scratch, unify the view of these disparate research strands, get the notoriously headstrong academics and institute directors to believe in the project and eventually build AUT’s overall brand, attract better post graduate academics, foster better research outputs and bring in more funding.
Per capita, New Zealand has the highest rate of banana consumption in the world. But, because we can’t grow enough of them ourselves, importing them is the only way to satisfy our voracious appetite. For All Good Organics, the problem was the wrong kind of bananas were being consumed, so it established a new socially responsible and sustainable banana brand that was, as the slogan says, good for the land, good for the grower, and good for consumers’ consciences—and they did it with an extremely limited budget and a challenger brand twinkle in the eye.
In 2009 entrepreneur Geoff Matthews and a consortium of mates purchased a struggling fish farm near Twizel and renamed it Mount Cook Alpine Salmon (MCAS). They knew MCAS was ten years behind the game, so just to catch up wasn’t good enough. It had to leapfrog the industry and play by its own rules.
As part of Colmar Brunton’s inaugural New Zealand Dinner Plate Study, 1017 Kiwis were asked what they were having for dinner, who planned, cooked and shopped for the meal, what their attitudes and emotions were to cooking, and all the who with, what with, where and which day of the week questions you can think of. And while there were lots of findings that fit with what you’d expect, there were a few surprises too, chief among them that Kiwi blokes now make up nearly half of the growing ‘passionate foodies’ category and are generally more passionate about cooking.
He’s been on gardening leave since his surprise resignation from the role of chief executive at MediaWorks TV in June. And now it’s been announced that Jason Paris will take over the role of chief marketing officer at Telecom, replacing the outgoing Keiren Cooney, who took a big media battering over the Abstain for the Game campaign and is set to take up the role of chief communications officer with the National Broadband Network company in Australia.
As you may have noticed, there are a host of rugby-themed promotions and, for the sponsors, RWC ticket giveaways being offered at the moment. And nzherald.co.nz and M&C Saatchi have come up with a good’un by asking Kiwis to send in their best rugby-related words or phrases, along with their definitions. And, thanks to official sponsor ANZ, the best ‘rugbyism’ added at rugbydictionary.co.nz and then voted for by the people will get tickets to the final. But wait, there’s more. There’s an extra special treat on offer for all you creative boffins in adland.
The call for entries for the 2011 RSVP and Nexus Awards has been put out. So marketing gurus are once again being encouraged to showcase shining examples of the campaigns and projects they’ve created that stimulate a conversation, ask for a response, prompt some deeper brand involvement and lead to a sale, lead or other measurable change in behaviour.
Grabaseat is known for its slightly risque promotions, such as last year’s Cougar Army at the NZI Sevens, and, with the arrival of Rico on the scene, the naughty child’s sense of marketing humour even seems to have rubbed off on its more staid parent Air New Zealand. Grabaseat has continued that trend for yet another pseudo RWC campaign called the World Trophy of Fun.
During the Rugby World Cup, close to 100,000 visitors are expected to grace our shores and, if the throng of diners at the new Wynyard Quarter is any guide, they’ll be spending plenty of time and money sampling our food and beverages inbetween games. It’s a great opportunity to show tourists what we can do and, as part of its in-restaurant marketing push, Fly the Flag, Silver Fern Farms and Bidvest are doing everything they can to get Kiwi meat into visitor’s gullets by supplying New Zealand grown lamb, venison and beef to 138 leading restaurants around the country, including Logan Brown and Pravda in Wellington, the Hilton in Auckland and Tatler and Millbrook in Queenstown.
In what appears to be yet another instalment of Attack of the RWC Loopholes, we received a rather excited email the other day with a photo of the newly repainted KFC Balmoral in Auckland that showed what they thought was evidence of KFC supporting the All Blacks. And while this would be the logical conclusion to jump to, the official line is that it has nothing at all to do with rugby. It’s simply to promote a new variety of Mountain Dew called Pitch Black.
Marine Industrial Design, a specialist naval architecture and marine engineering firm, was established in 1996, and, like many small businesses in New Zealand, it focused on the nuts and bolts—literally—rather than marketing. New business was won almost solely through word of mouth and via a relatively limited circle of industry contacts. But in late 2009 MID was purchased by Babcock Fitzroy and new goals and strategies were put in place in order to establish itself as New Zealand’s elite operator, one of Australasia’s premier suppliers in marine engineering and design consulting and a leading regional player in South East Asia and the Pacific.