Time is running out for young creative and media prodigies to enter the Fairfax Media Young Lions competition, which offers four fresh-faced souls a chance to attend and compete at the Cannes Lions, the largest and most prestigious advertising festival in all the world.
Hark! The iPad hath been released, the feverish purchasing (300,000 on its first day in the US, Apple says) hath begun and the opining, reviewing, analysing and critiquing of one of the world’s most talked about devices is well underway. And, overall, it seems the opining, reviewing, analysing and critiquing of this ‘game changing’ gadget has been very positive.
Somewhat surprisingly, for a man who’s the president and chief creative officer of the massive behemoth that is the Time Warner Global Media Group (oh, and he’s also the senior vice president of Time Warner), Mark D’Arcy exudes calm and charm. And, with a silver tongue and a penchant for strange magazines like this, he seems like your quintessential creative director. The strange thing is he’s actually working for a media company and he’s at the forefront of what he sees as a move towards media-led creativity in marketing.
There’s plenty of ambiguity going around when it comes to channel planning. So the time is right to shed some light on what it is – and, equally, what it isn’t.
Unless you’re scared of large, uninterrupted blocks of text, why would you read a story about one boring thing, when you could read a story that deals with a whole range of exciting things? That’s right, you wouldn’t. Or would you?
You know it was a bad year when an industry organisation comes out and says it’s fairly happy with a significant core revenue decline. But that’s exactly what the papers have done after the release of the Advertising Standards Authority’s New Zealand Advertising Turnover scorecard. Online, however, is sitting pretty as the only sector to notch up an increase.
After a stellar 2009 – so good, in fact, that it’s currently on a pitch ban – DraftFCB has taken the 2010 Fairfax AdMedia Agency of the Year award.
Aside from these, this, and this, StopPress loves nothing more than data. And we’re particularly fond of hard data. Of course, the brilliant thing about data is that it can be used selectively to show how good you are, and how bad other things, like competitors, are. And there’s almost no better example of this than the tit for tatting that is news ratings data in New Zealand.
Comedian and writer Raybon Kan, who has recently returned to Kiwi shores after a stint in London, is set to dazzle the magazine industry with witty quips in his role as MC at this year’s Magazine Awards.
New Zealand’s top-selling gardening magazine, NZ Gardener, has appointed Jo McCarroll as its new editor. She will lead the team but will be under the watchful eyes and green fingers of current editor Lynda Hallinan, who will take up a new role as editorial director.
…By getting the rest of the world to promote it for you, of course.
Over the past few years, there have been numerous attempts to make magazines more interactive. Sadly, most of those attempts tended to revolve around gimmicky, impractical augmented reality stunts, where a magazine might be held up to the computer screen and a photo ‘comes to life’. There was already a medium for this: it was called video. And there was plenty of it on that thing called the internet. But for the first time in a long time, if some of the app demonstrations deliver what they promise, the integrated digital content soon to be offered up appears to offer actual benefits to everyone involved in the process—the readers, the advertisers and, if the money starts coming back, the publishers.
The Magazine Publishers Association is calling – nay, yelling – for entries to the revamped 2010 Magazine Awards. It’s a chance to win recognition for yourself, your title and your team (and, if you win, to shamelessly dance on the tables).
January was a record month for MSN.co.nz, with some of its new editorial offerings, particularly its healthy living portal and virtual sports category, bringing in a slew of online punters.
In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: The latest readership results are out. Grim reading, of course. But don’t wallow in self-pity. Laugh at the misfortune of others instead. Telecom announces modest sales of TiVo. But can CASPA change that? Can the iPad do for TV what the iPod did for music? The Travel Channel gets set for landing. The case of the missing asterisk. ComCom cracks down on misleading promotions.
Big up
Slow down
It’s a mixed bag for mags in the latest audited circulation results, with most mags reporting year-on-year declines. But there are a few notable exceptions.
As Mother always said, free money is the best kind of money. And BBC.com is offering three prize packs worth a total of NZ$33,000 to New Zealand media buyers and marketers. Each pack includes NZ$1,000 cash for the winning buyer and NZ$10,000 in online advertising media for their lucky client.
The first in a continuing series of erudite insights, market research and zeitgeisty marcomms dissection from Marketing Week. The whys and wherefores of Catch Up TV in New Zealand? How does it stack up? The year that was in TV land: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Facebook hits 400 mill. Happy sixth birthday. Statistics New Zealand’s suite of online tools small businesses quick and easy access to information. Marketing Rebooted: e-courses focusing on all things 2.0 to get you up with the play
With the success of Avatar, the start of the 3D broadcasting era for sporting events and a steady increase in the amount of 3D content being created, 3D is all the rage at the moment, leading some to conclude that the new goggle boxes are destined to be the next must-have for couch lovers this year. At present, however, it’s visual effects houses and production studios doing the buying in Australasia.
Both traditional and social media juggernauts will be very well catered for in the coming days and weeks, with the inaugural Auckland Social Media Club event taking place on Tuesday 9 February at the 42 Below Bar and the next Media Mingle set for 23 February at Honey Bar.
Getty Images today launched Thinkstock, a new image subscription product that claims to provide one of the most complete offerings in the marketplace.
Time and Fortune has selected New Zealand Magazines, a division of APN New Zealand, as the media sales agency to represent Time magazine in New Zealand.
A check on the Companies Office website shows The Media Counsel has not yet been officially placed in liquidation. But company directors have just five working days from the announcement of a liquidation to notify the Companies Office about it, whereupon its status will be updated and a liquidator will be appointed.
Following yesterday’s news that The Media Counsel had gone into voluntary liquidation, Glenda Wynyard has, unsurprisingly, gone to ground and Carat’s Ryf Quail has deflected questions to Joy Clark, Carat’s PR enforcer in Australia, who wasn’t able to be contacted. But StopPress has seen a letter that Wynyard sent to her clients to apologise and offer suggestions as to what they should do and where they should take their business.
Sarah Nicholson will take over as editor of Cuisine magazine in February, replacing outgoing editor Eric Matthews, who is returning to Sydney to work as a design consultant.
If you fancy yourself as a bit of an angler, harness both your enthusiasm and a team of no more than eight people and put Friday, 5 March aside for a day on the water as part of The Great ACP Media Fishing Competition, which is hosted by ACP Media’s men’s magazines.
After months of rumours relating to the financial health of media agency The Media Counsel, Glenda Wynyard, the managing director, confirmed today that the company has had to be put into liquidation.
Those fortunate enough to still be at home watching television every weekday morning will have a new face to contend with in 2010 after it was announced Hadyn Jones will replace Steve Gray as co-host of Good Morning, joining Sarah Bradley and Brendon Pongia on the couch to discuss things like gardening and emotions.
Fairfax Media, publisher of stuff.co.nz has appointed journalist and blogger Greer McDonald, who has been a news reporter specialising in online issues at The Dominion Post for the last two years, as its first social media editor.
The new year has been rung in, and so have changes to the nzherald.co.nz team, with a new recruit and an increased focus on direct advertising sales.