In anticipation of the Super Rugby hype that will begin to captivate the nation from 15 February, APN has rebranded its sports tipping and fantasy portal as the Dream Team. In addition to a new logo, the updated version will also feature a fresh design, in-game experiences, enhanced functionality and greater integration on the Herald website.
In a time when every media doomsday prophet is speculating on the eventual expiration of print, News Works has continued to push print-based titles and has retained its belief in traditional forms of media. And to applaud the efforts of writers, editors, publishers and designers for their contributions, News Works again organised the Canon Media Awards, New Zealand’s biggest journalism awards. But rather than simply focusing on the newspaper industry, News Works also used 2013 to commend the creativity of ad agencies via the News Works Agency League. Here’s what executive director Jenny Stiles thought of the year.
While the newspaper industry is currently facing up to a range of concerning statistics, one of the positive consequences of the digital era is that newspaper brands and media companies have been forced to innovate and experiment with new forms of storytelling. APN NZ did a great job of bringing all of the various strands of its modern business together for its 150th birthday celebrations last week, from the printed paper to the special editorial projects to the parallax scrolling website to the live blog of the newsroom to Dick Frizzell’s commissioned artworks of Kiwi legends to the 15-day promotion. And at the cocktail function at the Auckland Art Gallery, they showed a clip created by Leon Sefton of Perendale Productions that showed what the current crop of editors and journalists thought about the milestone—and what the company will need to do if it hopes to be around for the next 150 years.
APN has made a swag of changes to nzherald.co.nz, including a Parallax-based microsite for special editions and topics. Another key addition is the content timeline, or story arc, which includes related articles, videos and images that let users track a developing issue.
The shift to digital has disrupted many industries, but news media has been one of the most badly affected. So what are the options? And are any local publishers making money online? Sim Ahmed investigates.
New Zealanders love nothing more than hearing their country get a mention, especially if comes from the mouth of a foreign celebrity. Facebook pages, articles both real and satirical, and TV segments have been devoted this strange and thrilling phenomenon. And we can add another one to the list, because the The Herald has made it into The Onion’s brilliant story about the birth of the royal baby.
Fizzy orange vitamin manufacturer Berocca is taking a rather unique approach to mobile advertising by targeting an underutilised feature of the iPhone (at least by advertisers) – the Calendar App.
Samsung’s latest range of hand and voice-activated Smart TVs were launched in New Zealand last month with a global campaign called ‘King of the TV City’, which features a heroic TV watcher placating an angry T-Rex with a mere pinch of his fingers. And Auckland agency Republik has come up with a clever way to leverage these international assets on local digital platforms.
As the illustration above demonstrates, it seems The New Zealand Herald has become a bit formulaic with its photography – so much so that a new(ish) Tumblr blog has sprung up to seize the frowny-faced opportunity for laughs.
Given the recent ructions in the world of print media—and, to a lesser extent, broadcast media—and the fact that the job of newspaper journalist was recently ranked as the worst job in a recent US survey, this nzherald.co.nz headline shows some surprising results.
NZ Herald and NZ On Air have given new life to a cartoon strip from the Herald’s now defunct music magazine Volume, taking it from paper to an animated web series called Hook Ups on the Herald website.
The New Zealand Herald now has more than 100,000 likes on its Facebook page. The impressive feat makes NZ Herald the most popular news brand in New Zealand on the social network.
A time traveller stranded in New Zealand seeks help in the NZ Herald’s classifieds section to go back in time and warn younger self.
Tired of the increasing “tabloidisation” of news media, James Wendelborn took it upon himself to see if New Zealand’s largest paper had succumbed. During his spare time he collected and analysed the front page of every weekday issue of the NZ Herald in 2012 looking for tawdry tales and what ever the print edition of linkbait is. Last week he revealed the results of his year-long project called Selling the News.
With only so many minutes in the day (1440 to be precise) there’s not much time for lolly-gagging about when looking for which news articles are worth reading and which are not. Ferald is an extension for the Chrome browser which takes the hassle out of this equation for New Zealander news consumers.
Browsing the New Zealand Herald website this morning for Pope stories I noticed a few new buttons that weren’t there the day before. Overnight the NZ Herald has added features to make sharing on the site a little bit easier.
APN New Zealand is shutting up shop at Sella, incorporating the auction site – and Trade Me’s last significant rival – into its classified services for the NZ Herald and other mastheads.
Further cost reductions and efficiency measures could see APN New Zealand outsource up to 24 jobs overseas, and has resulted in the sale of four of its Capital Community Newspapers.
Samsung has been one of the big movers in the mobile space in recent years, and, with a series of quality ads based around its ‘Next Big Thing’ tagline, has had plenty of success from taking the fight directly to Apple. While the late Steve Jobs rejected the idea of a stylus, Samsung has fully embraced the idea for its Note series and, to demonstrate the kind of artistic trickery the newest model is capable of, Colenso BBDO and Samsung collaborated with the New Zealand Herald’s legendary satirical cartoonist (and one of the oldest fathers in the world), Peter Bromhead, in an effort to go beyond the banner and become part of the content.
The print newspaper industry continues to struggle with retaining readers in a difficult time for the sector, with the latest circulation figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) showing losses almost across the board.
There are those among us who have some serious issues with grammatical errors. And, with a healthy dose of ‘there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go us’, we couldn’t help but notice a slightly ironic ad talking up the BBC World Service in the New Zealand Herald. First Jimmy Savile, now this. The controllers will be aghast.
The newspaper industry has certainly had better years than 2012, with a continuing shift away from paper by readers and advertisers, big losses and restructures for the major players in this market and the spectre of the Leveson Enquiry hanging over print journalism. But there was still plenty to celebrate. News Work’s new business and marketing manager Jenny Stiles sounds off.
APN went to plenty of trouble to promote the recent changes to the New Zealand Herald and nzherald.co.nz, with a fancy TVC, a host of print and digital advertising and a microsite dedicated to keeping readers and advertisers informed. All up, the campaign had a ratecard value of $4 million (although it used its own media channels extensively). And, in what could either be seen as an example of how far newspaper marketing has progressed, or an example of how the newspaper industry didn’t need to do jack to maintain its readers and advertisers back in the day, it was slightly more advanced than the campaign the Herald ran to preview its last major format change in 1960.
Despite the fact the paper was smaller, the launch of the compact New Zealand Herald and its redesigned website was pretty hard to miss yesterday (and not surprisingly, given the ratecard value of the campaign was around $4 million). So how has it gone down with punters, staff and media agencies?
Shine’s Julian Andrews goes free range, APN announces its new Herald line-up, DDB welcomes back a prodigal duo, Admission admits many, TradeMe seeks out Vivaki, DraftFCB activates a rising star, Komli launches its mobile ad network, Ngage gets its FIX and Steve Price spruiks Panasonic’s smart TVs.
There is no question the media landscape is changing and the pace of technological advancements means that change is happening more rapidly than ever. This is changing the way people live their lives and the way that they consume media. At APN we spend a lot of time listening to consumers and understanding the affect these changes have on their relationships with our news and entertainment brands. There is no denying that more and more people are reading, watching and listening to our content across print, digital and mobile platforms. But rather than seeing that as a negative trend, we believe this is a strong signal for a positive future.
The ‘compact’ weekday Herald is just around the corner. But APN New Zealand’s digital team will also have a few new toys to play with, with a revamped nzherald.co.nz website, a new social reader for Facebook and updated mobile and tablet apps set to go live on Monday 10 September. And to help keep everyone up to date with “the most significant changes being made to the company’s print and online products for a decade”, it has even launched a new microsite, nzherald.co.nz/themoreyouknow.
September is shaping up to be a watershed month for APN NZ—and, more broadly, New Zealand’s newspaper publishing sector. The New Zealand Herald is set to reveal its new compact weekday edition on 10 September and the newly redesigned nzherald.co.nz site will go live around the same time. There’s also a new Newspaper Inserted Magazine (NIM) on Mondays about food, health and well-being and readers will also be treated to a one-off premium glossy magazine on launch day called, appropriately enough, The Magazine. But what exactly is a magazine? Why are NIMs so appealing for newspaper publishers? And why is ACP’s Paul Dykzeul so fired up?
The latest issue of North & South features an in-depth cover story on the Ewen Macdonald case that was one year in the writing. And, as often happens when a big story hits the public domain, it was picked up by the major papers, which led to a bit of an online barney between ACP and editor in chief of the Herald’s products Tim Murphy.
With the massive changes currently taking place in the Australian publishing scene at the moment and the steady move of readers from print to digital around the world, the newspaper business is at a crossroads. So what is the rationale behind the Herald’s change to tabloid? Will New Zealand readers soon be paying for online content? And how is APN preparing for the future? We chat with APN’s chief executive Martin Simons.