Browsing: opinion

Opinion
Heeeere’s Johnny
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The lustrous holiday beard has now been sacrificed to the gods of work, the festive affliction known to many health professionals as the ham shakes are slowly subsiding and, despite falling into a deep post-holiday depression after returning to the coalface, we’re ready for another year of destroying lies and spreading truth. So, if you’re currently staring forlornly into space at your desk like we are, here’s to another year of excitement, joy and success/tedium, drudgery and failure. We realise the nation’s brain capacity is currently sitting at about 30 percent, so what better way to ease into 2012 than with the best product demonstration we’ve seen all year, a long-winded description about the homosexual nature of rugby, a very good, self-referential long-copy ad and a paranormal contender for Dorito’s Crash the Superbowl competition. And while we’re at it, check out the remix of Barbie Girl, which aims to kick off ‘Chopular Culture’ and inspire more lamb consumption for the upcoming Australia Day celebrations. 

Opinion
Localist’s Blair Glubb on why the NZ Post-backed directory isn’t flogging a dead horse
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In the last edition of NZ Marketing magazine, BCG2’s planning director Abe Dew wrote something of an open letter to Localist and Yellow Local and put forward his views on why the ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ corporate start-ups looked likely to fall into the same category as Telecom’s Ferrit. Not surprisingly, Localist chief executive Blair Glubb disagreed. He responds to some of the claims and outlines its plans for acceleration after what he says is a strong performance in the six months since launch.

Opinion
Twitter for dummies
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Over the past month we’ve rolled out our Colmar Brunton nzgirl Women’s Tracker presentation to agencies and clients and one of the key discussions from the preso has been around Twitter. While the most commonly bandied-around, unlikely-to-be-grounded-in-fact number of participators in New Zealand is around nice percent I suspect the reality is much smaller.  And in an industry more likely to be exposed to new communication tools, I found only a very small number of people actively participating. In some agency meetings, often in a room of twenty media buyers, not one of them was tweeting.

Opinion
Smart phones, smart apps, smarter people: Greg Radford on the rise of the digitally connected shopper
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If there is one ‘new wave’ trend engaging retailers and businesses at the moment, it’s the burgeoning pool of knowledge, insight and digital tools that shoppers are now drawing on to shop smarter and save more. And while it’s often claimed New Zealand is 12 to 18 months behind global trends, it was staggering to learn at the recent eTail Conference in Palm Springs that retailers in the USA have more like a three to five year lead on their Kiwi counterparts.

Opinion
Forget about satisfied customers
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The CEO looked worried. The share price is down another few cents. Where will it finish up? The revenue figures didn’t look too flash either. A report she received from Sales told her that they had lost 142 customers in the previous month and they gained only 98 new …

Opinion
Badeebadeebadee, that’s all folks
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This is the last official StopPress day of the year. Thank God, we—and probably you—say. We’re off to gorge ourselves to within an inch our lives over Christmas, tip over a few cars and throw bottles at the police as we celebrate a traditional Kiwi New Years and try valiantly to avoid getting sunburnt tops of the feet. Hearty thanks to all our readers, advertisers, sponsors, contributors, commentors and team members. It’s been a great first year for us and, as per usual, an interesting year for what really is a pretty damn exciting industry to work in (imagine being an accountant? Borrrring). It was a helluva lot of fun writing about it all and we look forward to more frivolity, tomfoolery and cheesy puntastic headlines next year, starting 17 January (well, as much as you can look forward to getting back to work just before you go on holiday). Have a good’un, StopPressers. And make sure you fill in our survey, which will be up over the break.

Opinion
What I Digged at Webstock
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Last week I was lucky enough to spend a day soaking up the latest digital wizardry at Webstock 2010. My plan was to get a better understanding of all things digital to help us do even better digital work.

Opinion
What’s with the ‘Aditude’?
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This week from the Consumer Counsel: Nielsen’s Media division and ANZA have launched a new Attitudes to Advertising segmentation that follows on from a 2008 study. According to the research, Kiwi consumers can be split into nine distinct ‘aditude’ categories. And it turns out that levels of trust in traditional media advertising in New Zealand were higher than the global average. 

Opinion
Whinge 2.0: now available on Google
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In this week’s edition of eBuzz from the Media Counsel: The arrival of real-time Google search means whatever the twittering classes are saying about you or your company now has the potential to make it on to the front page.

Opinion
These are the people in your digital hood
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In this week’s Consumer Counsel:

Physical distance matters not. Digital tribes rule the roost. And KPMG International has put together a white paper that examines the need for marketers to target customers in a completely different way.

Opinion
It’s not easy being green
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This week from the Consumer Counsel: It’s not easy being green. Tough economic times have led to reduced environmental spending. But the greenest consumers are showing little change in their commitment to the environment. They’re just replacing idealism with hard-boiled pragmatism and modifying their own behaviour rather than buying green products that many believe are overpriced.

Opinion
Shop till you read
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In this week’s edition of eBuzz from the Media Counsel: The NZ Herald Online adds shopping to its portfolio. But how exclusive are its offerings?

Opinion
Danone’s six step process
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This week in the Consumer Counsel: Global food giant Danone thinks the “world at large has gone, and is still going through, a profound transformational phase which will have a long-lasting impact on society and on consumer behaviour.” And there are six converging trends it believes businesses need to pay attention to.

Opinion
Customer reviews: gold or turds?
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The Media Counsel investigates the ups and downs of online product reviews. Can you turn a negative review around?

Download The Media Counsel’s Consumer Counsel Customer Reviews factoid and let us know if you agree or disagree in the comments.

Opinion
Hit for Six: DraftFCB
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Welcome to our new feature, Hit for Six, where we put agency heads in the inquisition chair for six quick questions. Let’s get to know our marcomms community. Prepare to be enlightened. First victim, Justin Mowday from DraftFCB.

Name: Justin Mowday, Managing DirectorCompany: DraftFCBNo. of staff: 120 …

Opinion
New Metro: “lacks cohesion, like, er, Auckland”
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Metro magazine has been revamped – again. The Auckland darling’s latest botox treatment gets a thumbs down from long time Metro friend (and StopPress critic) David MacGregor. Plus, we have some breaking news about the Citymix & Metro merger.Metro is an old friend. It showed up on the newsstand the …

Opinion
The Conversation
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Nobody believes business anymore. So who’s in control of your brand? It’s all of us. Here’s how the truth has been democratised, distributed and Google-optimised. It’s goodbye to the mass message and welcome to The Conversation.Nobody believes business anymore. So who’s in control of …

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