Claudia Macdonald, managing director of Mango and founding member of the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group, was the first New Zealander to be a juror for the Cannes PR Lions in June. Here she reflects on the experience and what she learnt.
Haystac has been selected as Tourism Victoria’s New Zealand PR agency after a rigorous competitive pitch process that began in March. Expressions of interest from over 30 agencies resulted in 11 tender submissions, six shortlisted hopefuls and finally, three pitch presentations.
Kelly Bennett, the founder and managing partner of Eleven PR New Zealand, has been tapped on the shoulder and will lead the expansion of brand activation, experiential and PR services for the TBWA\ network throughout Asia Pacific.
Beer porn and students emerged as the big winners at the annual PRINZ awards over the weekend, with the Student Volunteer Army and the WilliamsWarn personal brewer—the best beer porn you’ll see all day—taking joint supreme honours.
At last, a handbook for PR at its best. Spin was turned into an art form by former Tony Blair acolyte, Alistair Campbell, during the second Gulf War. So it’s been a surprisingly long time before someone finally codified this essential PR discipline into a ‘best practice’ manual. And …
It’s a big bad dynamic media world out there, one in which it’s harder than ever to make a splash and those who put a step wrong are instantly pulled up. To that end, PRINZ is hosting Our Space Our Place – reshaping communities, a conference that’s all about communicating with shifting audiences on-the-ground and online.
National Australia Bank’s (NAB’s) ‘break-up’ campaign was so good it ended up as the lead story on the news, and generated countless free publicity before going on to win last year’s Grande Prix at Cannes Lions. With digital technology evolving faster than you can say business model or best practice, it’s now even more important to stay up to date with PR. To this end, CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG) is hosting a special event on 21 March: Re-Imagining PR. The brains behind the ‘break-up’ campaign, NAB’s Kevin Ramsdale and Clemenger BBDO’s Tim McColl Jones, will be sharing their creative nous at the forum, but here’s a few morsels of their method to whet your appetite.
The power of good public relations, not to mention the perils of bad, cannot be underestimated, just ask Qantas, adidas, or Telecom. To help marcomms folk avoid such epic PR fails, CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group (MLG) is hosting a special event, Re-Imagining PR. It’s PR, ‘but not as you imagine, or know it’–because with social media constantly evolving, PR business models are also having to. Matt Bruhn, one of the speakers at the forum, answers a quick Q & A for those of you who can’t wait for the 21 March gig.
The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) has opened its annual awards competition by announcing a newly named award after long-standing chief executive Paul Dryden, who passed away in March 2011.
The New Zealand office of Haystac opened for business in 2009 and two years on things are going rather swimmingly for the Aegis-owned PR agency, with TelstraClear, Jetstar, Sonos Electronics, Motorola and Next Generation Clubs recently joining SEEK, DB, GlaxoSmithKline, Mattel and Beehive and Premier bacon on its client list. They grow up so fast.
Melanie Palmer
The comms response to the outbreak of bacterial vine disease Psa in New Zealand kiwifruit has won Melanie Palmer from ZESPRI International Limited and Andrea Brady from Catalyst Communication Consulting Limited the supreme award at the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand’s PRINZ Awards.
In our debut Colmar Brunton nzgirl Tracker, we uncovered some noteworthy social media statistics. While we’re all aware of high usage of Facebook (our results show 70 percent of respondents check/update Facebook daily or more), we were surprised by the sheer size of the networks: 65 percent had between 100-400 friends and the average number was 300.
It is with great sadness we let you know that PRINZ chief executive Paul Dryden has died as a result of complications while being treated for cancer.
PRINZ sent this message out asking for PR assistance, so if you can help, get in touch on the numbers below.
Omnicom-owned Fleishman-Hillard has jumped into bed with Omnicom-owned ELEVEN\PR in an effort to expand its extensive global and Asia Pacific footprint to New Zealand, while “broadening both firms’ areas of expertise and geographic reach”.
A highly successful PR campaign for the New Zealand Rugby Foundation (NZRF) has won a group of AUT Communications students the annual Network PR Practice Award, which recognises excellence in the planning and executing of real life campaigns for not-for-profit organisations.
With the launch of the #NewTwitter, it seems apt to speak about what the changes might mean for the social space in terms of PR.
While all the talk in DDB land is about the big merge between Rapp and Tribal DDB, Mango Communications continues to blaze a rather successful trail and has managed to get hold of a wee beauty: the public relations account for Icebreaker in the New Zealand market.
Kelly Bennett
It’s been a relatively stressful time for TBWA\ of late: around the same time the ASB account left the building, Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand (PlayStation) was also undertaking a thorough competitive review of its PR account. And it would’ve been a pretty bad look to lose that business too, but in news that’s sure to bring comfort to the Mayoral Drive offices, ELEVEN\PR, part of the TBWA\ Group, retained the account.
You know the drill: the mechanic’s car is perpetually broken and the builder’s deck is half finished. Who has time when your expertise is in hot demand elsewhere?
The New Zealand Transport Agency was handed the Supreme Award at the 36th Annual Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) Awards, with Janette Wise and the NZTA team taking home top honours for their communications around the Tauranga Harbour Link, a campaign that spanned three years and relied on the public to champion its success.
A senior, seasoned technology client quipped to me the other day that the growth of so called ‘social media experts’ reminded him of the rise and rise of the dotcom gurus who sprouted like mushrooms in the late nineties. But you know what? Not only does the prevalence of social media seem familiar, for someone like me (and those of my vintage), it’s actually reassuringly old fashioned.
The findings of a nationwide survey into how PR-generated media coverage is measured and whether Advertising Equivalent Values (AVE) was an appropriate method to do so contain no real surprises but the industry-wide debate generated has been invaluable, say the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group.
The way Kiwi organisations measure the value of PR-generated media coverage is the subject of a nationwide review being conducted this month by the CAANZ Marcomms committee and the New Zealand Marketing Association (NZMA), with agencies and clients around the country being surveyed in an effort to find out about their use of Advertising Equivalent Values (AVE) and other PR measures.
Know someone who is an excellent communicator who, low and behold, does not work in the PR industry? Then nominate them for the PRINZ Commincator of the Year award. Entries close on March 22.
Mango Communications NZ, DDB’s PR, experiential and events company, is spicing things up with the appointment of three new staff members.
Coming in from ELEVEN\PR (part of TBWA\Whybin), Julia George joins the team as a Senior Account Manager. Julia will work on the Cadbury, Lion Nathan Wines …
Fly Buys celebrated the handing out of five million reward redemptions in fine awkward style at Wellington Airport last week by gathering together an array of gift-bearing strangers, tromboners (!), middle-aged dancers, cartwheelers, humans in animal suits and a range of other carnies to surprise the winners of the …
Cadbury’s decision to add a glass-and-a-half of palm oil to its shrinking Dairy Milk chocolate blocks was, as everyone has seen, a big mistake. The brand suffered, sales dropped and competitors took the opportunity to stick the boot in.
Reputation management consultancy Creo has won the Philips New Zealand account and will provide marketing communications services to the audio/visual side of Philips’ business.
