Is there anything worse than a blind date? What about a blind date with BO? Rexona plays cupid to test reactions to body odour and encourage people to think twice about their smell.
After a five month pitch process, DDB and Spark PHD have been named as lead creative and media agencies for Auckland Council, beating out .99 and the incumbent Ogilvy & Mather. But Council has yet to decide which agencies will be handling its digital and arts and culture accounts.
Football fever (and football-related advertising fever) is ramping up as Brazil gets ready to host the World Cup in June. And there was a bit of fancy footwork in New Zealand last week when a selection of Auckland agencies put down their iPhones and laced up for the inaugural CAANZ soccer tournament. Plus: agencies also skive off to play basketball for TRN’s 3 on 3.
FCB Media, OMD, SparkPHD and Mediacom have taken a large number of finalist placings in the CAANZ Beacon awards, for which winners will be awarded on 1 May. Mediaworks, TVNZ and iSite Media are in the running for the Media Brand of the Year.
In January, Vodafone announced that it was reviewing its global media account, which has been held by Omnicom’s OMD for half a decade. And this process could have repercussions for local account holders.
The corporate wheel continues to turn this week at Foodstuffs, Tourism NZ, BMW, Pursuit PR, LiveSport, Ubiquity, Image Centre and the Vodafone Warriors.
At the 20th instalment of the annual Campaign Asia Pacific Awards, Barnes, Catmur & Friends stole the show by becoming the first Kiwi agency to win the Australia/New Zealand Independent Agency of the Year category. PLUS: media agencies also get acknowledged for their contribution to the industry.
For the past few years, Unitec, Special Group and Naked—which has recently closed and been reborn as Open—have tried to bring a bit more chutzpah to the education sector and change the impression of the institution in potential students’ minds, first with the ‘Change Starts Here’ docu-ads and then with the trade-focused follow-up, ‘We Make the People who Make it’. And in a slightly surprising victory, the campaign managed to beat out the big boys for the best in show prize at last night’s Media Awards at the Langham.
After a record 290 entries across 21 categories, 99 finalists have made it through to the final rounds of judging for the Media Awards. And the usual suspects are on top, with OMD on 36 finalists (11 from its Wellington office), Spark PHD on 20 and DraftFCB Media on 16.
Here in the expansive and luxurious StopPress towers, Instant Kiwi’s ‘It Pays to Push Your Luck’ campaigns ranks as one of the funniest of the year, which isn’t entirely surprising given the comedy-loving combination of NZ Lotteries, DDB, Jesse Griffin and The Sweet Shop’s Stuart McDonald, he of Summer Height’s High fame, was involved in its creation. And after the first instalment, which saw the Alibi spot make it into the good bit of the Fair Go Ad Awards, it’s followed up with some entertaining/violating instore luck pushing that could almost be likened to the advertising equivalent of Trigger Happy TV.
The ‘Cannes of the South’ kicked off over the weekend and the first blast of shortlists from Spikes Asia has been announced, with Colenso BBDO and DDB Group on top in terms of Kiwi agencies.
There’s Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, and our very own David Tua. Sure, the boxing world has been graced by many a talent over the decades, but Adshel reckons the pool of knockout talent isn’t the exclusive domain of athletes. Its newly launched Knockout campaign is an intercontinental battle where the best Adshel campaigns from the previous quarter are pitted against each other, with the ultimate power falling into the hands of you, the discerning industry player, to cast your vote.
In front of an almost capacity Langham conference centre young MC Oliver Driver had to shout to get attention. That’s becasue the 800-odd media and agency flunkies were riotessly celebrating their efforts last night at the CAANZ Media Awards.
And the big winner? Well it was linked to the halting of interest and inflation rates last year, it forced the electricity industry to drop its pants and it has already won a host of the country’s big awards. And DraftFCB continued its golden run by following up from the last two year’s efforts and taking the Best in Show title for its work on Electricity Authority’s What’s My Number? campaign.
The judges have done the hard yards sorting the wheat from the media chaff and the finalists of the CAANZ Media Awards have now been announced, with OMD and SparkPHD leading the pack on 20 nods each.
When SparkPHD swapped BNZ for ANZ after a regional realignment in February, BNZ went hunting for a replacement. And, after announcing Colenso as its new creative agency, it has rounded out the new family by naming Mediacom as its media planning and buying agency.
Guy Cousins swaps SparkPHD for Naked, Yahoo! promotes two of its own, Rachel Broadmore swaps five-star for financial services, Ian Finch presides over New Zealand’s patent attourneys, Margaret Zabel takes the reins at The Communications Council in Oz and Renee Bushby changes tack.
A media review by ANZ has seen SparkPHD get the call up as the bank’s Australasian agency, which means Ogilvy Media now misses out on the spoils in New Zealand and Spark PHD will resign the BNZ account it currently holds.
Heineken’s global ‘Enjoy Heineken Responsibly’ campaign aims to “inform and educate consumers about the safe and responsible consumption of alcohol”—and, ideally, the safe and responsible consumption of Heineken. And now it’s ramping up its efforts to drill that message in at the business end of the RWC with the official launch of its ‘let a sober driver take you home’ taxi campaign in Auckland.
…as the Ogilvy juggernaut keeps rolling, SparkPHD hires an ‘Irish media maven’, The Radio Network’s long-serving chief exec gets set to step down, Fluxx welcomes the co-founder of the Beige Brigade, Naked nabs a new comms planner, International Rescue adds five newbies to the flock, Media Design School tastes glory in Los Angeles, Lily & Louis wins a couple of accounts, ActionActors takes to the stage and Mark Hanson sets up a new kind of PR agency.
The Axis festivities have wound up for another year and Justin Mowday has finally got out of That Guy’s tub. Now it’s time for the CAANZ Media Awards to kick into gear and OMD has got off to a flyer.
Between them they’ve worked under the Spark PHD roof for over 20 years and Nikki Grafton and Stuart Rutherford have been rewarded for their loyalty after being appointed as joint managing directors.
The golf course is calling and Richard Fenner, the co-founder of Spark PHD, has answered, resigning from his role as joint chief executive of The Spark Group, which was established in 2000 and encompasses media agency Spark PHD, Spark PR & Activate and digital specialists, PHDiQ.
Five years ago the incidence rate of breast cancer in New Zealand was one in ten. Now it’s one on nine. And, with New Zealand laying claim to one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the world, there is an urgent need to find a cure, something the Breast Cancer Cure Research Trust (BCCRT) hopes to achieve by 2018. But to reach that goal it needs some financial assistance, and Spark PHD, PHDiQ, Spark Activate and Saatchi & Saatchi have decided to take on the annual Round Taupo Relay in an effort to raise funds.
Just as the media love a good end of year list, trade mags love to rank performance with a good end of year awards ceremony. And so far it’s Colenso BBDO, Special Group, DDB, AIM Proximity, SparkPHD and The Sweet Shop that are leading the Kiwi charge.
Fairfax Media is the toast of at least four towns today after the winners of the Fairfax Young Lions Cyber and Media competitions were announced.
Auckland’s Hyatt Regency Hotel was abuzz with unbridled joy, glee and envy last night as the CAANZ Media Awards rewarded the best strategic insights in the media industry. And the “precise marrying of message and moment” by DraftFCB Media in a campaign for Whitcoulls that linked book recommendations to specific television programming took home the coveted Best in Show award.
The finalists for the CAANZ media awards have been announced, with OMD New Zealand (fresh from the agency of the year win at the Fairfax/AdMedia soiree), SparkPHD and Starcom NZ nominated for the big one, media agency of the year.
See ya Y&R, hello Sugar. BNZ has appointed Sugar as its new agency with their media partner SparkPHD.
Even though Y&R have been delivered some “great work” in the last four years, BNZ head of brand, Jo Kelly, says “we’re entering a new phase of our business …