Browsing: Special Group

News
AA Insurance fixes up, looks sharp
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Insurance is usually a very low involvement category; a grudge purchase if ever there was one (although it’s become a very high-involvement category for some in Christchurch, and not in a good way). As a result, the service it offers is often taken for granted until it’s needed. So, perhaps rather bravely given the current feelings towards the industry, AA Insurance has decided it’s time to promote the positives of its business with a big multi-media campaign by its new agency Special Group that spans TV, digital, DR, outdoor and radio.

News
About face: Trilogy’s print principles earn Glossie honours
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The final instalment of The Glossies for this year had one of the biggest responses yet, with over 800 votes. And it was Trilogy and Special Group’s all-natural campaign in Woman’s Day that came out on top, beating out Taste magazine’s Homebrand takeover by Progressive and Ogilvy and DB Export and Colenso BBDO’s The Wine List in Metro.

News
Special Group dips its toes back in self-promotional waters
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We’re fans of ad agencies that back up what they do for their clients by advertising and we think they should do it more often (*cough, StopPress media kit, cough*). DraftFCB leads the pack in that regard and has created a great brand that it can hang its hat on. There’s a pretty big gap back to second, but Special Group has been known to talk itself up from time to time. And to celebrate its packaging pin at the Best Awards for OOB ice cream and drum home its belief that design and advertising need to kiss and make-up, it placed this ad in last week’s Herald.

News
TVCs of the Week: 25 September
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Gravity Coffee’s week-long intern experiment, Sky’s awkward dead air, Orcon’s new feline ambassadors, Cool Charm’s street cred and Ogilvy’s Shopping Channel clasp the TVC of the Week trophy to their bosoms this week.

News
TVCs of the Week: 18 September
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The IHC shows some every day inspiration, Gravity goes on an international adventure, Lindauer turns on the waterworks, Fly Buys ventures into the wild, Flip assumes the juxtaposition, and Kleenex dresses itself up.

News
Gravity gives birth to advertising quintuplets as Coffee Run project hits screens
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Kirstie Stanway got the shock of her life when she turned up for her first day as an intern at More FM and ended up flying to El Salvador as part of a marketing campaign for Gravity Coffee. And now Kiwis get to see how her rather unique experience panned out in a rather unique way, with her journey being made into a series of 45 second TVCs that will play in the first ad break of 3 News each night this week.

News
Sustainability: Ecostore
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From the start, Ecostore has had social and environmental responsibility at its core. And even though it has undergone a complete marketing transformation over the past three years, its ethical DNA remains firmly in tact.

News
Special Group zeroes in on the narratives in the news
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One of the major themes of the presentations given by Finlay Macdonald, Peter Thomson and Tim Pankhurst at the Newspaper Advertising Awards on Tuesday night was the power of journalism and the ability newspapers have to see stories through. Of course, there were some huge stories to tell in New Zealand last year, and to show how important and relevant newspapers still are, News Works NZ’s agency Special Group compiled a couple of clips using content from the country’s news organisations, one showing the carnage and courage in Christchurch and the other telling the tale of the Rugby World Cup from the French perspective.

News
Saatchi & Saatchi and Tui feel the love with 2012 Newspaper Ad of the Year award
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Last night at the Aotea centre, newspaper folk from across the land gathered to show off their wares to media and creative agencies and guest speaker Peter Thomson presented a fairly convincing case for the future viability of newspapers. And this year, the newspaper expo was topped off by the announcement of the newly rejigged Newspaper Advertising Awards, with Saatchi & Saatchi walking away with the $10,000 prize and the ad of the year honour for its very practical Valentines Day ad for Tui.

News
TVCs of the Week: 28 August
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Another bumper edition of TVCs of the Week, with Tourism New Zealand, Unitec, AUT, Lotto, Telecom and Pak ‘n’ Save making it on to the (extended) dais.

News
Keep cool till after school: Unitec and Special Group celebrate the urban creators
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Last year’s rather risky ‘Change Starts Here’ docu-ad campaign for Unitec Institute of Technology aimed to address some long-standing misconceptions about the institution among parents and potential students and led to a significant increase in enrolments. And now it is hoping to, ahem, build on that by celebrating the achievements of graduates of its Faculty of Technology and Built Environment with its new campaign, ‘We make the people who make it’.

News
Perennial performers Colenso and DraftFCB on top of Effie finalist table, BC&F and DDB hot on their heels
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As the bean counters might say, if advertising doesn’t improve the bottom line, it’s really just art. And expensive art at that. And the agencies that improved their clients’ businesses the most this year have been announced, with perennial Effie performers Colenso BBDO and DraftFCB on top with 22 and 16 finalists respectively, followed by the bolter Barnes, Catmur & Friends on ten and DDB on nine.

News
310 of the Best
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A guitar with a body sculpted like a spider web, uber cool packaging for compost, a Mexican restaurant, a fanzine for motorcyclists, a tiny cinema in a stair well, and various pop up shops in Auckland’s Viaduct and the Christchurch Re:START container mall are among the 310 finalists in this year’s Best Design Awards, which are organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand and recognise the country’s best graphic, interactive, spatial and product designs from the past year.

News
Special Group pours magic design sauce over OOB’s fruity wares
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Just as restaurants often find it difficult to operate successfully as bars, it’s tough for ad agencies to succeed as design shops—and vice versa. That’s partially because there seems to be an element of patch protection at play on both sides of the fence, perhaps as evidenced by some of the comments in the article about Designworks’ foray into advertising with the University of Canterbury’s latest campaign. But, as one of the few agencies that’s won both Best Awards for the likes of the ecostore rebrand and Four’s big yellow duck as well as a whole host of prestigious creative awards, Special Group seems to be doing a pretty good job of striking a balance. And its latest effort is the creation of a new brand identity for Omaha Organic Blueberries (OOB).

News
Special Group and Colenso round out Kiwi Cannes celebrations
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New Zealand finished off its Cannes run with a few more nods over the weekend, with Special Group and Colenso BBDO adding two gongs each to bring the total local haul for the Festival of Creativity to 21, an improvement on last year’s paltry six lions but still not quite back up to the record 25 lions in 2010.

News
No dice for radio and design at Cannes, as triple Kiwi treat make film shortlist
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No local acts made the shortlist for the design lions, not even Alt Group’s well-received Auckland Art gallery identity, but a rightful grand prix winner emerged: Serviceplan Munich for its solar powered report for Austria Solar. The two local radio shortlistings—Saatchi & Saatchi for Tui’s ‘Father’s day Morse Code’ and BCG2 for Jesters pies—didn’t have anything to write home about, with Brazilian agency Talent Sao Paolo taking top prize for its ‘repellent radio’ work for Go Outside, which saw a high frequency broadcast essentially turn a radio into a mosquito repellent.

News
Hi ho silver at One Show Entertainment awards for Special Group’s Smirnoff Night Project
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Most of the One Show Awards were handed out last month, with Colenso BBDO taking a gold and Publicis Mojo taking a silver. And the winners of the One Show Entertainment Awards, which honour the world’s best entertainment concepts, television ideas, branding and mobile or online content, were announced yesterday in Los Angeles, with Special Group’s Smirnoff Night Project taking a silver pencil in the television/reality/unscripted category.

News
The day the news didn’t die
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Newspapers, according to the latest readership and circulation figures, are still holding on and, in some rare cases, adding readers. So why, when the commonly held view is that newspapers are dead—or at least dying—does New Zealand appear to be bucking an international trend?

Opinion
Special Group’s Semi-Permanent manifesto
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Special Group is the first New Zealand ad agency ever to be asked to talk at the Semi-Permanent creativity conference, which packed out the Aotea Centre in Auckland for a few days recently and featured headline acts like New York artist Ron English, UK digital agency Hi-Res, San Francisco-based Industrial Light & Magic and Wallpapermagazine. The local lads opened proceedings in front of around 2000 people with a talk centred around the eight things they do to make their work more effective that showcased the diverse range of work they have produced over their four years of existence—including the Best Award-winning packaging work for ecostore and the 2011 AXIS-award winning AXIS opening film. So here’s a summary of their presentation.

News
AX12: terrible facial hair, tight sweaters and self-deprecating robotic in-jokes
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Special Group won a couple of AXIS awards this year for its ‘Most Creative Country on Earth’ awards theme in 2011. And when Colenso BBDO was handed the reins for this year’s awards it ran with the idea of a metal detector and tapped into the rich vein of science-based humour seen in shows like Look Around You. So for those who weren’t there on the night, or for those who were there but were seeing how many breadsticks they could fit in their mouth, here’s the ’70’s-inspired opening sequence.  

News
Things that go Bump in the night: TSB puts the power in customers’ hands with new bank-building app
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TSB has a stellar record when it comes to customer service and customer satisfaction, and it is, as its advertising says, New Zealand’s most recommended bank. And its latest innovation aims to enhance the banking experience even further with an impressive—and significant—new mobile banking app called {my}bank that was more than one year in the planning, comes complete with Bump technology and employed the branding and design services of Special Group. 

News
Dog days: Colenso BBDO wipes the floor with AXIS goldrush
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Bathed in the green hue of ’70s inspired laser body scanners and violated by the sight of Leigh Hart’s velour one piece, 750-ish adfolk ventured down to the Viaduct Events Centre last night to watch Colenso BBDO’s Doggelganger campaign for Pedigree repeat Yellow Chocolate’s performance last year by taking the Grand, Titanium and Interactive AXIS. But, as is usually the case, the awards weren’t without some controversy. 

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