Stories about Special Group published on StopPress – Aotearoa/New Zealand’s daily news site for the advertising and marketing industry.
They say: “We are a modern, independent communications company working across advertising, PR, design and digital. With a track record of producing highly effective strategic and creative campaigns. Named ‘New Zealand Effie Agency of the Year’ 2023 & 2025 and Campaign ‘Global Creative Agency of the Year’ 2021, 2023 & 2024 – more than any other agency in the world. We create ideas that drive fame, earn attention and deliver real business results for ambitious brands.”
Special is a founder member of Agency Directory – find out more about them here.
.99’s had a very tough few months. It lost Air New Zealand and Vodafone to DraftFCB and, as far as we’re aware, it’s not on the pitch list for the brand work for Westpac, although whether it retains the retail business seems dependent on which creative agency the bank goes with. So a few alarm bells went off when we heard Colenso and Special Group were doing work for one of its remaining big clients New World.
AA Insurance has said adios to Ogilvy and appointed Special Group and direct and digital specialists Twenty following a competitive RFP and a rigorous two month pitch process.
You may have noticed a few pictures of Special Group’s flash new Drake St offices gracing the homepage of StopPress last week when it was helping to edit the site as part of our Hog the Blog Axis prize. And the 16th fastest growing company in New Zealand/Creative hotshop nominee has recently added a few humans to help fill those flash offices up, with Hilary Cootes being promoted to the role of general manager, Nigel Sutton and Rahat Chaudry joining as head of production and strategic planner respectively, and Claire Beatson returning from maternity leave.
The Ad Contrarian is Bob Hoffman, chief executive of Hoffman/Lewis advertising in San Francisco and St. Louis. He also writes one of the world’s funniest (and painfully truthful) blogs on advertising and marketing. Bob is former chief executive of Mojo USA and ex-president and creative director of Allen & Dorward. And in a former life he was a middle school science teacher. It’s with this objective point of view that he has burst many a hype bubble. His honesty and straight-forwardness is refreshing in a world of marketing mumbo jumbo. So if you like what Bob has to say, you’ll enjoy his books, The Ad Contrarian and 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising.
Nigel Roberts is one of London’s most highly-awarded copywriters. Starting life as a junior copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi in the late ’80s, Nigel worked his way up through some of the best agencies in London with his art director Paul Belford. For many years, their potent combination of brilliant copy and conceptual art direction earned them a reputation as the best print team in the world. Creative directorships at Ogilvy London, AMV BBDO and CHI & Partners were followed by a return to Leagas Delaney London to run the creative department. Over the years he has won nine D&AD Silver Pencils, six Cannes golds and four One Show Golds (the full list is too long to publish). Nigel spared us a few moments to answer our questions and share his thoughts on the industry. We hope you find it as inspiring as we did.
Sir John Hegarty is one of the world’s most famous advertising creatives and was knighted in 2007 for his services to advertising. He’s founding partner and worldwide creative director of BBH, an agency he set up in 1982 with fellow ex-TBWA staffers John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. The network now spans London, New York, Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai and Sao Paulo and is famous for pushing the boundaries creatively and transforming its clients’ businesses as a result (Levis and Lynx are two great examples). Hegarty’s values have never wavered, he is as driven now as he ever was and BBH’s work is consistently entertaining, irreverent and insightful. We sent him a few questions and, as always, he was happy to give us a bit of his time and share his views.
Special Group has managed to get itself a spot alongside BMF and The Monkeys as a finalist for Creative magazine’s coveted Hotshop Awards, while Finch and Curious got the Hotshop nod in the production categories. And in the AWARD nominations, DDB Group picked up the most finalists with seven, followed by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop with six each. In the craft categories, Finch received seven finalist nominations, Thick as Thieves three and Curious Film also received a nod for its poignant Helena’s story, made for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.
The Marketing Association celebrated the use of insight-driven marketing and data last week. And CAANZ will soon be celebrating what could be seen as the opposite end of the marcomms spectrum with the creatively-focused Axis Awards. And after 50 judges—and presumably the wonderous Axis Metal Detector—spent three days scanning the very best work in New Zealand this year, regular creative award-hogger Colenso BBDO came out on top with a massive 57 finalist nominations, followed by Special Group with another excellent showing on 21 and DDB Group and Clemenger BBDO on 17.
The January/February round of voting for The Glossies has been tabulated, and FOUR’s Home of NOT Rugby in ACP’s Metro, cooked up by FOUR and Special Group, has taken top honours with 27 percent of the vote. Yellow Pencil BrandSharp’s effort for Red Paris in NZ Marketing got them tantalisingly close, with 26 percent, and Chris Dobbs was third for Working Style in Metro (10 percent). That’s two in a row for Special Group…
As sponsors of the Wellington International Sevens, Nikon set out to build brand awareness amongst the thousands of fans that turn out for New Zealand’s biggest annual party. With a bit of help from BRR Ltd, it created an integrated campaign that stood out in the stadium and saw its fan base rocket up a whopping 850 percent.
Last year, Special Group launched a campaign for America’s Next Top Model that featured a naked lady pulling the old hand-over-the-side-boob-on-the-back-of-the-ute trick. It also launched a campaign for Top Chef Just Desserts featuring the words Backstabbing Slut on a cake. Both campaigns were complained about to the ASA, and the complaint about the offensive cake was upheld. And it’s taken a similarly attention-grabbing approach with new poster campaigns for Four’s America’s Next Top Model All Stars and Family Guy.
Special Group duo Kim Fraser and Sarah Frizzell took the combined Dec/Jan ORCA with their ’91 Days of Summer’ campaign for Streets Ice Cream. They made 91 different ads, turning each day of summer into a national day. “December 4. National Weta Freak Out Day. Nothing says summer like a weta under that thing you just picked up. Is it a giant insect or a tiny brown crayfish? Doesn’t matter, your boyfriend still needs to man up, and grab a glass and a piece of cardboard.”
Special Group managed to take home 4 Caxton awards in 2011 for its Orcon Business banner, including the Quinlivan Black Best in Show, and it’s kept its name in the hat for the next round after winning the Oct/Nov ‘Could be a Caxton’ award for its ‘Send a Newspaper’ ad for the Newspaper Publishers’ Association.
Who’s it for: Unitec by Special Group and Film Construction
Why we like it: The final set of 60-second ads in this year-long reality-advertising series showed just how much students can change if they put their mind to it. It was a risky …
The November/December round of voting for The Glossies has come to an end and the creative campaign concocted by ecostore, Special Group, Naked and Salt Interactive that ran in ACP’s Little Treasures and allowed parents to turn their children into cover stars has claimed first place with 22 percent of the 574 votes received, beating out Alt Group’s Fisher & Paykel ad in Cuisine (18 percent) and Tourism Queensland’s multi-page execution (EBOOK_LTQG_2011_LR) in Let’s Travel Golf edition (15 percent).
While the mass-market weeklies continued to struggle last year, ACP popped a few corks when Woman’s Day finally edged out Woman’s Weekly in both circulation and readership after a very long wait. Elsewhere in 2011, special interest magazines largely seemed to hold firm despite the gloomy economy—and the predictions of death from the digitally-focused doomsayers. Sales manager Paul Gardiner goes to town on 2011.
Flying in the face of all the election and Christmas related advertising that has been dominating our newspapers lately, November’s winning ad, by Special Group, was created for the Newspaper Publishers’ Association using an innovative full page designed to be folded so the whole newspaper could be posted to someone overseas to celebrate the Rugby World Cup All Blacks win.
The finalists of the direct and interactive marketing showcase that is the John Caples Awards have been announced, with Colenso on top from the local shops with 18 nods, followed by DDB and Rapp Tribal with nine, DraftFCB with seven, AIM Proximity and Republik with three, and .99, Publicis Mojo, Clemenger BBDO and Special Group on one. And in other awards news, Colenso dominated the Digital Media Awards Asia awards recently with two golds and three silvers, while Naked won silver for Powerade Challenge and Rapp Tribal won bronze for Telecom.
Despite tough times for print, newspapers remain close to Kiwis hearts, even when they’re overseas. Special Group has followed up its Kiwis Together campaign with a full page ad encouraging readers to fold up the newspaper, pop a message on it, and send it to a Kiwi overseas – so they could read enjoy it just as if they were back home in NZ. Alternatively it could be sent to an Aussie mate.
Amid all the global economic carnage, Deloitte Fast 50 was almost like an island of business optimism. Powershop took out the top-spot with the competition’s highest ever growth rate of 5280 percent, 2degrees was next on 3761 percent and many impressive smaller, often under-the-radar businesses from across the spectrum were recognised. But Special Group and The Research Agency stood out in the marcomms sector after being ranked as New Zealand’s 16th and 42nd fastest growing companies respectively.
The Air New Zealand business is thought to be up for pitch, with a rumoured list of Saatchi & Saatchi, DraftFCB, Special Group and the incumbent .99/Colenso all gunning for one of the country’s best-loved brands.
Rugby World Cup advertising continued to dominate throughout October, some say to the detriment of both quality and originality. And after being told to ‘touch pause engage’ one time too many, the NAB judges have decided no one deserves the October Newspaper Ad of the Month award. The obvious headlines and groan inducing puns featured across too much of the material – at times to the detriment of art direction.
Newspapers have had a bit of bad press lately (geddit?), facing dwindling sales and circulation as news junkies get their fixes for free online. But newspapers still remain close to Kiwis hearts, even when they’re overseas. To prove it Special Group placed the front page of the Herald in the free daily newspaper Metro for thousands of Kiwis living overseas to read.
The first phase of Unitec and Special Group’s year-long ‘Change Starts Here’ kicked off back in January. And stage three of the ‘reality advertising’ campaign has gone live on TV3 and FOUR this week, with Special Group’s Tony Bradbourne saying the feedback has been phenomenal so far.
Over 700 designy folk attended the DINZ Best Awards event on Friday night at the swanky new Auckland Viaduct Events Centre. And with a record 812 entries, the highest in the 23 year history of the event, a multitude of Gold, Silver and Bronze pins were handed out, with five winners—Avanti, Wellington Airport, Fisher & Paykel’s Social Kitchen by Alt Group, Sarah Maxey and typographer Kris Sowersby, and Resn for Toyota’s Sponsafier—picking up a coveted Purple Pin.
Who’s it for: Smirnoff by Leo Burnett Sydney and Curious Film
Why we like it: It was a bit of a coup for Darryl Ward to get this shoot. But, as you’d expect from a chap who won two Cannes Grand Prix awards in one year …
ASB had Goldstein. ANZ has The Mentalist. The National Bank has a Black Stallion. And now, thanks to Special Group and The Sweet Shop, TSB Bank has an old alien.
Special Group and MediaWorks TV took the non-rugby ball and ran with it for ‘The Home of Not Rugby’ campaign and their online ad that gave users the opportunity to ‘un-rugby’ an interactive banner has won the September IABNZ BollyAward, which aims to encourage great Kiwi-made online creative.
The Effie finalists are out and Colenso has backed up last year’s most effective agency mantle with 16 nominations, followed by DDB and DraftFCB with 14, .99 with ten and Special Group with eight. And, as for the clients, Air New Zealand, Frucor, 2degrees, NZ Lotteries, ANZ, ALAC, Fuji Xerox, the Electricity Authority, Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind and DB were among the most nominated across the 15 categories.
Take a radio fashioned out of pavlova, some interactive nappy packaging, a 21st birthday party invite, mix it with a giant rubber duck and a home brewing system and what do you get? A snapshot of Kiwi creativity by way of the finalist entries for this year’s Best Awards, thanks to the folks at The Designer’s Institute of New Zealand.