The newly rebranded Sugar & Partners announced the addition of Dave Nash as a creative partner a couple of days ago. And it has just launched a new campaign for the TAB that has continued on from last year’s successful ‘Your Call’ campaign (which included the best example of psychic poultry the world may have ever seen) with a new effort that aims to show the ‘weekend’s for calls’.
As is often the case in the advertising biz, losing big clients usually means losing staff. And after Sugar decided not to go back for a BNZ booty call, managing director Jeremy Johnston says it has said goodbye to approximately four full-time equivalents over the past few months. But now that the “recalibration” is complete, he says the newly restructured business is on the upward trajectory, as evidenced by the arrival of ex-Ogilvy executive creative director Damon O’Leary, who has joined as creative partner.
It’s all go in the local broadcasting world at the moment. Sky’s content deals with ISPs have been put under the microscope, Freeview has started its final push before the digital switchover and announced some impressive technological additions, streaming service Quickflix has given Kiwis another (legal) way to watch, and, as Igloo’s 15-second teaser ad by Sugar shows, the “new kid in town”, with it’s colourful blobby mascots, is getting set to launch after the joint venture between Sky and TVNZ was recently cleared by the ComCom.
There’s been plenty of chatter about the BNZ of late after a regional realignment meant it parted company with Sugar and, rather unexpectedly, shacked with Colenso BBDO. But before that all kicked off, the old pairing had time to come up with a new campaign pushing the bank’s offset mortgage product TotalMoney.
On February 17, after a regional alignment saw SparkPHD take up the ANZ account and resign BNZ, we mentioned that rumours about a change of creative pants for the bank also appeared to be gathering steam. And it made the call this morning to put the account up for review, with the incumbent, Sugar, deciding not to participate.
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.
When we found out Sky and TVNZ were building an Igloo together, we heard Barnes, Catmur & Friends and Sugar were the two agencies in the hunt for the account. And Sugar has come out victorious.
Glenn Jameson has “been putting out fires his entire career and now wants to start some”, Raydar’s long serving creative director hands over the baton, James Coleman gets up early, ex APNer Greg Hornblow moves into real estate, and, fresh from swallowing Mitchells, Aegis launches a new innovation unit.
Ad agency Sugar and online DVD rental company Fatso are capitalising on paranoia about new video piracy rules with a clever new campaign. As record companies sent out warnings for people found making illegal downloads, they sent out phony warning letters with the fictitious logo of the New Zealand Copyright Authority and the message “notice of breach”.
First there was award-winning copywriter Nigel Corbett. Then there was executive creative director Nigel Corbett. And now, having sold his shares in Auckland indie agency Sugar late last year, it’s now a case of roving creative director Nigel Corbett.
Given the unexpectedly small one-point gap on Sunday night—and the fact that the final was the biggest ever event in the TAB’s betting history with over $3 million wagered—the TAB will probably do quite well out of the RWC final. But, much more importantly, its ‘prediction chicken’ has been shown to have verifiable soothsaying skills.
They say everyone’s got a book in them. And most of them should stay there, say others. But to encourage entries into the 2011 BNZ literary awards and get in front of different kinds of people, Sugar brought writing to life with a nice little ambient media stunt that projected real-time stories onto buildings in Aotea Square. And they did it all with a budget of around $10,000.
DDB NZ turns the tables to try and up the donations for the Coastguard’s MayDay appeal; Colenso releases its first TVC for Westpac and keeps fighting the good fight for Amnesty International; the eyes have it in Saatchi & Saatchi’s latest NZ Army campaign; professional meets amateur in Publicis Mojo’s print ad for Panasonic’s new Lumix camera; TAB and Sugar follow up with another bad call; and a great new Cadbury Glass and Half Full production out of South Africa.
Who’s it for: Speight’s by Shine and Curious Film.
Why we like it: Inept, high-maintenance and presumably well-moisturised city-slickers head to the hills for some toughening up. And who better to whip them into shape and enhance their gradually decreasing manliness than a strong, silent, Speight …
… with ACP Media, Sugar, DB Breweries and Alcatel-Lucent all issuing a few new swipe cards.
It was less than two years ago that BNZ released its cute, fluffy, cloud-like logo into the wild. Some thought it was fresh, different and looked like toothpaste. Others thought it was too fresh, too different and too toothpastey and, therefore, lacked history and gravitas. And it seems the BNZ brand boffins agreed with the latter, because it’s gone back to its astronomical roots and changed its logo again, adding the classic Southern Cross back in, reducing the fluffiness and chopping that cheeky vestigial tail off the B.
Who’s it for: BNZ by Sugar, Exile Films and Franklin Road.
Why we like it: Portraying banks as good, honest business/community/family builders is a pretty tough sell at present given the financial sector’s greed and recklessness played a large part …
Bow down before the newsy melange and marvel at its tremendous interestingness.
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 …