The competition for content is heating up. Customers don’t want one service, they want choices that fit the type of household they are and the individual tastes in their household. Kym Niblock talks about making sure people choose Lightbox from a suite of video-on-demand services.
Browsing: tech
New Zealand based social media analytics and listening platform Zavy has announced its agreement with DataShift that will provide direct access to data from 1.59 billion active Facebook members to help improve brand performance on social media.
Uber is transforming its back seats into a Dragons’ Den of sorts tomorrow, giving the business thinkers of Auckland a chance to pitch their business ideas to a panel of leaders and investors who are looking for their next opportunity.
Australian-owned marketing technology company Squiz has recently expanded in New Zealand, adding an Auckland office to its pre-existing Wellington base. Upon the move, we talked to New Zealand managing director Patrick Fitzgerald about the changing landscape of marketing technology, how the lines are blurring between marketing and IT departments and what the technology developers are doing to help.
Modica Group has announced the acquisition of New Zealand’s leading enterprise messaging provider, Run The Red to create the largest New Zealand owned messaging company.
It’s ‘War of the Worlds’ job edition and as this cheat sheet explains, in the face of robots we should embrace our human nature.
Advertising has long been inspired by the arts. And the creative community will no doubt appreciate the artistry in the latest music ‘video’ for Pacific Heights, which Sam Peacocke produced without the use of a single camera. Here’s a look at how it was done.
Uber has expanded its rideshare network across New Zealand by launching in Christchurch this week, the latest city on its list of 400 in over 58 countries.
DDB’s Liz Richards and Nick Dellabarca are in Austin at SXSW 2016, and they sent through a few outtakes from the past few days.
Google driverless cars have suffered the first significant blow, with one of its fleet making headlines for a crashing into a bus.
As counterfeiters step up their game around the world, the need to verify products and their accreditation logos is increasing. So, in a bid to counteract the counterfeiters, and to promote New Zealand and its premium products to the world in a unique way, FernMark has incorporated augmented reality into its logo.
Kiwi company Trust Codes is helping New Zealand and Australian brands protect their reputation from product counterfeits and recalls by placing a serialised QR code on product packaging, which allows consumers to verify the authenticity of what they’re buying.
In some ways, smartphones are a strange product. We all use them differently, and have different expectations as to their performance, yet most of us buy one of just a handful of models that all do pretty much exactly the same thing. But what if you want something different? What if you want something distinctly you? Well, here are some phones for particular people that fulfill a particular need.
Customisable shoes have been around for a while now and they don’t come cheap. But a US company called ShiftWear has taken it to the next level by creating kicks that can be instantly updated in their design, with an e-ink display that can show detailed artwork or animations of the wearer’s choice beamed straight from the wearer’s smartphone.
Depending on your viewpoint, Facebook is set to get either creepier or more effective because the social media giant has announced the introduction of photo recognition to its popular Messenger app.
To draw attention to the tech underpinning the headlights of its new A4 model, Audi has launched an innovative piece of outdoor advertising that picks up on pedestrians and illuminates them while they are crossing the road. In addition to illustrating the mobility of the lights in the system, the activation also serves make those crossing the road more visible when the streets are dark.
There’s automation for almost every aspect of marketing these days. So is there still room for human creativity? Damien Venuto ventures into the ad tech factory.
We’ve seen a few clever queue hacking campaign ideas in recent years, from Samsung’s Smartphone Line to Spark’s Emoji Queue. And Spark’s employed 3D printing technology for what it’s calling the world’s smallest queue for the world’s biggest phone launch.
Since 1964, Kashin, the ASB moneybox, has been an inhabitant of countless Kiwi homes, serving as a tool used by parents to teach their kids about the value of money. However, at a time when coins have become something of a rarity, Kashin was becoming a largely unused anachronism—a white elephant, if you will. So, in response, ASB and Saatchi & Saatchi have given Kashin a digital makeover and introduced a new moneybox called Clever Kash.
Humans regularly pay for having their photo taken (when it’s horrible and it gets posted on social media, or when looking back and wondering why you ever thought that hairstyle was a good choice). But, following on from a tease at its I/0 event, Google decided to let people pay with a photo to promote the enhanced search functionality of its upgraded Photos app.
Since Google was first launched, Larry Page has shown his inner prankster through quirky doodles, elaborate April Fools’ jokes and a slew of Easter Eggs. And, despite the seriousness of his latest message on the launch of Alphabet, it still came with a sneaky touch of Google’s humour.
To own a smartphone is one thing, but as technology becomes more advanced, it also becomes more pervasive, edging itself further into the household. Soon it seems we’ll have a smart everything: smart beds (yes that’s a thing), smart watches, smart thermostats, smart bikes. The list goes on. Yesterday Spark released its Morepork smart home technology, but it’s not using the native owl of which it’s named after to market the product, but rather a family of emojis. We spoke to Spark’s Gemma Croombs to find out more on how the telco is pushing the product and her insights on smart technology. PLUS: a few examples of the latest in home smart tech.
The days of wallets being crammed with loyalty, bank and business card might soon be coming to an end. In fact, wallets themselves could well be headed for obsolecence if Semble has anything to do with it. The company has already been facilitating contactless mobile phone payments across the country, and it has now announced that it’s expanding into public transport. The expansion is part of Semble’s plan to become a one-stop mobile shop for every card in a person’s physical wallet, chief executive Rob Ellis says.
Blunt – the Kiwi makers of “The World’s Best umbrellas” – have paired up with Tile, the location-tracking device from Silicon Valley, to produce the first “unlosable umbrella”. Does this mean it’s less cursing and frustration on a rainy day, or just another thing that’s wirelessly tethering you? PLUS: a look at how geo-location technology straddles the line between being useful and a little creepy.
Accenture recently showed that 87 percent of individuals watch TV with their devices within arm’s reach, meaning that a smartphone can quickly become a medium by which to escape the advertising that punctuates a television show. Add to this the fact that Google’s recent Consumer Barometer report showed that 72 percent of Kiwis own a smartphone and that almost a quarter of the population now access the internet more often via a smartphone than any other device and it becomes clear that smartphones are a place where brands should be. This is not to say that television, which continues to reach 92 percent of the population, should be abandoned as an advertising channel, but that it should rather be used in conjunction with other available channels. Snakk Media has just launched a way for Kiwi advertisers to do this.
Uber’s entrance into markets throughout the world has generally been typified by controversy, and the New Zealand is no different. Drivers have been arrested, the taxi lobby has come out swinging and there are some serious concerns about the company’s approach to collecting customer data. The company’s general manager Oscar peppit recently chatted to StopPress’ sister publication Idealog about these and other issues.
Standing for input/output and “Innovation in the Open”, the annual Google I/O developer conference explores the latest in technology, web, and mobile. Held at San Francisco, this year’s event sees some major upgrades to Google’s Android platform, new projects from the ATAP team, and some nifty VR.
Wellington’s wide array of promotional activities have helped to greatly increase visitor numbers to the capital, both domestically and from Australia. Now it’s trying to get some of our neighbours to think about staying for longer with the Wellington Works digital campaign.
Since its launch only two years ago, Wellington-based tech start-up Showcase Workshop has grown quickly, picking up major Kiwi clients such as Spark, NZTE, Z Energy and The Warehouse, and now the company is expanding into Europe after winning a new client in Vodafone UK.
At a time when Spark’s Digital Ventures unit is currently trialling a SmartHome system with a view to launch it in the market in early 2015, we are stepping ever closer to a time when our homes become automated entities that respond to what we are doing and where we are. So, in an effort to see what all the hype is about, Vanilla Brief director Ben Slater recently underwent a smarthome trial.