Steve Bayliss had the Midas marketing touch at Air New Zealand and he seems to have transferred it to his role as group general manager of marketing at Foodstuffs, with the Pak ‘n Save brand continuing its top form and New World getting a long overdue—and almost universally applauded—refresh.
Whereas previously data analytics was confined to the laboratories of marketing research agencies, it is now becoming as commonplace in a marketing department’s arsenal of weapons as A/B testing and the now-ubiquitous brand blog. And a trio of New Zealand’s leading corporate marketers from BNZ, Farmers and Telecom shared their recent experiences of turning data interrogation into a competitive advantage at this year’s last DAN Dialogue event.
YWCA’s turning of the tables, Igloo’s double Ohs, 2degrees’ Christmas push and Telecom’s mistaken identity get the vote this week.
‘Tis supposedly the season of giving, and The Telecom Foundation (the telecommunications company’s charitable arm) is making it slightly easier to for Kiwis to do just that after buying online giving platform Givealittle.co.nz and making the fundraising service entirely free.
We’ve seen the banks gunning for new customers after a big merger. Now, after Vodafone’s $840 million takeover of TelstraClear was cleared by the Commerce Commission yesterday, it’s time for the telcos to have some fun, with Telecom running a full-page print ad today riffing on TelstraClear’s slogan.
Telecom’s great escape and Gib’s Kiwi connections take the honours this week.
GrabOne has come out as the first New Zealand company to integrate with Passbook, a new feature in iOS6 that enables the storage of coupons, loyalty cards, tickets and more on your iPhone. And the mobile wallet fun doesn’t stop there, because Westpac, Telecom and Auckland Transport have cranked up a trial.
There were a few raised eyebrows when Telecom chose a turtle to play the role of brand mascot in the new Tommy and Boris campaign. And Vodafone has taken the opportunity to subtly poke fun at its major competitor with a cheeky wee number starring its spokesboy James Rolleston and a greyhound called metaphor.
The news that Andrew Stone had departed his post at Droga5 came a few weeks back, with consultancy, fishing and family time taking precedence over his position with agency he helped set up with Mike O’Sullivan and Jose Alomajan in 2010. And his consultancy work has taken him back to a client he knows very well from his time as chief executive at Saatchi & Saatchi: Telecom.
Judging by the opinions we’ve heard from industry chinstrokers about Telecom and Saatchi & Saatchi’s new Tommy & Boris campaign, you’re either in the ‘awwwwww, turtles and a cute kid’ camp, or the ‘pfffff, turtles and a cute kid?’ camp. But who cares what they think, because the hoi polloi are quite taken with the new duo and it was voted the country’s favourite advertisement in August in an online Colmar Brunton poll of 1000 Kiwis.
The ‘new Telecom’ carries with it a fair bit of baggage, some of it well-deserved and based on its legacy, some of it based on misperceptions and a general lack of understanding about the oft-confusing telco realm. And in an effort to address some of those issues, Telecom has taken the fairly brave step of opening itself up to the masses and launching a new website called www.whytelecom.co.co.nz that’s part PR campaign, part customer service innovation and part public service announcement. And, in quintessential Telecom fashion, it’s gone heavy on the animals.
With the country’s two biggest telcos each releasing big new brand campaigns at the same time, we thought we’d compare and contrast some of the follow up work. So, dear StopPress friends, who do you think is winning the communications battle at this early stage?
Telecom’s Tommy and Boris campaign has been going great guns but while the masses are busy fawning over Tommy and his cute turtle, elsewhere Telecom is busy rallying up young’uns in school to spread the word on the potential of ultra fast broadband (UFB). Its Amazing Ideas Search (AIS) was launched last month, inviting pupils across the country to consider what UFB will make possible in the future and what that future may look like.
‘Tis a tussle of the telcos this week, with Vodafone’s ‘Do Your Thing Better’ and the return of Tommy and Boris for Telecom scooping the prize.
We had a chat with Telecom’s chief marketing officer Jason Paris yesterday for a profile that will feature in the next edition of NZ Marketing magazine and he said one of the best things about the new Tommy and Boris work is the fact that everyone thinks it’s a brand campaign. That’s understandable, given the set-up ad is the only one that has been released so far. But it’s actually a retail platform that’s being used to promote different aspects of the Telecom business. And the first examples of that strategy were launched last night, with one spot focusing on ‘New Zealand’s best pre-paid pack’ and another classy number showing some of the lesser known benefits of broadband.
It would seem only those with a heart of stone could fail to be swayed by Telecom’s latest brand campaign starring excitable eight-year-old Tommy and his new turtle friend Boris. We reckon it’s one of the best ads of the year and it sees Telecom heading back to its heartland territory of connectivity and New Zealandness. Here’s what chief marketing officer Jason Paris had to say about the thinking behind the campaign—and the state of the company.
Around this time last year there was a glut of ‘manvertising’. And this year it seems as though cute kids are de rigueur, with Civil Defence, Z and Pink Batts all recently enlisting a few young’uns to tell their stories. Now Telecom can be added to that list, because it’s gone back to what it knows best with a great ode to connection featuring a lovable frontman Tommy and his ‘turtle of few words’ Boris.
Skinny welcomes a new Paul, Jo Hartley trades OMD for Carat, Studio Alexander appoints a general manager, Acumen Republic ups its events firepower, Volkswagen goes human hunting, and iStart and Software Shortlist get together to embrace the pay-per-lead model.
Leopards, as the old chestnut goes, find it quite difficult to change their spots. But since its launch, Skinny, a sub-brand of Telecom that’s gunning for the youth-market, has gone about things much differently than its big brother. And its modern approach to marketing seems to be working quite well so far.
Who’s it for: Rexona by Naked and Curious.
Why we like it: Depending on your viewpoint, the last Rexona spot that aired around the Rugby World Cup was either overwrought and overly earnest or powerful and beautifully shot. The follow up is fairly earnest as well …
According to a recent Commerce Commission report into the telco industry, the number of broadband connections in New Zealand has more than doubled in the past five years and Telecom has around half of the total residential ISP market. But it’s aiming to increase that, sweeten the deal its for existing customers and get more people streaming by doubling the amount of data for all Total Home broadband packages for no extra charge. And, as the new ‘Why Not?’ campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi shows, that means you can download and share to your heart’s content.
The Commerce Commission’s 2011 telecommunications annual monitoring report shows competition among telcos is heating up—and consumers, who doubled their consumption of mobile data since last year, are getting better and more diverse deals as a result.
NZ Post certainly doesn’t like the trend towards receiving bills electronically, but it makes a lot of sense in these digital, environmentally conscious times. And RAPP Tribal and Telecom tried to bump up their numbers by dangling a philanthropic carrot with the Bills to Storybooks campaign, what they’re calling ‘the country’s first ever storybook written by New Zealanders for New Zealanders’.
This time last year we were oohing and ah-ing over the mad ball skills of the All Blacks. Which turned out to be the mad skills of the mighty ABs—and the special effects jiggery pokery of Brandspank. So when #aliwilliams tweeted “Haha yeah that copter thing was hilarious. Izzy took it out. BOOM!” along with a news announcement on the All Blacks and BackingBlack’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, followed shortly after by the release of a film showing the All Blacks smashing a “coptercam” out of the sky with a rugby ball, we should have guessed… we’d become victims of yet another ad campaign ‘going viral.’
Consumers generally aren’t too enamoured with large corporate entities, even less so in this climate of occupation. And Telecom, with its monopolistic heritage and less than enviable recent track record, is looking for all the love it can get. So, in an effort to show that it isn’t just a faceless corporation and really does care about its customers, its direct agency Rapp Tribal came up with a creative way for the employees of one of the country’s biggest companies to show their thanks.
It seems more and more mates are joining Bruce. 2degrees has announced a larger than expected growth, providing mobile services to 875,656 New Zealanders now, after two and a half years in the market. Included in this are more than 275,000 customers who brought their existing mobile numbers with them.
2011 was a big year for Adshel, with the departure of Australian-based chief executive Steve McCarthy and marketing director Elvira Lodewick, the reinstitution of the much-loved Adshel Rally after a six-year hiatus and the added buoyancy—and, in many cases, frustration—brought to the outdoor sector by the RWC. So, take it away national sales director Nick Vile.
Frucor, with the help of its long-time agency Colenso BBDO, maintained its consistency in 2011, with V continuing its run as one of the country’s most innovative brands and Mountain Dew Skate Pinball taking experiential marketing to a whole new level of massiveness. Marketing director Scott Wright spills the beans.
With public broadcasting increasingly seen as a ‘nice to have’ by the National government, it’s all about the money for TVNZ these days. The $14-ish million TiVo mistake was obviously on the wrong side of that ledger, but the national broadcaster also had some big wins in 2011 and, judging by the extravagance of the 2012 new season launch, confidence is high for more success—both for ratings and ad spend—this year. General manager of marketing Annemarie Duff offers her two cents.
2degrees has sought urgent Commerce Commission action to stop Telecom from damaging competition in the mobile market. Telecom has confirmed it will lock the phones of customers who buy its planned ‘Skinny’ product, forcing them to pay a fee if they want to leave before a certain time. ‘SIM-locking’ is an anti-competitive practice the Commerce Commission warned against in 2008, when Vodafone tried to get away with it. Vodafone backed down after receiving a letter stating the practice was anti-competitive