Accountability is often seen as an achilles heels of the out-of-home industry, and with no measurement system like Australia’s MOVE, it seems to be becoming an increasingly thorny issue in New Zealand. But Taxi Impact is trying to improve the situation through the use of GPS technology.
Auckland Fringe 2013 officially launched today with a snazzy new look devised by design partner Special Group and the promise of three weeks of the bizarre, the beautiful and the baffling in February as “joystick orchestras, boy bands, Antarctic song cycles, cross dressing history celebrities and stories about dogs, Nazis and curry” vie for attention. And for all the creative types out there, festival sponsor Taxi Impact is offering you the chance to plaster one of its taxis with whatever wrap you want* as part of its Taxi Art Project.
First Mercury and TBWA\ talked the Good Energy talk in February with the launch of a big TVC featuring Tiki Taane and his version of ‘Over the Rainbow’. And it’s backed that feelgood brand sentiment up in meat space as well, with all proceeds from downloads of the song going to Starship Foundation and a ‘good samaritan’ social experiment on the side of the road that showed how helpful Kiwis are. Now it’s taking the karma bank concept to the city streets with the Good Energy Taxi, where rides are paid for by good deeds rather than cash.
Heineken’s global ‘Enjoy Heineken Responsibly’ campaign aims to “inform and educate consumers about the safe and responsible consumption of alcohol”—and, ideally, the safe and responsible consumption of Heineken. And now it’s ramping up its efforts to drill that message in at the business end of the RWC with the official launch of its ‘let a sober driver take you home’ taxi campaign in Auckland.
Taxi Impact went live a few months back and, at the time, its director Tim Dove promised to create the country’s first professional—and fully national—taxi media network. And if its first major client is any guide, it’s off to a pretty good start, with 2degrees employing the services of its taxis and taxi vans in Auckland and Wellington to spread the message about its mobile broadband offerings.
New Zealand will soon welcome a big new player in the out-of-home sector, with media company Taxi Impact and a range of taxi companies—including the main taxi co-operatives under the Blue Bubble brand—agreeing to start displaying advertising on their vehicles in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.