Publicis Mojo

Publicis Mojo

DDB

DDB

Barnes, Catmur & Friends

Barnes, Catmur & Friends

And you can see a few more of the DDB lines here DDB 1.

An amazing stop-motion stroll across America captured using a Canon 5D camera. Dreamed up by Peter Cote, director Sam Griffith and the Conscious Minds Productions crew, they approached Levi’s jeans for sponsorship and products to use during the shoot and set out on the mission on 17 June in New York, finishing up on 1 July 1 in San Francisco. And you can find out a bit more about the project here.

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Look at all those hipsters in that car. And look at all these hipsters on this website.

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The football celebration that some celebratory football experts believe could be the world’s best ever.

Fun with meat; combining all the best bits from Now 75 into one glorious musical medley; and, to honour the rise of the online game in the world of marketing, here’s one with Robotic Unicorns.

Around 70 creatives from 14 agencies munched on pizza, supped on some creative fuel and put their thinking caps on in an amazing setting on stage at the Civic Theatre in Auckland. And, after a couple of entertaining performances from Morgana O’Reilly and Gareth Williams (whose unique show is based on being trapped in his own head with the voice of a very funny John Farnham), a thorough explanation of the Fringe brand by festival director Sally Barnett, and a brief hints, tips and rules session from chief judge Oliver Maisey, the bell was rung and the teams had just one hour to come up with the goods.

Much like the vibe at the 48 Hour Film Festival, there was definitely a competitive buzz in the air and an impressive focusing of creative minds on the task at hand. Of course, it’s not just about serious competition, it was also intended to be fun, and there seemed to be a fair amount of  hilarity at some of the tables as presumably controversial ideas were thrown around in an effort to capture the spirit of the event.

As well as capturing the spirit of the Fringe, the event was also about capturing the spirit of advertising: coming up with a good creative idea to go on a static poster while under pressure. And despite a clear brief about the various restrictions, a number of the campaigns came up with clever ways to use the outdoor medium (see through panels, peepholes, day/night panels, participative panels that could could be drawn on etc), which, sadly, were unable to be considered due to cost, logistics and other factors.

For some of the competitors, it was strange to have an event that aims to showcase creative talent and inspire creativity in the outdoor medium with limits placed on creativity. But at its heart, the outdoor medium is a simple one, generally using static images and words to create awareness among the masses.

Adshel and a few other outdoor companies have been trumpeting their advancements and innovations of late, with Bluetooth this and LED that, but Adshel marketing executive Rochelle Weaver says the event was about getting back to basics and ensuring that those basics are done well. And, as Oliver Maisey said, when outdoor is creative enough to spark awareness from all the people going about their daily business, it shows exactly what advertising is meant to do.

After the hour was up the pens went down and the judges departed for their lair to stroke their chins, laugh maniacally and choose a winner. As one of the four ruthless, heartless judges, it was an impressive display of creativity, especially considering the ideas were all developed in just 60 minutes. It also took about an hour to get through them all and make the final decision (the judges were given a hurry up as the creative natives became increasingly restless and a few low-level pizza fights kicked off).

In the end, it was a pretty tough call between the top three, Publicis Mojo, DDB and Barnes Catmur & Friends (it would’ve been great to combine specific elements from each of these campaigns into one super campaign, but that’s another story). But the judges eventually decided that the ‘Leave with more questions than answers’ idea was the best and was likely to pique some interest about the Fringe among ticket-buyers. Of course, there’s still some work required on the imagery front, but the line summed up the ethos behind what is a very diverse arts festival best.

The Fringe has a reputation as being edgy, brave and usually a bit weird, so it was a perfect ‘client’ for a unique event like this. And, as Adshel’s sales director Pauline Hanton says, the festival organisers and particularly its director Sally Barnett, who was also a judge, are to be commended for “the fearless decision to drop many of the usual mandatories of campaign development and to entrust [the participants] with their marvellous brand” .

The Creative Challenge has been held in Sydney (with Cate Blanchett’s Sydney Theatre Company) and 120 people turned up. So getting 70 creatives for the Auckland edition is a pretty good result.

And with Publicis Mojo getting a chance to show off their work (both with the Fringe campaign next year and the additional 130 panel Adshel campaign they win for one of their clients), Auckland Fringe getting a great campaign and the rest of the contenders getting their fill of M&Ms, Toto’s pizza, free booze from Stoneleigh and NZ Pure, it was, as expected, a bit of a win-win-win.

The Publicis Mojo team summed it up best in a email this morning: “When we’re stuck in our day-to-day workload, it’s exactly that sort of thing we need to remind us of why we became creatives in the first place. And having a brief that allows us to go a bit crazy always helps too.”

• Photos by Sharlene Ferguson from Focal Point photography.

Here’s the Adshow’s Simon Pound with his take on the event.

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And rumour has it that Martin Yeoman, currently the planning director at Publicis Mojo, is to join them.

Lancaster and Hitchcock, who say the main Assignment brains (and past Saatchi & Saatchi main brains) Kim Thorp, James Hall, Howard Grieve and Peter Cullinane are about as close as you can get to advertising heroes in New Zealand, say it’s a huge honour to be approached.

“These are the guys that originally inspired us to get into advertising,” Lancaster says.

Assignment Group are notoriously secretive and refused to comment. “No comment,” said Peter Cullinane, over the bubbling sound of his super-yacht jacuzzi. Asked if he was expecting to replicate the enormity, in both staff numbers and awards, of the old Saatchi’s Wellington office, Cullinane croaked wryly and said “not likely” and then hung up whilst reaching for the smoked Alaskan salmon.

Meanwhile, the more verbose pair of Josh&Jamie were happy to spill the beans. Selling out to a larger agency was something the pair had envisaged, but it was on the distant horizon, “far beyond the curvature of the earth”.

“To be honest, we thought we’d be in this for five to ten years,” he says.

They never imagined it would happen just six months after setting up shop. But, as Lancaster says, some opportunities come up when you least expect them and this one was just too good to turn down.

Lancaster says they worked with Assignment Group, which is owned by STW Group, on the 40 Hour famine earlier this year, so it was a good test-drive for both parties. They have been in discussions about a deal for a couple of months now and while he says growing the indie from scratch has been enormously satisfying, “like ordering an entrée in America and finding out that entrée actually means main course over there”, the pair had no reason to refuse.

“We’re not going into this blind by any means. And it’s not been a decision we’ve taken lightly.”

He says the goal was never really to sell, but just to keep doing the sort of work they were good at doing. And that work, much of which has an unashamedly New Zealand bent, has managed to attract a host of clients looking for that explicitly Kiwi approach since the agency’s inception.

“I think New Zealanders have a certain unique and awkward way about them and they like to be spoken to in that tone of voice, like Rhys Darby and the 2degrees ads. It’s a tone of voice that I don’t know travels very well, but it really strikes a chord here.”

He says the chaps behind “semi-indie” Assignment Group, which has clients like Hyundai, Whittaker’s, Telstra Clear, new addition Griffins and also Antipodes water (which it actually created), are renowned as New Zealand storytellers, so perhaps this acquisition is something of a passing of the torch. Certainly, with an opportunity like this, Lancaster hopes he and Hitchcock might be able to become the next generation of New Zealand storytellers.

“Those guys are in their end years, and we see them as being New Zealand storytellers. And the work they’ve been responsible for over the years is a lot more long-lasting than the flash in the pan stuff you see today. We’d like to be remembered for the stuff that people remember years after it’s left the TV stations. We’d like to think that’s the goal. And if we can do half of what those guys have achieved, we’ll be happy.”

The new incarnation of Josh & Jamie–initially tabled as JOSH&JAMIE&PETER&KIM&H&JAMES&JOHN&CHRIS&MARTIN&REALLYGOODSUITS—will officially be known as Assignment Group and the pair, along with “super suit” Jo Weallens, will move to Assignment’s Shortland St offices on August 16.

“JOSH&JAMIE&PETER&KIM&H&JAMES&JOHN&CHRIS&MARTIN&REALLYGOODSUITS was a bit long and didn’t have enough names beginning with the letter ‘J’, so the decision was pretty easy,” says Hitchcock.

And Lancaster: “We’re still going to be Josh & Jamie, we’re just being called Assignment Group. All our clients [3 Wise Men, Premiere Beehive, SBS Bank, Dairy NZ and recently won stuff.co.nz] are happy and excited [and he says there will also be some more announcements soon]. The only downside is losing the name on the door. But that’s totally outweighed by the potential of what’s going to happen.”

Although reluctant to discuss specific financial details, a guy at the Grey Lynn TAB indicates the deal is in the vicinity of $100 million over five years, plus a year’s supply of Antipodes water and a big bar of Whittaker’s Dark Almond chocolate. But seriously, Assignment doesn’t speak to the media (or enter any awards) and Lancaster wouldn’t give anything away as to any sums that were handed over. It’s safe to assume the TAB guy is a very reliable source, however. So drinks at the Grey Lynn bunker are on them.

“As an agency, they’re less than 10 people over there. So they’re still going to be a small agency. It’s definitely not a big agency and it certainly doesn’t subscribe to big agency thinking. There’s a very different approach to relationships with clients.”

And like Assignment’s creation of Antipodes water, Lancaster says the pair are very interested in the trend of advertising agencies increasingly using their creative talents to create their own products, like Consortium’s Darryl Parsons with Murder Burger, Special Group’s Mr Vodka or, overseas, an agency that was pitching for Starbucks and said it would start up a cafe to show how committed it was to the account (turns out it made so much money from the cafe it flagged the pitch).

“We see the premium that non-creative business people put on creative ideas. Often those creative people could do with backing themselves. So it’s something that interests us. What is advertising? What is a business solution? And can you do what you do to achieve other stuff?”

Click here to view the embedded video.

An example is the video series starring babies to promote online stock market trading service E*TRADE. The newest video has had nearly six million views and counting, which is amazing promotion and exposure for the company. But you know what kicked off the viral effect? A half-time ad during Super Bowl, the most expensive TVC slot in the world.

How about that cool Evian ‘roller babies’ video (25 million views)? That didn’t have any traditional above-the-line expenditure right? Correct, but it did have prominent homepage ads in YouTube’s seven most popular regions (US, UK, Australia etc.)

What if you haven’t got the budget to light the touch paper in the same way as E*TRADE or Evian? Then you have to use offline integration, which is where ‘out of home ads’ demonstrate their continued relevance. According to Nielsen NZ’s research, 73 percent of the country’s internet users sent or shared a link in the last year. But are people more likely to send or share a link when they have time on their hands, like waiting for the bus, or is it purely to do with compelling content?

Content is crucial, as it always has been. People want something that adds value to their lives. With online video, this normally means something that can be shared with your social networks and conveys emotion, often humour. Having said that, capturing people at the right time is also key. I guess it’s similar to email marketing: you always get a better response if you send something around 9am as people are settling in at their desks.

Encouraging user-generated content is a great way to create and spread online video, as shown by the Old Spice ads. Jumping onto a video trend in a clever and appropriate way is also going to be a growing area. There was a recent fad for rainbow videos in the US. It was a strange phenomenon, but it could have been used very effectively by the right brand to make their own version.

Most businesses want to relate the campaign back to sales. Have a read of this comparison between Old Spice and Kotex (a US feminine care brand) to see which campaign had the best impact on the bottom line.

Panasonic (which, disclosure of interest, is a client of Bullet PR) has a campaign running where Kiwis are asked to upload their own ‘exceptional performance’ on www.evolta.co.nz to win a range of prizes, including a 42 inch plasma TV.

The current leader, with 45 percent of the overall views (over 4,500 at the moment) is a young soccer player with mad skills. Or a cute kid with aspirations of being the next Michael Jackson. So far there have been around 18,000 total video views, 25,000 page impressions and 172 videos uploaded.

The Panasonic Evolta campaign has been integrated with TVCs, back-of-bus ads, bus shelters and billboards. And we have noticed an interesting and encouraging element to this campaign: the majority of uploads have come from an older, typically less digital, audience. This is great news as the campaign has hit the right audience, those who buy the most batteries.

With a few weeks to run and more videos to be uploaded, it’s not yet possible to judge the impact in terms of sales. However, the campaign has reached a large and relevant audience and increased brand awareness for Evolta. Ultimately, you can only judge bottom line success if Evolta sales have increased in the coming months.

Anyway, I’m keen to hear other people’s thoughts on online video for marketing.

• Alex Erasmus is an account manager with Bullet PR

With bear skin rugs, rollerskates, leopard skin beanbags and little puppies used as the sexy props, the cheeky campaign shows Shirtcliffe and Co’s Matt Shirtcliffe, Fonterra’s Gillian Munnik, DraftFCB’s Tony Clewett and The Pond’s Stacey Roper like only a few have ever seen them before: scantily clad (no word yet on whether the foursome will be putting on a raunchy burlesque show at the awards).

New Zealand Post Targeted Communications’ Fiona Woolley says the calibre of entries over the last several years has been impressive and she’s expecting even more Kiwi creatives to take up the challenge to showcase their talents this time round. And if last year’s winning efforts (with the main winner an independent entrant), are anything to go by, it’s amazing what can be achieved when the creative boffins put their minds to it.

“The call for entries goes out this week and we think the DM packs developed by bcg² will stimulate a lot of interest,” she says.”

Categories include the Mailed Masterpiece (previously created work that has been direct mailed, including envelopes and larger packages), The 50 Cent Classic (a redesign of the regular-sized envelope that can be mailed economically, to showcase creativity on a budget) and Redefine and Redesign (an unrestrained opportunity to produce an artistic or futuristic masterpiece).

This year’s overall winner gets to choose from a prize pool worth $5,000, with category and monthly winners being rewarded with the latest Apple gear, vouchers and other stuff.

Along with final judging in November, the monthly People’s Choice Award gives voters the chance to win prizes too. Each month, one online voter will win an Apple TV, $500 bar tab or $500 iTunes voucher.

If you’re planning on entering, remember that the People’s Choice Award is judged online each month, with the first deadline on 24 August 24. The final deadline is 5pm, on Friday, 22 October 2010 and there is no entry fee.

Check out www.pushtheenvelope.co.nz for all your sexy envelope requirements.

*Experts believe that mmmvelopes, or bacon flavoured envelopes, are among the world’s best inventions.

Who it’s for: Frucor/V by Colenso BBDO

Why we like it: It was always going to be hard to top the success of—and mystery inspired by—the previous V campaigns, but ‘Pomparkour’, the new spot—and new sport—from Colenso and independent director Nathan Price for V’s new isokinetic sports drink, comes pretty close. It’s a prime example of the advertising industry being able to bring ridiculous ideas to life. And it’s so well filmed it even makes Auckland look good.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The call for entries for the 2010 Art of the Envelope Awards has been made and New Zealand Post has decided to embrace the ethos in its traditional advertising with a new ad created by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington and produced by Teaspoon that aims to draw attention to the Community Post scheme. This is the 12th year New Zealand Post has been supporting Kiwi communities through the initiative and more than 11 million postage paid envelopes to community groups have been dished out to help charities achieve their goals so far. And for those not-for-profits out there, applications for the 2010 round are now open.

Roberts spent eight years with TBWA\, winning plenty of awards along the way, and Chalmers was there alongside him for four years. And while Walden and Blood are obviously disappointed at the pair’s departure, they both agree that spending that long in one agency is almost unheard of.

“They’ve been tapped on the shoulder and you can’t stand in their way,” Walden says. But while it could be seen as a case of rubbing a bit more salt into a fairly fresh wound, it also seems strange for ASB to go through the pitch process, decide to shift agencies and then have the same creative team implementing all that fresh ‘new thinking’.

No-one from TBWA is saying anything about the whole weird situation just yet, but it’s obvious there’s plenty of juicy stuff still to come out, presumably at the end of the contract in October, about how this panned out.

Walden says ASB was always a client that was front and centre, a client that defined the agency and often demanded a ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’ approach. But while he’s obviously disappointed at the loss of the account and thinks it’s unfair, he’s being very philosophical about it. And he believes this professional approach is what’s required if the ad industry actually wants to be taken seriously by the wider business community.

He’s not sticking the boot in (at least not yet) and doesn’t want TBWA\ to be seen as a “bunch of prats” after losing a piece of business. He will, of course, keep saying irreverent things, but he thinks the old Saatchi & Saatchi mantra of ‘it’s not enough just to win, you have to make sure someone else loses’ is unnecessary.

“It’s only advertising, not a cure for cancer… This business doesn’t do itself any favours when it’s churlish and nasty,” he says.

While a big client like ASB obviously offers plenty of financial rewards, Walden and Blood say the news of its departure has given them time to breathe, to look at what it can do for its other notable accounts like Mercury, Adidas, Visa and 2degrees, to start looking for another good financial client and to find out what needs to be done to please clients and appeal to consumers in this rapidly changing marcomms landscape.

Walden says TBWA has established a reputation as a brand building agency, but he now believes the best way forward is to have equal competency in digital. And for him, an ad man with a bit of length to the tooth, it’s an exciting (and probably fairly scary) time.

“It’s like a whole new industry. I’ve made hundreds of TVCs, but I’m still learning about all this. It’s the exciting part of the business at the moment.”

Blood, who has taken time to write something of a TBWA\ manifesto, says the future of the agency’s creative model is about bringing digital into the centre of the communications mix, whether that means making advertising more interactive, or making better content for the digital realm. And this is why Howard is now sitting at the desk next to him.

“It’s my belief that Ross is one of the smartest creative brains in the business, having been hugely influential in the success of Shift\ and cementing its position as the pre-eminent digital outfit in the country [Shift\ made the very well-received iPad app for NZ Herald],” Blood says.

Prior to joining Tequila\, Howard worked across blue chip clients such as Tourism New Zealand (picking up two webbys) and Lion Nathan and he was also the lead digital creative on the recent award winning work for adidas adisynth and Visa go.

Carl Lough and Chris Childerhouse, who have joined from AIM Wellington, and Jeff Harris, who was part of the Tequila\ network 15 years ago in London and has an impressive direct marketing and digital track record, have also been brought in to bolster the digital arsenal.

“Change in our industry is happening at a phenomenal pace. And so in many ways the changes in the creative department now mirror the changes we are making in other parts of the agency, following the conclusion of our relationship with ASB at the end of October,” Blood says. “We’d always envisaged reconfiguring the TBWA Group after having lost an account of that size. The internet and digital technology in all its forms have been hugely instrumental in changing the advertising environment. And it’s fair to say that Tequila\ has been at the forefront of our digital capability over the last while. So with Ross at the helm, some new, exciting talent on board and other big signings in the wings, we’re confident we can take yet another creative leap forward.”

At this stage, there are no other casualties to report, and Blood doesn’t believe there will be any announcements to come. But one imagines those decisions will be made closer to the time of the final ASB handover.

Here’s my stab at it. According to Statistics New Zealand data there are 1.7 million New Zealanders aged 15-44 years. Using Windows Live ID information I know that in the same cohort there are 870,000 people on MSN New Zealand. Placing a video ad on MSN New Zealand (frequency capped at one) would reach 51 percent of all 15-44 year olds. By TV standards this equates to 51 tarps. At a $20 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) MSN’s 51 TARPS would cost $17,400. Which means the cost per TARP (CPT) is $341.

$341 might be a bargain, or a bit pricey. And different TV network times (peak/off-peak), demographics, and TVC duration – 15”, 30”, and 60” – will impact the value, or otherwise, of the Cost Per Thousand (CPT) rate. Who knows (well, your friendly TV sales rep should be able to tell you)? But at least advertisers have a comparative value measure to work with.

Not so long ago online video advertising lacked legitimacy. Stunted broadband, compatibility issues and shoddy online delivery technology consigned online to the planner’s portfolio of ‘emerging’ media options. But these limitations are history and advertisers increasingly vote with their feet.

New opportunities, such as web-enabled TV, and proliferating online video (advertising and entertainment) offer audiences more viewing options, in terms of what they watch, how they watch it and when. Convergence and slowly improving broadband are bringing the geeks back to the TV lounge. Soon, there will be no such thing as a computer geek – just more ugly people and pizza boxes in your lounge.

Video is king. Who cares about the delivery platform when availability is so unrestricted. Sure, when it comes to reaching a mass audience TV is hard to beat. But these days advertising is less about mass and mostly an exercise in engaging a defined group, on their terms (when and how they like to watch).

The time is right to establish a common industry measure. Just putting it out there.

Das Boot 2: curse of the randy cetacean.

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Everyone loves Lego. And now, with this awesome augmented reality technology, you can love it just that little bit more.

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A possible contender for the next Cadbury commercial?

How to be a good winner; scholarly Old Spice; only the Japanese could devise such an awesome game; and a new, slightly more realistic ladies mag hits the shelves.