The Herald on Sunday is one of the few papers in this country to have charted increases in circulation and readership over the past few rather difficult years. And that performance has been recognised after it beat out newspapers from across Australia, New Zealand, South-East Asia and the South Pacific to win the best Sunday newspaper at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (Panpa) Awards.
“This year we relaunched the paper with a new design, new columnists and new content,” editor Bryce Johns, who is soon to shift to the role of editor for content partnerships at APN, said in The Herald. “We paid close attention to how our readers live their lives, looking to provide them with the information, ideas and inspiration to improve their homes and neighbourhoods. That has been a tremendous success, and our readers have been telling their friends and families just how good the Herald on Sunday is now.”
The APN-owned newspaper also won the best environment campaign award for its feature series called ‘Cleaning up New Zealand’s beaches’.
Another APN newspaper, The Rotorua Daily Post, took out two awards: Newspaper of the Year (up to 10,000), which it shared with the Shepparton News, and Portrait of the Year, regionals, which went to Stephen Parker for ‘Stolen’.
New Zealand Herald photographer Richard Robinson claimed the award for National/Metropolitan Features Photograph of the Year for his photo called The Great Migration.
The Herald was also a finalist for Newspaper of the Year (circulation: 90,001+), which was won by The Age in Melbourne and nzherald.co.nz was a finalist for best Metropolitan/National News Website, which was won by News SA.
Marlborough Express photographer Emma Allen, who won the Junior Photographer of the Year at the Canon Media Awards earlier this year, also won the PANPA Features Photograph of the Year (Rural/Regional/Suburban) for her ‘Truck Show Kids’ image.
As well as the awards for journalism and editorial direction, PANPA’s Ad Awards celebrated in-house creativity and advertising.
The New Zealand Herald won the major newspaper marketing category (circulation 90,000+) for the launch of its compact version. And the digital team won best dedicated digital environment for a client, the Mercedes One to Watch campaign.
Fairfax Media’s digital platform, Stuff.co.nz, claimed the Branding – Digital award for the ‘Stuff Nation Launch’. And acting product development director Nigel Tutt said it was great to see the the industry recognise the branding work being done for Stuff Nation.
“This award is a testament to some great work produced by a very talented team. It further underlines the huge success that we found with Stuff Nation in user experience, citizen journalism and commercial outcomes,” he says.
Also in the marketing arena, The Dominion Post took two wins for Display Advertising 25,000-90,000 circulation for its trade marketing campaign ‘Telling it like it is’, and the Sponsorship 25,000-90,000 circulation category for its ‘Wide Angle’ exhibition.
The Marlborough Express won Print Best Advertising Feature of Supplement 0-10,000 circulation for their ‘Classic Fighters’ campaign and The Press’s ‘Freeze Out’ marketing campaign, which showcased the strength of combining the reach of print with the engagement opportunities that press.co.nz provides, won in the Marketing Audience (25,000-90,000 circulation) category.
The Bay of Plenty Times won marketing excellence in 10-25k circulation for its new look Wednesday editions and also the best advertising feature or supplement in 10/25k circulation for the 140th anniversary feature.
Janine Davy, advertising manager at the Rotorua Daily Post was named advertising manager/director of the year and Sarah Dyer, real estate account manager at the New Zealand Herald won classified sales executive of the year.
