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Condensed news: now with extra facts

You’ll definitely want to lick the spoon after reading this.

Dead ringers

In morbid marketing news, New Zealand website www.amemorytree.co.nz, a site that offers a list of current deaths in New Zealand, drawing together death information published in over 20 newspapers, recently celebrated the creation of the 100,000th online remembrance page.

All the pages hold records and links to valuable information for professionals and marketers and over 75 percent of these pages have activity on them, with more than 2,000 pages active with messages and virtual flowers.

Site creator and managing director, Sue Skeet, says it is useful to manage client records, particularly for lawyers and trust managers who are managing wills. And for anyone who holds a customer database, she says keeping them purged of obsolete data to avoid ongoing contact with those who have passed away is vital.

She has also developed a death notification service to help certain business groups such as the legal, accounting and insurance industries identify clients that have died recently.

“Responsible businesses are fast accepting that timely notification of a client’s death helps them not only undertake whatever legal responsibilities they may have and to remove the person from their mailing lists, but also acknowledge the passing. It’s very powerful, as customers are once again being recognised as people, not just a statistic or a client number, in a database. Personally, I feel we’re doing our bit to help bring the human face back, helping businesses, and that feels really good.”

The site launched last January and now draws up to 30,000 visitors each month from over 80 countries. Complete published death records date back to 2006.

The Marketing Association also has an agreement with the Department of Internal Affairs enabling the Deaths Index to be added to the existing Do Not Mail Register and approximately 2,655 additional deceased persons names are added each month.

Primo logo bro

First there was the scary washing machine, then came the scary fridge (next up has to be the scary vacuum cleaner, with the potential for some hilarious hospital scenes). You’ve probably seen Colenso’s entertaining ‘Beware the wrong fridge‘ campaign, and Dow Design has followed that up with another logo redesign for the flavoured milk brand that reconnects the brand’s earlier logo mark to its ‘new identity’.

Dow Design has worked with Primo since its inception in 1991, and has been responsible for every redesign the product has undergone. And this time Fonterra has apparently tried to reposition Primo as ‘the chill-out drink for the moments inbetween the action’.

“It was inspired by thermo graphics to reflect the physical changes that take place when you go from full-on activity to chilling out,” Dow Design creative director, Donna McCort.

Scoop o’ chips

About a year too late, but what the hell: Andy Wyeth (art director) and Kat Stamm (copywriter), Kiwis who are now living and working in Berlin but used to ply their trade at TBWAWhybin, took home a gold chip at the 2010 Chip Shop Awards for the best press ad with their Nike ‘Finish line’ concept, which allowed readers to open up the mag and break through the ribbon.

Founded on “creativity without limits”, the awards, which were started to take the proverbial out of the rather chinstrokey D&AD awards, have become a truly international event. And it has grown substantially (the new Chip Shop ‘People’s Choice‘ saw over 42,000 votes) but it’s fair to say it still doesn’t take itself too seriously: “It should be assumed The Chip Shop Award entries do not reflect the views, policies or strategies of any organisation living or dead. In fact it has mostly been created without the knowledge of those the work purports to either promote or parody.”

It’s a great example of what can be achieved when creative brains are set free, often with the help of risk-taking clients. And tou can check out all the winners here. This one from the Politically Incorrect section is a goodie.

Pin-ups

The Auckland leg of the Film Festival will soon be upon us. And Ocean Design are running a competition that gives anyone who votes for their favourite festival poster the chance to get it framed. It goes all the way back to 1972 Wellington. So get your vote on here.

Digi boom

As a result of a stellar performance in the first half of 2010, with year-on-year growth of 84 percent, global digital group, AD2ONE is now looking to recruit new staff across Australia and New Zealand, with new hires set to include a new operations executive as well as new business development executives based in Melbourne and Auckland. The digital sales agency opened its Melbourne office in September 2009 and an Auckland office in January 2010.

Phil Duffield, managing director of AD2ONE, says much of its growth is due to its highly successful travel category, which has seen the firm’s biggest ever deal secured locally with Visa Australia this year. It has also taken on a record ten new clients since January across various vertical sectors including travel, business and sporting publishers, including Gourmet Ads, Reuters, Rentahome, SportingPulse, Shopping.com and Holidayhomes.co.nz. Lonely Planet and Takeabreak have both renewed their contracts.

BBC Worldwide has also had a good year, with results from the 2009-2010 financial year showing BBC.com doubling its number of local advertising partners in Australia and NZ, and now reaching more than 3.5 million unique users

The wailing wall

Graph of the week goes to HitwiseUK, which has released some interesting data on the effect News Corporation’s paywall/registration model on The Times traffic. In May last year, it held a 4.37 percent share of the news and media market in the UK. After imposing the registration, it dropped to 2.67 percent. But the scariest statistic is that the Daily Mail is at close to 12 percent.

Hitwise analyst Robin Goad says the drop is not as precipitous as many expected and that the most-visited part of the Times has been the new site dedicated to registration.

The full paid content system was switched on by Rupert a couple of days ago. So we wait to see how those numbers fare in the face of actual money.

Safety in numbers

In exciting health and safety news, ‘Crossing the road to safety’, a DVD produced for Vector by Auckland motion media company Omnicron, has taken first prize in the safety category at the 31st Annual Telly Awards in New York, the only Kiwi entry to nab a gong.

The awards attracted 11,000 DVD entries in an array of categories and Omnicron’s Andrew Eggelton, the DVD’s producer, says the video was praised by the US judging panel for its creativity and technical excellence.

The video also nabbed third place and Certificate for Creative Excellence in the 43rd annual US International Film and Video Festival in Los Angeles, which featured entries from 25 countries.

“It only took four days to shoot in Henderson late last year—with 10 crew—and apart from Pio [Terei], the entire cast was comprised of Vector employees,” says Eggelton. “Editing was completed in less than two weeks but the real key to it was the presence of Pio. He is a huge ambassador for safety in New Zealand and he relates very well to everyday Kiwis.”

Giving the finger

Sony Ericsson has just launched a global competition for aspiring fingerdancers, with the best ‘finger battler’ getting to star in a music video with Tha Breakadelics and attend the world B-Boy champs in London. Apparently, says a press release filled to bursting with exclamation marks and arbitrary capitalisation of letters, it’s all to draw attention to the Xperia X10 mini pro, which was “designed with fingers in mind”.

“Fingers can’t help but dance on the phone – and we want to share this feeling with fingers across the world!” says some cheesy PR person with no shame speaking through the Oceania director from Sony Ericsson.

Contenders need to head to www.sonyericsson.com/battlefingers and upload a one minute video of their sweet phalange moves. And the winner will be decided online in a furious dance off.

IT crowd

Video will take centre stage at the Auckland Chamber of Commerce’s free technology event Transform IT, previously Right Click, on July 15.

The Chamber’s popular ‘Right Click’ events of the past five years have evolved to ‘Transform IT’ in 2010 and the free half-day event will explore the increasing importance of video in business communication and highlight the rich communication environment video offers customers and partners.

“The new series of events will provide businesses with the opportunity to learn about the latest technology trends and how to get the most out of their IT spend,” says Michael Barnett, chief executive of the Auckland Chamber. “They are designed to help businesses use information technology in a more efficient and strategic way. In a country like New Zealand, businesses of all sizes and types can benefit from the effective use of video. When your business operates with a geographically spread workforce or customer base video technology allows you to progress things face-to-face regardless of geography.”

Speakers at the July event will include:

  • Kris Boyd, SMB Market Manager Cisco on ‘Business Transformation with Video Real Time’
  • Warwick Grey, Marketing Manager South Pacific, Hewlett Packard on’ Video and the Future of Business’
  • Debbie Mayo Smith, Director Successful Internet Strategy on ‘Developing your social media strategy’
  • Adon Byron, NZ Sales Manager, Google on ‘YouTube for Business Success – more than just home videos’.

The event will be held from 9am – 12pm at the Rendezvous Hotel, Auckland.

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