The Year in Review: Paul Gardiner
While the mass-market weeklies continued to struggle last year, ACP popped a few corks when Woman’s Day finally edged out Woman’s Weekly in both circulation and readership after a very long wait. Elsewhere in 2011, special interest magazines largely seemed to hold firm despite the gloomy economy—and the predictions of death from the digitally-focused doomsayers. Sales manager Paul Gardiner goes to town on 2011.
1) Favourite campaign that isn’t yours: I like the Powerade Challenge campaign. I can’t believe someone can do 9kms in 29 mins. Maybe I need to drink more Powerade.
2) Favourite campaign that is yours: 
We worked with Naked and Special Group on an ecostore campaign with Little Treasures magazine. It’s a publishing first that created over 3,000 personalised covers on one edition.
3) Least favourite campaign: Any campaign that asks people to “like” something. Engaged fan base?
4) Best brand: 
Steinlager Classic. Knowing how hard IMG were around RWC, they did a great job executing the campaign.
5) Best stoush: Adidas v NZ public. I wonder if someone over there has signed up for a crisis PR course yet.
6) Heroes: Anyone that’s done a great brand campaign. We need more of them to shift people’s hearts, not just their fingers on the keyboard.
7) Villains: Procurement managers
8) Most memorable marketing moment: I just keep going back to Steinlager. Not only did they execute a great campaign but they ended up the top selling item in dollar sales across all categories in all supermarkets. Well done.
What do you think?