Click here to view the embedded video.

Xero, which was founded in 2006 by tech entrepreneur Rod Drury and small business accountant Hamish Edwards and now has 60,000 customers, was the only New Zealand company to be nominated for and win an IxDA award. Stimulant/Sifteo’s pretty frickin’ amazing Loop Loop took out the best in show.

“It’s awesome to see our team get recognised alongside some of the most innovative designers in the business,” says Xero’s head of design, Philip Fierlinger. “You wouldn’t expect to see an accounting system sitting in the company of some of the world’s sexiest, most ground breaking products.”

IxDA president Janna DeVylder said: 
“Great interaction design does not suddenly appear; it’s through a considered design process, understanding of behavior, and clear intent that these projects shine.”

And while Xero is still waiting to break even, a recent filing to the stock market shows it hopes to double revenue in 2012 (the 2011 financial year saw revenue of $9.3 million and a loss of $7.5 million).

Stuart Ogden, bcg2 Health’s general manager, says it was a full-blown creative pitch against two incumbents, and he says they took out the top prize because of a “very innovative, creative idea” (that they obviously can’t talk about yet).

The win ”again demonstrates how well positioned bcg2 Health is as a leading partner in developing world-class digital healthcare solutions”, which he says is an increasing area of focus for the industry as patients are matched up with providers via digital channels.

This big win follows up from the recent award-winning digital work bcg2 Health and Spitfire undertook for Pfizer in Australia/NZ with its FACTORy programme, which won a commercial excellence and innovation award and is currently being looked at for release in other markets.

Ogden says the project is set to run for around three months, and will again involve its partner agency Spitfire, but he’s confident it will blossom into a full agency relationship.

Certainly New Zealand is way down the list when it comes to understanding, let alone implementing, online strategies with traditional media. However this is going to change – and quickly.

The UFB rollout and savvy business operators like the masters of the Pacific Fibre initiative to build a new cable into NZ (Sam Morgan, Rod Drury and Stephen Tindall) will give consumers access to speeds previously never seen on these shores, meaning that launching interactive campaigns within the confines of traditional media become a key ingredient to the future success of a brand.

As viewing habits change, so too does one-way advertising. Add to this our almost blithely naive attitude to sharing our every offline moment with our online ones, and marketers here will be watching with interest those countries where the impact of the ‘second screen’ while watching television is gaining some serious traction.

The advent of the second screen

While Samsung, ASUS, Blackberry (name your brand!) try to play catch-up to Apple, the iPad is only into its second iteration and already according to data from Yahoo/Nielsen, 86 percent of web users in the US access the internet via a mobile device such as the iPad or iPhone while watching TV. Armed with this information, content providers and advertisers are looking to complement the viewing experience with the online platform in order to create stickier audiences and increase ROI.

But how is it being done?

Tag a TV ad, get a free Pepsi

iPhone app IntoNow has partnered with Pepsi in a promotion that rewards users with a free drink if they manage to ‘tag’ the drink maker’s TV commercial.

IntoNow works much the same way as Shazam or Soundhound, however, instead of recognising songs or music it recognises television shows.

According to IntoNow founder and CEO Adam Cahan: “This is the first time where consumers can close the funnel between a brand experience on a TV commercial right down to a real-world drink you can consume.”

IntoNow has 600,000 users and generates between 25,000 to 35,000 tags per day. Not bad going. Earlier in the year Yahoo bought a similar concept from IntoNow for $20 million – that’s some nice action, if you can get it.

Shazamed!

Shazam doesn’t want to identify what you’re watching but it does want to help you unlock prizes. Mega brands like Honda, Starbucks and Paramount Pictures have partnered with Shazam where radio and TV ads can be “Shazamed” to unlock free music, buy tickets or purchase an entire soundtrack.

Shazam is on about 45 million phones and tablets – that’s a ton of phones to point at tellies and radios and earlier in the year it raised $32 million to push into the TV market.

Web-ready TVs

Sky TV recently launched Soho and now the ridiculous Igloo channel is on the horizon, but how much longer will Kiwis be tied into paying exorbitant prices for premium content?

Coming back to the fact that we have incredibly slow internet speeds, US-based content streaming provider Netflix said in November 2011 that it hadno plans to enter the NZ market due to low internet data caps and problems obtaining content.

On the back of data out of the US, 65 percent of TVs sold in 2012 will be connected to the web, so perhaps the UFB initiative will arrive just in time for some of us to adopt this trend.

Freeing the consumer to enjoy the content of their choice will open the doors to hyper-targeted advertising pitched at the level of the audience rather than at the level of the show. Personally, I can’t wait to not have to endure the Harvey Norman guy yelling at me every second ad break.

Don’t believe online TV will take off? YouTube does and is investing $100 million in premium content. Still not convinced? Considering YouTube has made its money on the back of thousands of ridiculous cat videos and Charlie biting his brother’s finger, imagine the cash it can make showing premium content. Cue cash registers ringing as advertisers fight dirty to have their logos on screen.

Social TV

Twitter hasn’t exactly taken off in New Zealand, however it is used extensively during shows overseas to generate chatter or what producers used to call the “watercooler effect”. The X Factor became the first reality show to allow voting via Twitter and the stats backed up the decision to test the waters.

Perhaps it’s not revolutionary stuff but online sentiment (“Shortland Street was epic tonight! or “Shortland Street is going all Ramsay Street – yuck!”) is social currency for success or failure and gives instant feedback for networks.

So while TV advertising is best for telling people about a new brand or reaffirming a brand’s presence, online is about sharing and socialising. Although IntoNow, Shazam, Twitter and YouTube are not game changers, they do answer the question about why a consumer decides to engage with a brand in a social environment – to win prizes or get something for free. And in doing so it just so happens they have found a way to successfully merge both the offline and online worlds.

• This story originally appeared on idealog.co.nz.

1) Favourite campaign that isn’t yours: 

Click here to view the embedded video.

2) Favourite campaign that is yours: We were actually responsible for the guerilla-marketing campaign in the opening RWC match. You know, the bit where Sonny Bill’s shirt actually exploded? Got loads of coverage but we were hoping for a bit more brand recognition for our client. I am also proud of the work we did for New World Media. Hypermedia got the march on and we had to play fast catch up. I do reckon that this collision of transaction data, retail store environment and advertising is a hot opportunity. I call it ‘relationshop’ marketing.

3) Least favourite campaign: You won’t find me bashing someone else’s work when I wasn’t party to the brief, the budget or the client feedback. Just not my way.

4) Best brand: Cancer Society Sunscreen. Close as I come to doing something meaningful with my life. Slip, slop, slap my friends, that sun is really quick to burn.

5) Best stoush: Couple of goodies this year. In the agency, I thought the most memorable was Cess trying to talk Alina out of sun bedding by threatening to call her mum. But the hands down winner has to be that global juggernaut Adidas and our local-man-done-good, Mr Briscoe. You should all sit down and have a nice cup of tea with John Key. That’d sort everything out.

6) Heroes: There’s a few for me. The Mad Butcher. He is a human force of rugby league-ness. I like that guy who organised the student army in Christchurch. And the team at ROLFE who work their hearts out to impress our clients.

7) Villains: That bloody earthquake was a bit rough and scary.

8) Most memorable marketing moment: Great use of experiential and consistent branding to deliver a huge global campaign for the Windsor family. Surely has done a great job in revitalising their key metrics like net promoter score and awareness trends.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stream views on TVNZ’s Ondemand reached 1,780,015 in July this year, an increase of 35 percent on the previous month, and unique viewers also increased by 28 percent. MediaWorks and iSky are also luring more and more punters to their ondemand platforms, so the eyeballs are certainly there for the advertisers.

Of course, hovering ads aren’t new. They’re all over YouTube and most of the time they’re pretty bloody annoying. But, just like its Ad on Pause and Ad Selector offerings, it does increase the potential interaction between viewer and advertiser.

New World has already used it successfully for its New World Cup campaign and BMW is doing the same with a call to action message sitting over its video ad. 36 percent of viewers have interacted with it so far and almost two percent clicked through to the BMW website, upon which the video ad and content is paused while the viewer explores the interior and exterior of the new BMW 1 Series. The viewer can switch between images and locate a dealer all within the video window. Viewers have spent an average of two minutes each interacting with this ad unit and a total of 31.58 hours were spent on the ad from last Friday to Sunday alone. 

According to ComScore data from the US, AdHover advertisers found that “combining content with compelling information and unsurpassed scale leads to measurable success and on average a 200 percent lift in engagement rates and brand recall”.

Rust was given the task to find the best Christmas gifts by doing the shopping for a range of local celebs like Nick Dwyer, Colin Mathura-Jeffree, Hollie Smith and many others. You can get your voyeur on and search through all these gifts or hunt for gifts she’s chosen for family members, partners or friends. Gifts can be added to a Top 5 and plotted on a map for when you head into the city. You can also check out all the Christmassy events going on.

There’s also a social media competition where you can let friends know what you want for Christmas by choosing your favourite gifts, making your own wish list and sharing it on Facebook (five wish lists are worth $1000 each are up for grabs).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Credits

Steve Cochran  - Executive Creative Director

Dan Wright – Digital Creative Director

Zoe Hawkins – Writer

Kia Heinnen- Art Director

Raymond McKay – Art Director

Paul Headington – Technical Director

Craig MacGregor – Junior Developer

Craig Thompson – Digital Designer

Amanda Theobald – Digital Project Manager

James McMullan – Digital Producer

Marcelle Baker – Group Account Director

Dave Munn – Senior Account Manager

Patrick Rowley – Account Manager

Courtney Herbert – Account Executive

Rob Linkhorn – Producer

Michegro Chisholm – Senior Planner

Tias Somers – Mac Operator

Erin O’Connell – Studio

Duncan Innes – Photographer

Charlotte Rust – Gift Guru

Localist’s mission is to be the place Aucklanders come to find out ‘what’s good around here’ and, despite launching only mid-year, has already cracked 250,000 user sessions a month. From a standing start, some 50,000 Auckland businesses are now listed in our local search engine. We’ve got double the traffic anticipated coming to the site, and some great examples of businesses who are getting strong return for their investment.

The first six months involved experimenting with the popularity of content types from local news and events to customer reviews and photos. In doing so, we have attracted tens of thousands of posts from Aucklanders including contributions of ratings and reviews, talk, events, news and photos.

The company’s rewards programme, called the100, has been a key factor in making the site an active living and breathing hub for loyal users. Each month we reward top contributors with prizes and access to special events.

Our iPhone and Android apps include the ability for people to check-in to locations to scout for local offers, along with customer ratings and reviews that point people to the best businesses nearby. Since June we have amassed some 6000 of these user reviews.

New homegrown applications such as AdMonkey®, Localist’s way of creating templated ads in a fully digital environment, have helped to cut layers of time and cost out of the typical print production process.

In September Localist signed an agreement with Google as a Premiere SME partner to sell Adwords packages to companies needing help with search engine marketing.

Our new technology approach and much sharper pricing than incumbents has been part of the attraction of Localist for customers. Small businesses have received a more effective means to connect with customers, and a less costly way to reach prospects.

Many companies tell us they know they need to be online, but don’t know how. Localist’s end-to-end offering will ultimately move from online reputation management, through web site management, to SEM and content builder solutions.

Our printing of a local product and services guides is part of a product strategy to ‘join the dots’ between online and offline worlds. For example, top-rated businesses from localist.co.nz are now being featured in the print books.

Despite inevitable commentator predictions of print media decline, Localist research this year shows that print is still widely used by certain customer groups. Market feedback shows that many advertisers are getting results.

Clearly having 800,000 books in homes helps to build the Localist brand. But it also creates an obligation to embed a sustainable approach into our business model. We’ve done this by adopting sustainable printing and delivery processes, and by printing on 100% carbon neutral paper. We were thrilled to be a People’s Choice finalist in the Sustainable Business Awards, and to also pick up the Emerging Large and Corporate Business Award at the Northern Sustainable Business Network Awards just last month.

Our print presence also creates ‘pull-through’ to the digital world where consumers can get more information about a particular business they want to research – like ratings, reviews, more detail on products and services, and offers.

We are aiming to take online marketing one step further into reputation management. This will allow small businesses to better establish a name for themselves as being trusted and recommended by customers, a way of spreading goodwill via digital word of mouth.

The inspiration for Localist’s development has mainly come from overseas companies such as Yelp and Foursquare. While global search engines continue to play a ‘wide-receiver’ role in the New Zealand market, Kiwis have been looking for deeper, richer local content for some time.

Localist has leveraged our owner New Zealand Post’s success with Kiwibank by building our revenue acquisition and content generation approach on the bank’s success in developing new products and acquiring scale at the expense of traditional incumbents.

Our strategy to avoid traditional ‘pay for priority’ models is working, and on our site businesses earn their place at the top of search. Search is based around a combination of relevancy, best reputation and best content.

Localist is now selling our seventh and eighth local guides and will fast-track the next stage of digital development. We have no plans to slow down and the company is now looking at national expansion.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Christchurch mayor Bob Parker says the award is great recognition of the work by council and its staff.

“Share an Idea was designed not only to collect and process the best ideas from our people, it was also designed to replace our sense of powerlessness in the face of the earthquakes that shattered our city. Our community’s vision provided all of us with a vision that gave us a reason to have hope; hope for ourselves and our descendants that we would again have a city that would sustain us and our descendants in a way that the city we had just lost had done.”

Chairman of the jury Jaco van Zijll Langhout says it established co-creation with the community in several ways and at several moments in time: an online platform to post ideas, a Community Expo, workshops and roadshows, to develop the city centre together.

“The response on this initiative was overwhelming: more than 106,000 ideas have been shared and more than 10,000 people visited the Expo. Next to developing the new city centre, the result of this co-creation is also a stronger community.”

The award will be presented to Parker next month when Jaco van Zijll Langhout visits New Zealand.

The results of the CMO study were presented at a breakfast before last week’s Marketing Today conference and there were some interesting results from the 54 CMOs interviewed in New Zealand that differed from the global findings.

For one, there’s a lack of marketing and IT alignment in New Zealand compared to global rates. And strangely, given the pressure on marketing budgets, the need to prove ROI, the desire for marketers to be taken seriously in the boardroom and the impact of technology on the marketing playing field, when asked what they needed to worry about to achieve personal success, Kiwi marketers didn’t feel they needed to worry about tech savviness, social media or finance skills (creative thinking topped the list for both chief executives and CMOs).

The global survey of 1734 chief marketing officers showed more than two-thirds saw a need to change the mix of skills within the marketing function to enhance analytic capabilities, invest in new tools and technologies and develop new strategies for managing big data.

With market and technology factors driving rapid change, the four areas they saw as game changers were social media, the data explosion, proliferation of channels and devices and shifting consumer demographics.

Few CMOs were exploiting the full power of the digital grapevine, with only a quarter tracking blogs, and less than half monitoring third-party reviews and consumer reviews.

While CMOs generally believed they were underprepared to take charge of the growing volume and variety of data, social networks can provide a rich source of information about customer sentiment with context that can help companies predict demand patterns.

Four out of five respondents anticipate high levels of complexity over the next five years but only half feel ready to take on the challenge.

Worryingly, despite the number of ways in which customers’ privacy can be compromised today, only 28 percent considered it necessary to take a second look at their privacy policies.

Given that privacy concerns are a huge issue for users, the study pointed out that CMOs might want to think about how they could inspire greater customer confidence as they consider the management of big data for their own purposes.

Most said proving the value of the marketing department to others was a hurdle and cited ROI as the primary measure of their effectiveness. But CMOs are struggling with providing hard numbers and plan to look outside of their companies for analytics.

Generally, while respondents said they had strong influence over promotional activities, they were lacking in the other three Ps of marketing—product, price and placement.

“Trading targeted impressions in real-time, based on real insights and data, about individual browsers, is very powerful,” she says. “The right message to the right consumer at the right time for a market price.”

Fraser says it’s not really competing with the ad networks like AdHub, 3DI and TPN and says it’s aiming to take on Google’s Double Click Ad Exchange by selling the inventory, including display inventory across Windows Live, under the Mi9 umbrella (in addition to msn.co.nz and Windows Live Hotmail, and Messenger, it comprises more than 40 brands including Bing, Skype, Xbox, MSDR performance advertising network, and large third-party sites, including Ticketek, Hoyts, Menumania and Everybody).

She says the inventory pool will grow to include msn.co.nz, msn network partners, and other premium local online publishers.

“Third-party premium inventory is a key part of the Microsoft Advertising Exchange strategy. The bigger the premium inventory pool the greater the opportunity for advertisers to reach their desired audience and drive better ROI … Our aim is to be the largest local source of premium inventory in the RTB landscape. Besides our own publishing properties, we will partner other high quality inventory sources. But we have to offer brand safety, so publisher inclusion isn’t automatic.”

There is some contention over the auction process and what that means for publishers. Some industry pundits believe ad exchanges reduce CPM rates and online inventory yields, but Fraser says overseas experience shows publishers achieving higher yields on their inventory and agencies and advertisers recording improved return-on-investment on their campaigns.

“It’s important to understand yield management in the context of Ad Exchanges,” she says. “RTB is designed to elicit the highest bid on an impression-by-impression basis. Views about downward price pressure stem from earlier incarnations of exchanges that lacked RTB. We also layer intelligent price flooring and yield management features, using insights from our network and other advertising assets to drive higher yield for publishers.”

Given New Zealand’s relatively smaller percentage of ad expenditure online compared to US and European markets, Fraser expected relatively slower uptake of RTB.

“New Zealand has over 2 million online users and today generates approximately $300 million online ad revenue. In terms of the revenue to audience ratio, New Zealand lags behind other global markets. We think Microsoft Advertising Exchange [which was rolled out in the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia earlier this year] will be a catalyst for rapid growth.”

MSN is also set to launch its Microsoft Media Network (MMN), a new advertising platform offering 16,000 behavioural targeting segments. MMN will sell inventory (both from MSN sites and third party publishers, including competitors) to advertisers, who can buy online advertising based on past audience behaviour.

“The right content pulls a crowd, but publishers want data that offers a more vivid picture of target audiences. More than knowing the kind of people they’re talking to, advertisers want a current picture showing what people are doing online, so they can target more receptive eyeballs and improve performance. Behavioural targeting is the way to do it.”

There’s been a bit of controversy over behavioural targeting and the use of cookies recently, mostly, Fraser says, from publishers. She says the new age of data centric advertising adds new gravity to transparency and provisions for visitors to opt in or out of having their information collected for the purpose of behavioural targeting. But, as long the data isn’t personally identifiable and doesn’t jeopardise consumer privacy, she says consumers aren’t opting out because it presents more relevant advertising.

The other big shift for MSN is in the fight for eyeballs, with MSN adding new partners and local production to its news offering.

If you listen to Nielsen’s market intelligence figures, the top five sites in terms of average daily UBs for domestic audience are TradeMe, Yahoo, Stuff, MSN and nzherald.co.nz (unlike Yahoo, Fraser says MSN’s figures don’t include email). But according to Comscore, MSN New Zealand reaches a unique audience of 2.5 million (or 85 per cent) of New Zealand’s total online audience (Fraser says the fact that Internet Explorer users have msn.co.nz as their homepage doesn’t make much of a difference).

The news portal, which launches in December, will include an expanded team of eight MSN news producers and a freshly minted partnership with Australia’s news service AAP, which set up a NZ outpost when NZPA departed. This relationship effectively replaces its relationship with nzherald.co.nz (nzherald links took MSN news visitors—approximately 200,000 UBs per month—to a MSN/nzherald co-branded website).

Fraser says there will also be a broader cross section of international news from MSN New Zealand partners ninemsn and MSN worldwide and a partnership with TVNZ for video news continues.