After four years as professional development manager at CAANZ and a short stint as acting chief executive this year while a replacement was found for Rick Osborne, Dean Howie is off to pastures anew.

He’s heading to Hawaii to “catch a few waves” before returning to Auckland in late August.

“At this stage I have no idea what I’ll be doing so the world is my oyster, as they say.”

New chief executive Paul Head is currently interviewing for a replacement.

Are you experienced?

12 members of New Zealand’s experiential marketing community came together last week for the first official bi-monthly function of the Experiential Marketing Association of New Zealand, an organisation that aims to showcase and reward best practice in the industry, provide a code of practice that ensures better relationships with city councils, venues and event organisers as well as providing an active forum for members to share ideas and to find costs savings for their clients.

The executive committee chair was handed from Copper Brand Experience’s Megan Clark, who leaves to take up her role as chairperson at the CAANZ Marcoms Leadership Group to Mark Pickering, head of the newly formed agency FLUXX – Ideas in Motion.

“Megan has done a tremendous job bringing the organisation through its early days and we’re finally at a stage where we can now push on with our many new members to lift the bar in delivery of experiential campaigns and to raise its profile as one of the most effective communication channels available to marketers.

“The industry has a massive period ahead with the RWC and we want to provide all of our clients with the best ideas, service and delivery of campaigns and prove the value and ROI that can be obtained through working with EMANZ members in the experiential channel,” Pickering says.

Next up

According to the NZ Herald, Christina Sayers Wickstead, who took the job as editor of Next magazine around two years ago after ACP purchased CityMix and stuck it in Metro, is stepping down to spend more time with her family but would still be available to consult.

ACP is currently looking for a replacement, with Wendyl Nissen and Fiona Fraser thought to be possibilities.

Surf wax

In an effort to drum up some more business, Waxeye, the creative studio specialising in animation, has launched its own version of a loyalty programme called Surf Safaris.

Director Paul Scott-James says the initiative, whereby the more you spend, the more you can surf (here and in Samoa), was a natural extension of the company’s relationship management programme. Never fear, if you don’t like surfing you can use your points for some apres surf fun.

“Well, we had to do something, we don’t have a beer fridge,” he says.

For more details, visit the Surf Safaris website.

A Healthy Supply

The Dieline Awards are devoted exclusively to the art of brand packaging and every year, over 900 entries from top companies around the world are received. And local graphic design and interactive agency Supply, which was recently nominated for a Webby, came away with third place in the Beer, Malt Beverages + Tobacco category for its work on Nelson-made Rochdale Cider.

Supply’s managing director, Craig McColl, believes it’s the only company in the Southern Hemisphere to receive a Dieline Award in 2011.

“The standards at the Dielines are extremely high. We were up against big corporate giants from all over the world [Heineken and Millers were first and second in the category]. Receiving this award demonstrates that we have produced some amazing results for our client. That’s what really makes us proud.”

Supply produced a ‘retro cheek’ look that captures a classic ‘brown paper’ heritage feel, with a modern twist. The result is a range of nostalgic, feel-good bottles and boxes that feature antiqued paper and a red apple fruit stamp.

For whom the Belkin tolls

Ian McLean has been appointed as Belkin Australia & New Zealand’s managing director and Brendan Sparks has been named as head of marketing and product management for ANZ.

McClean replaces Belkin’s previous MD, Patrick Domingue, who is returning to Belkin in the USA. In his previous role at Seagate, he was responsible for driving the storage business in ANZ.  Prior to his role at Seagate, Ian spent 10 years at Netgear as VP of Asia Pacific Sales and 10 years at Netcomm as head of sales and marketing.

Sparks joins Belkin from Samsung Electronics where he was product marketing manager for Plasma and 3D TV.  With over 12 years’ experience, he has a very strong background and knowledge of the consumer electronics space. Through strategic and tactical market development, he was pivotal in Samsung’s growth and success in the TV market and he has a track record of aggressive growth in sales, revenue and market share.

Prior to Samsung, he was with Fuji Xerox Printers as APAC regional marketing manager and at Canon Australia heading up software marketing.

In Good Health

Despite difficult times for the magazine sector, ACP Magazines is to add to its stable with Good Health, a new health and wellbeing publication for women. The decision came from research showing these two factors are increasingly important to New Zealand women, with more females than ever actively seeking a healthy lifestyle.

Good Health was first published in Australia 11 years ago as Good Medicine and changed its name to Good Health last year, becoming one of ACP’s strongest performers.

Paul Dykzeul, chief executive of ACP, says the launch is testament to ACP’s on-going commitment to investment in the magazine category with Good Health filling what he thinks is a gap in the market for a high production value health magazine that addresses women’s ongoing pursuit for a more balanced lifestyle.

“Good Health will be in great hands under the editorial direction of Shelley Ferguson, also editor-in-chief of CLEO magazine.”

Paul Gardiner, general manager, advertising sales says it’s a good chance for ACP’s advertising partners to target these women 25–45 who are hard to reach through other media.

“We are confident this magazine offers the mass reaching health and lifestyle environment that advertisers in the New Zealand market have been waiting for.”

The New Zealand edition of Good Health will be on newsstands from 28 June 2010, supported by substantial editorial, production and marketing investment.

Mobile outage

Telecom has announced the appointment of Kieren Cooney as director of mobile. The brave soul will start in the role in June and replace current director of mobile Paul Hamburger, whose contract ends in July.

Cooney will be the responsible for commercial operations of Telecom’s mobile business, such as product management, plans, handsets and roaming, as well as supply chain, retail promotions and sales. The role doesn’t include the management of network infrastructure.

Cooney is currently chief executive of Leading Edge NZ Ltd, Telecom’s retail dealer partner, which runs a network of 60 Telecom branded outlets.

Prior to his four years at Leading Edge, he held key senior roles at Vodafone, including general manager new markets and general manager media and content. During this time he led the launch of the company’s 3G service and the development and growth of its content portal.

Alan Gourdie, Telecom retail chief executive says Cooney was a standout for the role given his close workings with Telecom’s mobile operations over recent years and his impressive local market experience.

“Kieren has been working alongside our mobile and retail teams for some time and has in-depth understanding of the customer experience, sales and service models we work towards. His knowledge of the New Zealand mobile market and understanding of the competitive landscape make him an excellent addition to the retail organisation.”

Car pool

Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand has made two senior appointments in sales and marketing, with Warren Brown becoming general manager sales and marketing and Daniel Cook becoming head of sales and marketing strategy.

Brown first joined the Porirua-based importer as a junior marketer in the late eighties, then headed off to gain sales and finance experience with Toyota and Telecom before returning as national sales manager in 2003. And Cook, who has a first class honours degree in marketing from Victoria University, has managed Mitsubishi’s marketing communications for the past five years. He will be responsible for all marketing and retail sales.

Freeviewers rejoice

Over 5000 votes were cast for the inaugural Freeview Awards, which were created to recognise the platforms’’s growing popularity and to acknowledge the broadcasters, manufacturers and retail and technology partners.

Dick Smith Electronics took out both the best in-store retail experience and best online retail experience categories. Media 7 (TVNZ 7) claimed two trophies for both the best digital-only show and the best show on a channel on Freeview categories. TVNZ 7 led the way in the best digital-only TV channel on Freeview category, with three gongs. TV3 picked up the award for best High Definition TV show on a channel on Freeview with CSI the clear winner.

Check out all the winners here.

“We would like to thank all those Freeviewers who took the time to vote and give us their feedback as well as congratulate the winners of the 2010 Freeview Digital TV and Radio Awards,” says Sam Irvine, Freeview general manager. Being an open platform we rely on many organisations and individuals to make Freeview a world class free digital TV and radio service and these awards allow the viewers to show who they think contributes most to that success.”

Kiwi Techno

Nielsen Market Intelligence has compiled the list of most popular technology category for domestic traffic for the week to 11 April 2010, with the top five being stuff.co.nz/technology, nzherald.co.nz/technology, geekzone.co.nz, pcworld.co.nz and computerworld.co.nz.

stuff.co.nz/technology have especially shown a strong increase of 17 percent in weekly unique browsers since the last technology ranking six months ago, which compares with nzherald.co.nz/technology’s growth of six percent during the same period.

New Zealand’s Next Top Woman

NEXT magazine has kicked out the men and announced the launch of the inaugural Woman Of The Year Awards, which aims to  recognise New Zealand woman in five distinctive fields: Health & Science, Arts and Culture, Sports, Business and Community. It is sponsored by Aveeno and will be held annually.

“Every year at NEXT we write hundreds of stories about wonderful New Zealand women in our country achieving amazing things. It became very clear to us that New Zealand needs an award that formally acknowledges these and other role models,” says editor Christina Sayers Wickstead.

The first awards will be judged by Sayers Wickstead, Dame Catherine Tizard and, perhaps a little strangely, Dr Gareth Morgan.

“We are looking for a leader – someone who has inspired others through their tenacity, commitment and big picture thinking,” says Sayers Wickstead. “Women can nominate themselves or someone who has inspired them. The winner will not be judged on profile, but on a carefully selected set of criteria.”

Blame the media

The 2010 CAANZ Media Awards, which is to be held on 6 May at the Hyatt, has sold out, with 610 tickets sold in just over two weeks.

“Those still looking for entry to the hottest media show in town should approach the Hyatt in the first instance and see if there are any waiting jobs on the night,” says CAANZ chief executive Rick Osborne.

Green Shoots

CAANZ and the Association of New Zealand Advertisers are hosting an economic and business briefing on Wednesday 28 April entitled Nurturing the Green Shoots, featuring Westpac’s chief economist Brendan O’Donovan and the NBR’s Nevil Gibson. The forum will provide advertisers and agencies with an insight into economic and business conditions likely to be encountered in the second half of 2010, and will assist with business planning and investment decisions.
Wednesday 28 April, 4pm registration, 4.15pm start at Vodafone Theatre, 20 Viaduct Harbour Avenue, Auckland. Networking drinks to follow presentations .
CAANZ/ANZA members $35+GST, non-members $45+GST
RSVP by Friday 23 April to office@caanz.co.nz

Game on, Gambon
The mellifluous tones of Sir Michael Gambon have arrived in New Zealand, after he was enlisted to be the voice of an advertising campaign for Sovereign Assurance created by TBWA\Whybin.

“The stories have a gentle heart and reinforce a genuine love of life with little hints of very human humour. In life, everyone has their favourite memories and moments and these ads really convey that through a variety of carefully selected photographs. I’ve never been to New Zealand – I’m not sure you’d have me – but I hear it’s a beautiful country so I intend to rectify that soon. The guys I worked with on the campaign even offered to put me up at their house in true Kiwi style, so I said chaps, you’re on.”
Gambon, who recorded the TVC campaign in London and has the Top Gear racetrack named after him after a particularly aerial lap in the Liana, says his distinctive voice means he can’t do advertisement voice-overs anonymously, like some of his  colleagues.

“Thus I have to be careful what commercials I agree to do. Sovereign impressed me as a company with a good track record, a sound reputation and a strong position in a market that’s been under strain in recent times.”
Sovereign’s general manager of marketing and communications, Craig Waugh says Gambon was an obvious choice for the company’s new advertising campaign, which will run for two months.

“We needed someone whose voice would connect with the New Zealand market and communicate the strength, stability and dependability of Sovereign. Sir Michael is a wonderful personality with an amazing voice. It conveys just the right tone for the message we want to communicate to potential customers and fits with our positioning of ‘life’s memories and moments’.”

Waugh explains that while the campaign’s over-riding message is that the business is stable and secure, the sentiment is around treasuring the special memories and moments in life which are personal to every individual.

“We were delighted when Sir Michael agreed to lend his strong personal brand – developed through hard work over half a century – to ours. He saw a synergy there, as do we.”

On Trend

Internationally renowned trend forecaster, curator, publisher and educator Li Edelkoort of Trend Union, Paris, is coming to Auckland for a series of presentations on 6 May that will show you the way and the light. Apparently, she “constantly lives in the future” and is widely credited with pioneering trend forecasting as a profession.

She has worked with some of the world’s leading brands and, by studying the links between art, fashion, design and consumer culture and  analysing the concepts, colours and material that will be important two or three years hence, has been honoured by British design mag i-D, British Elle and Time magazine.

‘There is no creation without advance knowledge, and without design, a product cannot exist,” she says so d her closely-knit teams orientate professionals in interpreting the evolution of society and the foreshadowing of consumer tastes to come.

Thursday 6 May 6 Auckland presentations:

Resource: fashion and textiles for summer 2011
We Are Family: design and interiors for 2011
Organic Dwelling: biomimicry and architecture beyond 2012
Taking Flight: fashion and textiles for winter 2012

Visit www.colourways.com.au for more details and bookings.

Works of art

A  new internet-based artwork management system has just been released in New Zealand and it aims to assist brand managers/marketing departments control and manage artwork from concept through to printing by placing total control over artwork in the customer’s hands, enabling better management of costs.

“Kiwi companies spend millions of dollars on digital assets yet many may be failing to manage, store or reuse them efficiently’ says business director of the Global Artwork Brand Management System (GLAMS BM) Colm McGrath. “The actual asset, which in artwork terms consists of the original digital files, can often end up left with the advertising or creative agency who produced the piece or on the desk of the printer, invariably not in the possession of the organisation which actually owns the asset. This limits an organisation’s ability to re-purpose or leverage the asset, with agencies often charging retrieval or re-working fees for artwork and influencing the choice of printer.”

GLAMS creates a central online storage area that accepts all files using recognised industry standards, to provide a single point of proof and allows all involved parties to participate directly in the print production process to generate artwork in a unified tracking and management flow.

“Any company that produces volumes of artwork such as marketing material or packaging will benefit from the GLAMS system. We’re presenting it throughout New Zealand over the coming weeks and that’s the message we will be emphasising in our presentations”, he says.

Following on from the recent ASA data that showed online advertising turnover increased by ten percent last year, Stuff.co.nz has recorded its best ever result in February, reaching the 100 million milestone for total page impressions. It also recorded its highest ever domestic unique browsers, domestic page impressions and total page impressions.

This makes Stuff.co.nz one of only four sites in New Zealand to nab more than 100 million page impressions a month, the other three being TradeMe, NZDating and YahooXtra!, all of which have major service components (auctions, transactions, matchmaking and email) that generate massive volumes of interactions on their sites.

The Chilean earthquake and the domestic tsunami threat helped Stuff.co.nz secure 105,553,346 total page impressions and 3,680,762 total unique browsers for February. This means stuff.co.nz leads the nzherald.co.nz by 253,102 domestic unique browsers, 28 million page impressions domestically, and 29 million page impressions in total traffic, which is the highest lead ever.

But enough about online, let’s talk about PR (check out this rather interesting, but not entirely surprising, study into the power PR has to influence the news agenda in Australia). After selling her shares in spice communications group to Jackie Ellis, Sarah Alexander Wilcox has set up a new brand called PR ink that “encapsulate [her] fifteen years in the marketing industry”.

“We have a pool of expert consultants based in both Auckland and Napier who have their own niche talents from copy writing, media relations, experiential marketing, to social media specialists and marketers. Our client portfolio is very diverse and includes the Hilton, Lockwood, Spaceships, Skinfood, Lion New Zealand, Nordic Naturals and Gourmet Garden.”

In new editorial postings news, Fairfax Magazines has chosen Sally Duggan as the new editor of NZ House & Garden. And Next magazine has announced food writer and chef Julie Le Clerc as its new food editor.

Duggan has been the associate editor on the NZ House and Garden, New Zealand’s leading home title, since joining the company 15 months ago. Current editor Kate Coughlan will remain with the magazine as editorial director and will continue to edit NZ Life & Leisure. In her editorial director role she will work closely with general manager Lynley Belton on editorial development across the division’s portfolio.

In the latest round of magazine circulation results NZ House & Garden is one of only two titles in the home category to show increasing circulation, with total circulation increasing to 47,600 copies a month.

Le Clerc has been a leading food writer in the Australian and New Zealand print media for the past 12 years and has a prestigious culinary career stemming from training and teaching with Le Cordon Bleu. She has since been a professional chef, run a boutique catering business, authored 10 best-selling cookbooks and launched two highly successful Auckland cafés.

Next Editor Christina Sayers Wickstead says it’s wonderful to think that the 358,000 people who read Next every month are “going to be effortlessly serving up extra special food all over the country from now on.”

Auckland visual effects and animation studio Oktobor has won a Favourite Website Award (FWA) for its handiwork on the interactive Erky Perky website.

The FWA is an industry recognised award program, established in 2000, that showcases websites using cutting edge technology, together with inspirational ideas. And winning the Site Of The Day Award led an additional 100,000 hits to the site.

According to Oktobor’s creative technologist Mark Zeman, the brief from Ambience Entertainment for the new website was simple: create an all seeing, all-dancing website as good as the animated TV series, a show that features two quirky insects, Erky and Perky, who live at a hot dog stand but are accidentally taken to a house.

Zeman and Oktobor digital design director Matt von Trott watched lots and lots of episodes of Erky Perky and devised a concept where the audience could explore the house’s kitchen through the website and get to know the characters in their own environment.

“Our aim was to take the audience inside the world of Erky Perky,” says Zeman. “We used the kitchen as a metaphor for their world and the website as a gateway into it.”

A lot of time was spent making the site look and feel like the TV show. But it needed an engaging interactive element so the team devised a multi-level game where there were incremental rewards for the audience. The team also created a Secret Club to keep the audience coming back, where users discover and collect crumbs from different parts of the website.

Ambience scripted the interaction between characters to a very high level and gave Oktobor access to their entire library of Erky Perky assets. It also created animation, voiceovers and 3D shots specifically for the website.

“This level of cooperation is very rare indeed,” says von Trott. “The voiceovers were done in Canada with the original actors and Ambience made their full 3D team available to us for the full duration of the website’s development. The reality was that Ambience, in essence, produced an episode of Erky Perky which we then turned into a website.”

Speaking of websites that have won the FWA Site of the Day gong, the web gurus from Resn in Wellington went live with the Sponsafier site for Toyota Racing just over three weeks ago. It was part of Saatchi & Saatchi LA’s U.S. campaign and fans have the chance to design their own custom Cup car in 3D for NASCAR Team Toyota drivers. The competition winner will see their car on the track at the 2010 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and, so far, over 75 000 cars have been entered in the competition. And the TV spots that Saatchi LA did for the campaign are very muy bien.

Speaking of very muy bien, the Tiger beer website has had an overhaul by the folks at Splinter Group recently. The idea was to create a fast and easy HTML-based site for consumers to keep up to date with Tiger-sponsored events, news, giveaways and, of course Tiger Translate, which is kicking off this weekend. And it has been designed in a way that reflects the brand and doesn’t feel like it’s followed any corporate guide lines, says Splinter Group’s Lorenz Perry.

“People can also register for stuff like tickets/competitions etc. and view photo galleries. And emails from the database are sent out to inform people when new content worth checking out has been added, a great way to keep the brand and consumer connected.

From beer to accounting: journalists have until Monday, 22 March 22 to submit entries to the inaugural Openside Accounting Journalism Awards, an independently judged competition, which has been established by the Wellington accounting firm Openside to celebrate outstanding published work covering the accounting profession, is open to journalists who published original reports or commentary over the past 12 months on accounting-related issues.

The Award initiative recognises and supports the crucial role of the media in raising awareness of accounting issues during an unusually challenging business year. Cash prizes will be awarded for the best article and the best column or analytical piece about the accounting industry, as evaluated by industry judges, whose decision will be announced on 30 April.

All entries must be received by no later than March 23, 2010. For more information, including an entry form, visit the Openside website at www.openside.co.nz or email mediaawards@openside.co.nz.

The Show Me Shorts festival, an annual national short film festival that plays Kiwi and Australian short films between three and 30 minutes long that have been made within the last three years, is calling for entries and film-makers have until 5 July to get them in.

Show Me Shorts will screen in cities and towns throughout New Zealand from 4 November, with Tauranga and Waiheke Island new additions to the location list this year. The successful short filmmaking seminars of last year will also be repeated with the addition of a short film development lab.

Festival director Gina Dellabarca says the whole team is always really excited at this time of year because we know those shorts are about to start rolling in.

“We all have our favourites, but the festival is open to any genre and we encourage both established and emerging filmmakers to send us their work. We are particularly looking for striking films with high production values and a strong central idea that will capture the audience’s imagination.”

For more information visit the Facebook fan site or enter your short film here.

And finally, more visual imagery-related news, Auckland gelato shop Giapo is holding a photography contest. Owner and social media savant Gianpaolo Grazioli wants as many people as possible to have the opportunity to enter the competition and to build on our use of social media to engage with the community so people have to enter the competition through the Facebook page.

“One of our dreams is to give a child a smile, so we have set an entry criteria that all photo’s must show a child smiling. We’re not just looking for a photo of a child sitting smiling, we want to see some creativity, and are looking for something unique,” he says.

When entries have closed, all images will be uploaded to the Facebook page and democracy will reign: everyone can ‘like’ how many and as much as they like and once voting has closed, the photo with the most ‘likes’ wins $1000 and two runners up get prizes of $200 each.