The annual Nielsen readership numbers are always followed by much chest-thumping, and in APN’s case there’s a fair amount to thump about. The NZ Herald and the Herald on Sunday are up six percent and 12 percent respectively on the year to December 2009. Its supplements, Canvas, TimeOut, Viva and the Business Herald all show growth and the nzherald.co.nz increased its quarterly visitors by 34,000 in quarter four.

In contrast, Fairfax titles mostly recorded falls nationwide, though only two were statistically significant. Sunday News slipped eight percent from 302,000 to 280,000 and Sunday Star Times slipped seven per cent from 563,000 to 533,000.

Nationwide, newspapers are holding their own in readership, staying steady with the growth of the population.

Circulation numbers bear out a similar tale. Compiled bi-annually by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, the Herald held its circ steady at 170,677 and HoS grew 6,000 to 96,069. SST fell by 7,000 to 160,592 (it dropped them all in the last half of 2010 – what gives?) and Sunday News fell a massive 11,000 to 51,740. Indeed the Sunday News lost 31,000 circ in the last two years.

APN doesn’t get all the bouquets though. Shift the focus to Auckland and SST is a surprising winner, surging 14 percent, lifting its readership from 174,000 to 202,000. SST joins the North shore Times and Western Leader as the only papers to record statistically significant growth in Auckland, says Nielsen. This will give great encouragement to Fairfax as it tries to catch its weekly competitor, Herald on Sunday, which grew seven percent to 237,000.

Sunday News held steady in Auckland at 103,000 readers.

Fairfax’s take on it all is that it rules the rest of New Zealand.

“For the first time, Fairfax Media’s stable of brands is found to be read by a staggering 85.2 per cent of New Zealanders aged 15+ years on an average day. The result, up 2.5 per cent year on year, is from the January to December 2010 Nielsen Consumer and Media Insights survey,” its says in a release today.

Chief banana of Fairfax Media, Allen Williams says the positive results reflect the significant on‐going investment into quality journalism and a ‘content first, channel second’ approach.

“We are a multi‐platform media company, with an investment in our 750+ journalists and as such, the superior quality of our news content is what drives our business across newspapers, magazines, online, and the recent additions of mobile, tablet and video. We view these readership results as testament to the power of integration we have achieved across platforms for our audiences.”

The APN dominance of Auckland must annoy Fairfax, so used to being the big noise across the ditch. Check out this (supplied) graphic about APN’s reach into wealthy Auckland. Stories about Granny’s death are much exaggerated.

For the year-end September 2010, the Herald has increased its 15+ daily national readership from 598,000 to 607,000. This result is also reflected in significant readership rises for its lift-out magazines – TimeOut, Travel, Business Herald, Viva and Canvas (here’s what APN had to say about the results and here’s what happened last quarter).

The Herald on Sunday may have only 3,000 more readers than last year, taking its total to 383,000, but rival weeklies Sunday News and Sunday Star-Times have lost 34,000 (total 276,000) and 42,000 (total 528,000) readers respectively. Likewise, Sunday magazine has 43,000 readers fewer than last year. Wellington’s only metropolitan, the Dominion Post, has suffered a steady readership decline from 247,000 nationally in 2009 to 225,000 this year.

Weekend Herald data doesn’t seem to feature in the Nielsen release, but APN claims that, like its daily associate, it rose by 39,00 to 657,000 readers, making it “clearly the best read edition of any newspaper in the country, and double the readership of any other daily paper”.

Most community newspapers around the country have seen only slight drops in readership, with the exception of North Shore Times and Western Leader (Fairfax) and Citylife Wainuiomata News (APN), which have enjoyed notable increases.

Fairfax can also find some solace in the Auckland region, where Sunday Star-Times has gained the most readers year on year to reach 195,000 (up 19,000). However, it retains its place behind Herald on Sunday with 236,000 readers in Auckland (up 16,000) and above Sunday News with 100,000 (down 8,000).

Despite the mixed results on paper, Sandra King, group sales and marketing manager for Fairfax, says there were “no surprises” with what the year on year figures show. “We’re pleased with the results, considering the recession and the changes in people’s disposable incomes.”

It’s understandable some premium-priced publications have not performed so well in retail, but she is quick to confirm subscribers of Fairfax newspaper and magazine titles have remained faithful. Furthermore, she says the Fairfax brands continue to grow their online presence: www.stuff.co.nz has had a 64 percent increase in domestic unique browsers in the last year and it has recently launched the Stuff iPad and iPhone applications.

nzherald.co.nz has increased its online domestic audience by 31 percent over the last 12 months and the Herald iPad app has had 24,000 downloads to date.  The site’s domestic weekly audience averaged 798,000 over the most recent quarter, with a record domestic audience of 941,000 during the week of the Canterbury earthquake.

The Sunday Star-Times’ “content first” policy, implemented over the last 12 months to provide “relevancy for readers”, has worked to Auckland’s favour but seems to have alienated everyone else south of the Bombay Hills. Even in Hamilton, the Waikato Times, the Sunday papers and community newspapers have taken a hit, except for ‘granny’ Herald, which has gained 2,000 readers to reach 22,000 (grannies et al).

King has no qualms about the considerable drop in Sunday News readership: Fairfax made a business decision to reduce its distribution in the South Island, but the result is mirrored in the North Island as well.

We want to know why fewer people are reading the Post. Is Citylife Wainuiomata News that good? Wellington literates—are you out there?

You can check out the comparative magazine results here. And keen beans can download the Nielsen data and take a look for yourself. Newspaper Comparatives Q4 2009 – Q3 2010

I, Pad, take you, upgrade.

After a hugely successful launch back in July 2010 and more than 25,000 downloads to date, the NZ Herald iPad App has been upgraded “with new functionality and faster access to the latest news”.

“The three-month launch partnership we had with Mercedes and our other advertisers, Air New Zealand, Vodafone and Yellow, enabled us to release the App as a free download,” says Spencer Bailey, general manager and publisher. “This new version of the App can still be downloaded free of charge but we’ve made some changes to ad placements, including removing the 30 second pre-roll video, which means readers can dive straight into the news.”

APN Online will be sticking with a limit of four brands, sold on a monthly tenancy for now, and it is offering category exclusivity.

The upgraded App gives readers access to the latest news from the Herald and now also allows readers to share articles via Facebook, Twitter and email. At present, the NZ Herald’s iPad app is sitting at number 14 on the most downloaded free app chart, with Stuff’s recently released iPad app at number ten.

Easy Tiger

Tiger Beer has taken its penchant for creative collaboration online and, not too long after launching its old website (which was made by new Interbrand creative director Lorenz Perry), it has launched its new website. And it goes by the name of Hey Tiger!

Hey Tiger! is a hub that delivers “socially intelligent, genuine and refreshingly unexpected content direct to your brain hole” and, of course, a place to find all the artists and events Tiger Beer is associated with.

Running with Scissors were on ‘actualisation’ duties and, in keeping with the website’s ethos, it was a collaboration involving artist/designer/Tiger Translate contributor Jon Chapman Smith of Fuman, digital producer Shane Eriwata of Creative Organism and a handful of other contributors, including an array of words from Hot Grits singer and actor Barnie Duncan.

“Tiger Beer is a brand that encourages freedom of expression and has a great deal of respect for genuine artists,“ says Running with Scissors’ Eddy Helm. “We wanted to create a site that reflected Tiger’s passion for art and music, and allowed the real talent to shine. That’s why we selected creative practitioners to make the site happen.”

Mike Stribrny, brand manager for Tiger Beer says it is a very progressive brand and he has been impressed by Running with Scissors understanding of the brand and its strategic lead in the project.

“Tiger Beer has the confidence to let artists adapt and interpret it on our behalf. Not many brands can do that,” he says.

The site has been launched to promote the Tiger Translate event, which will be held this year at the Wellington Opera House on Friday 26 November. The event will be produced once again by RJX and the inaugural issue of the bi-monthly Hey Tiger! e-magazine, which has been introduced by Barnie Duncan, with contributions from musician Chris Cox and illustrator James Stewart, is dedicated to Tiger Translate. New content will come in on a regular basis, keeping the site fresh, current and relevant.

Through the Hey Tiger! site, there is also the opportunity for creative types to apply for support of their gig, opening, performance or exhibition.

“There are plenty of talented people out there who are so focused on their art that they leave the search for sponsors until the last minute,”, says Stribrny. “Supporting creativity is what Tiger’s all about, so we’ve set aside a little beer to help as many emerging artists as we can to get their events off the ground.”

By the balls

Advertising folk hard at work

A brief conversation at the Effies between DraftFCB’s head of planning David Thomason and Daniel Barnes from Barnes Catmur led to the gauntlet being laid down for the first ‘Balls of Steel’ inter-agency Table Tennis challenge. And a riotous evening in the DraftFCB Thunderdome on 29 October ensued.

Despite many close games, DraftFCB were the clear victors on the day, winning four out of the five matches.

“The trophy is up for grabs for any agency that can put together four doubles teams,” says Thomason.

Barnes Catmur has already vowed to seek revenge, a dish that is apparently best served deep and to the backhand side.

Something’s in the making

Take a few design industry veterans and add a splash of creative variety and what do you get? ‘MAKE SOMETHING’—a creative, genre-defying mash-up, which seeks to creep beyond regular commercial boundaries.

Founded by graphic designer Bevan Tonks and joined by five other leading New Zealand graphic designers, MAKE SOMETHING participants have been thrown a challenge: given absolute free reign, who would you choose to work with from the creative industries and what would the results of that mash-up be?

The collaborations blend a mix of New Zealand creative talents across architecture, product design, fashion, music and visual effects. This is the first exhibition in what Tonks hopes will become an annual event, within Auckland and further afield.

The 2010 collaborative partnerships are:

• Brogen Averill (Designer) and Jamie McLennan (Product Designer, ex Tom Dixon, UK)

• Xanthe Harrison (Designer) and Anja Harrison (Assistant Runway Designer, House of Balenciaga, Paris)

• Tana Mitchell (Designer) and Julia Deans (Singer/Songwriter, ex Fur Patrol, NZ)

• Dean Poole (Designer) and Mechanical Turk (Amazon-based crowd sourcing initiative)

• Bevan Tonks (Designer) and Davor Popadich (Architect, Patterson Associates)

• Leonie Whyte (Designer) and Angela Jackson (Visual Effects Producer, NZ)

When: 26 – 28 November

Where: Achilles House, Cnr Custom Street East and Commerce Street, Auckland.

Time: 10am-4.00pm daily

You shouldn’t have

Air New Zealand is teaming up with children’s charity Make-A-Wish New Zealand to give people a chance to make up for life’s little mistakes (overlooking a friend’s birthday, causing a fender bender, sneaking that last piece of chocolate, creating an innuendo-loving mascot etc etc) and help a great cause that works to grant the cherished wishes of children with life threatening medical conditions.

So whatever it is that makes you think “I wish I hadn’t”, you can now balance the ledger by sharing your un-wish at www.iwishihadnt.co.nz and donate to Make-A-Wish at the same time.

You can also check out the moments that others would rather forget, including some classics from high profile New Zealanders such as:

• “I wish I hadn’t given those drums to Max!”
  Mils Muliaina – All Black
• “I wish l hadn’t delivered those letters myself”
  Hon Chris Carter MP, Te Atatu – former Labour Cabinet Minister
• “I wish I hadn’t taken so long to realise my parents were so cool”
  Sara Tetro – New Zealand’s Next Top Model judge
• “I wish I hadn’t put all those interesting names on my blog”
  Cameron Slater – WhaleOil Blog
• “I wish I hadn’t given him my phone number”
  April Ieremia – TV sports presenter and former Silver Fern
• “I wish I hadn’t run the lawn mower without any oil”
  Bevan Docherty – Olympic Triathlete

You can also text your name and wish to 3181 to make an automatic $3 donation. And limited edition “I wish I hadn’t …” t-shirts are also available for purchase from the website.

Does collaboration between creative agencies work?

Twitter debate #markchat is back again at 12.30pm today and the topic is: ‘Brothers in marketing: does collaboration between creative agencies work?’ Here’s what the instigator, Bullet PR’s Alex Erasmus has to say:

“First things first, it would be wise to list what I deem to be ‘creative agencies’. The following fields are what I am principally referring to: PR; advertising; marketing; design; web development. So, in the broad modern world there are lots of creative entities ready and willing to promote a brand. But can marketing agencies really work collaboratively with design agencies and can media agencies work in blissful unison with advertising agencies? And what happens when a PR agency has to work alongside a web agency to deliver a project? From experience, this is sometimes a very rewarding process as you get input from people with different skill sets. That said, it can also be a frustrating process when the other party doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to understand, how your contribution fits in. In some cases, large media entities have absorbed every facet of the communications spectrum into a one-size-fits-all offering. But does this provide a better solution for clients? In some respects it does, as there is one place where the creative buck stops. There is also, typically, one main point of contact on the agency side. On the other hand, having one entity handle the whole process can be very costly and there can be the same creative frictions within a company as there can be between companies.

In a country like ours, there is perhaps more collaboration between agencies than in many other nations. The key reason being that it limits overheads to not have to hire an internal web development consultant, for example. It makes sense to have friends in overlapping fields who you work with regularly as it can deliver great results. You also get the chance to work with a wider range of clients, which is beneficial for all involved. What we want to debate is whether you should get the marketing agency to do the marketing, the advertising agency to do the advertising, the PR agency to do the PR and so on. Is this even possible in the homogenised media landscape we occupy?

If you’ve got opinions on the matter (and on what the best model/structure is), bring them to #markchat on Twitter at 12.30pm.

Totally Wired

Down to the Wire, the digital project created by HeyDay that told the story of New Zealand’s Internet, reached its 21st anniversary milestone when it published the content for the year 2009 a few weeks back. And it is now calling on its fans to write the current 2010 year chapter.

Each day for 21 days, starting in 1989 with the nation’s connection to the internet, Down to the Wire published annual content and built a chronological account of the internet’s impact on Kiwi lives. And using video, editorial, statistics and a wealth of contributions from site visitors, it has grown into a rich and entertaining resource for all New Zealanders.

To keep those contributions coming and to grow the resource, Down to the Wire wants people to tell the story of 2010 themselves. They are also being asked to recommend internet personalities of the year who should be filmed for the chapter. Previous years’ personalities, more than 50 in all, have included Geoff Ross, Richard MacManus, Helen Baxter and Alastair Thompson.

“The contributions we’ve received from visitors for each year have been fascinating and insightful and have added tremendous depth to our coverage,” says project lead Thomas Scovell. “We’ve said that Down to the Wire is New Zealand’s resource and now we’re out to prove it again. We want 2010 to be told entirely by New Zealand’s netizens. And that really means almost everyone these days.”

When in roam

For all you holiday wanderers, Telecom has announced new data pricing for XT customers heading to Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom that gives customers 100 megabytes (MB) of mobile data for $100. The press release also helpfully points out it is the equivalent of $1/MB.

Customers will be charged $8.00/MB for the first 12.5MB and a remaining 87.5MB worth of data for the rest of their billing month will be free.

The new pricing is available to all XT customers, both prepaid and postpaid and will be applied automatically to their bill without them having to do anything to activate it before they leave New Zealand.

“This means our customers get the equivalent of $800 (in Australia) and $1000 (in the US and UK) worth of data for only $100,” says Telecom’s head of mobile roaming, Niki Chave. “This will not only make it more affordable to use data while roaming but also give our customers more clarity around the cost of data use before they travel … When travelling overseas the majority of our customers, more than 88 percent, roam to Australia, the US and the UK, so we have started by introducing new pricing to the most popular travel destinations first, with more to follow later.

100MB is equivalent to approximately 1000 text based emails or 2000 m.facebook pages. Any usage over the 100MB total will be charged at an overage rate of $8.00 per MB.

“We think 100MB is a good amount of data for our customers to not feel too restricted when using mobile data abroad and we are excited to give them more freedom to be able to stay in touch while travelling,” Chave says.

Digital deadline

Digital strategists have until this Friday to enter Yahoo!Xtra’s third round of Digital Strategy Awards. So if you want to be recognised for the role digital strategy plays in the success of on-line campaigns, get them in by close of play, Friday 12 November.

Entrants need to submit an entry in 800 words or less summarising the overall campaign, the challenge, the solution, and the results at the Yahoo!Xtra website.

The four quarterly winners will be eligible for the overall Y!X DSA Annual prize of $10,000 of media on Y!X plus free entry into the CAANZ Media Awards Best Use of Digital category. The first annual winner will be announced in March 2011.

Paid in pizza

And finally, whoever said design was undervalued obviously hasn’t seen this dream job, which offers occasional free pizza as compensation.

If you believe APN’s release, it’s all good news, with The New Zealand Herald going for the visual approach to put its performance into context and claiming “the added daily readership [in the past year] would virtually fill the new South and East stands of the rebuilt Eden Park”. At a time when print is competing with an ever-increasing range of news channels and supposed to be dying a horrible death, the fact that APN says The New Zealand Herald achieved its best readership result in seven years, recording an increase of 29,000 or 5.1 percent over the last 12 months, is impressive. It is now read each day by 602,000 people aged over 15, which APN claims is more readers than all the other metropolitan newspapers combined. The Herald on Sunday also achieved its highest ever readership of 396,000 New Zealanders aged over 15 years.

Martin Simons, chief executive of APN’s New Zealand media business, says the readership result was outstanding and he thanked readers and advertisers for their great loyalty to the title. Prior to the previous high seven years ago, Herald readership had only reached above 600,000 in the early 1990s.

“This is a remarkable result given the range of news channels consumers have today and recognises the great job the paper is doing as a news and entertainment provider,” he says.

On the weekend, The Herald sells almost twice as many newspapers as any other daily paper in New Zealand, with the Weekend Herald recording a readership of 650,000, up 37,000 or six percent on the same period last year.

The Herald’s inserted magazines have also achieved solid gains, with Canvas adding 36,000 readers (+9 percent) to reach 453,000; Time Out adding 73,000 (21 percent) to 420,000 and Viva (Wednesday) now with 330,000 readers, an increase of 44,000 or 15 percent.

And the good news keeps coming: there doesn’t seem to be too much online cannibalisation, as the growth in print readership has occurred at a time when the Herald’s online audience has also been expanding rapidly, with weekly domestic traffic for the site up to 674,000 for the first six months of 2010, an increase of 27 percent on the same time last year.

Roy Morgan’s annual NZ Media Trends data compared readership of the nzherald.co.nz (those that have visited the site in the last four weeks) against average daily readership (Mon-Sat) of The New Zealand Herald, for the target of Aucklanders with a home internet connection.

The comparisons were taken over a five year period and show the growth of online readership against a decline in print readership. For Aucklanders 14+ with a home internet connection monthly online readership of nzherald.co.nz has risen to 40 percent, equal to that of daily readership of the printed version. For the same group of Aucklanders aged 25-54 (with home internet) the daily printed version figure was 39 percent and the monthly online version was 46 percent.

Overall, The Herald’s daily brand audience (those reading across the print and website edition of www.nzherald.co.nz) has increased by 81,000 (12 percent) year on year, and now reaches 753,000 on a typical day. And over a week it now connects with 1.2 million New Zealanders, which is an annual jump of 105,000.

“The first six months of 2010 have proven to be very positive for APN. With the launch of a re-designed Weekend Herald with the addition of a new Weekend Magazine this will underpin even more positive results to come,” Simons says.

APN’s arch nemesis Fairfax Media doesn’t have quite as much to crow about in terms of its flagship titles, but it’s good news on the targeted, local front.

Over the last year, the Waikato Times has increased by 6.1 percent to reach 122,000 New Zealanders aged 10+, The Press is up 2.7 percent to reach 266,000, and The Dominion Post is up 1.7 percent to reach 305,000. The best performer for Fairfax’s metropolitan dailies in print is The Press, which has grown its reach by 7.3 percent or 11,000 readers in the last quarter in its core Christchurch market, the biggest growth since 2006. Even so, there’s certainly no mention of filling new stadiums with extra readers. Merely “holding their own among consumers”.

Fairfax has performed well in the Auckland market, with the Sunday Star-Times and Sunday News experiencing a combined increase of 7.2 percent in the last quarter to reach 254,000 Aucklanders aged 10+. But the big growth in the Auckland region was also seen across Fairfax’s Suburban Newspapers, which reach 776,000 or 73.8 percent of Aucklanders aged 15+ across the week, up 10,000 readers in the last year, with the Rodney Times, which has grown by 5,000 readers, North Shore Times, up 15,000 readers, and the Western Leader, up 17,000 readers, the star performers.

Following international trends favouring hyper-local, relevant content, other success stories for Fairfax community titles include the Christchurch Mail, which has grown 10,000 readers across the year to reach 138,000 Cantabrians, and Dunedin’s D-Scene.

• Nothing to do? Download the charts and crunch your own numbers. Newspaper Comparatives Q3 2009 – Q2 2010. And check  out the latest magazine results here.

In an achievement sure to rank right up there with Sir Ernest Rutherford’s splitting of the atom, New Zealand recently became the first country to launch the Subway Express iPhone application, which, Subway claims is the most downloaded free iPhone app in the country.

The app was developed right here in Enzed by mobile technology development company Altaine, which has been raking in awards for its widgets in the last couple of years.

“New Zealander’s are the fastest adopters of new technology and penetration of iPhones is among the highest in the world”, says Brian Tap, regional director of Subway Asia Pacific. “We’ve had incredible success with the Subway Express for mobile and online. And the iPhone application is a natural progression from these current platforms.”

As you might expect, the app allows you to order, pick up and pay for your food, with the added bonus of also being able to locate the closest Subway (the country’s most trusted food brand, according to the Reader’s Digest) near you. And for those of you who like to accumulate those loyalty points that seemingly take forever to actually result in a free sub, the app also allows you to view your loyalty and gift balances.

New Zealand’s success has sparked interest globally for the Subway franchise: Altaine, which set up the text, web and mobile ordering system for Subway around five years ago, has also developed iPhone and online systems for Subway in the UK and conversations are underway to further develop these systems for other international markets.

Speaking of international markets, The New Zealand Herald’s iPad app has been getting some international props. It’s already been downloaded more than 7,000 times and remains the number one app in the New Zealand iTunes store. And Mark Zeman, creative director of Shift, the digital agency responsible for it, says the media commentary has been fantastic.

“Some people are saying it’s the best news experience available and blows away other news-focused apps, even those from the US and Europe …We knew we had to do something different with the iPad app and craft an experience that combined the trust of the brand with the interactivity of the iPad. We were determined to make this the most engaging, immersive and visual way to access the news online. I think we’ve succeeded.”

Shift worked in conjunction with developers Carnival Labs and Mercedes came on board as the principal sponsor of the app, which meant it was free to download at launch.

“It allowed us to work with motion design director Jonny Kofoed and create a Mercedes ad that was purpose-built for the iPad. It plays beautifully in both portait and landscape orientations and people see it once every day while we cache news in the background,” says Zeman.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In other cool tech-related news, the Kapai Group are utilising the iPhone and iPad in combination with social networking sites as an online learning tool for te reo māori. And it’s crowdsourcing the expertise online.

The Kapai Group are aiming to publish an audio-visual, online learning event every three minutes, 24 x 7, for one month at w w w . k a p a i . tv, and fluent te reo māori speakers are being asked to literally contribute their voices to scripts.

To take part, you go online to find out what phrases need voicing and then with an iPhone, record your narration using the voice memo. When you’re happy with your linguistic performance, send it in.

“When we receive the audio, as long as it supports a safe learning event, we’ll put it online,” says director Paul Ransfield. The site has started publishing over 3,000 situational phrases, spanning 12,000 words, to the internet on social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter.

Ransfield is predicting an astronomical growth in online learning. “I expect New Zealand to generate significant export earnings in the online learning market. There are no technical barriers to us being market leaders; we just need to show everyone how to supply.”

Ransfield says suppliers can expect a royalty-based contract for the use of their voice or graphic or script. Basically, if it gets played online, they’ll get paid.

In other appy related news, fans of tap-dancing bovine beasts (hazard a guess that would be middle aged mothers and teenage girls) can rejoice and perhaps break out into their own celebratory dance with news that Tribal DDB has developed a Facebook game and iPhone app for Cadbury’s dancing cow Freida.

There seem to be a host of these slightly gimmicky online games being released at the moment, but apparently it’s what the consumer wants. So the Facebook game, called Smooth Moves, allows players to use the arrow keys to hit the falling chocolate pieces in sync with Freida. The coolest aspect of it is that Freida dances in accordance to the type and style of music playing from your iTunes library. And the sweetener is that there are iPhone and iTunes prizes up for grabs.

To play the Smooth Moves Facebook click here and to download the Freida iPhone app, click here.

]]> http://www.stoppress.co.nz/news/2010/08/brave-new-tech-centric-world-embraced-by-kiwi-digi-gurus/feed/ 0 http://www.stoppress.co.nz/news/2010/07/kiwis-finally-get-to-give-ipad-the-finger-but-its-slim-pickings-on-the-app-front/ http://www.stoppress.co.nz/news/2010/07/kiwis-finally-get-to-give-ipad-the-finger-but-its-slim-pickings-on-the-app-front/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:33:12 +0000 Ben Fahy http://www.stoppress.co.nz/?p=13010 For months the New Zealand tech retailers have been displaying a range of iPad paraphernalia for sale in their stores and, as of today, they actually get to sell the object all that paraphernalia is associated with. But after all the hype, all the talk of publishing revolutions and all the feverish Tweetbooking about Jobs Almighty and his newest hero product, there seems to be a surprising dearth of local applications available on the day of the iPad’s release in New Zealand.

In a not very scientific study, we searched for ‘New Zealand’ and ‘NZ’ on our gleaming iPad and found just 10 Kiwi-made iPad Apps, not including games, with NZ Herald, Radio New Zealand, TV Guide, Weather NZ, North & South, George FM, New Zealand Mountain Biker, Harcourts Mobile Agent and a couple of marine and traffic Apps currently on offer (bear with us as we use the strange term ‘Apps’ constantly throughout).

The lack of local offerings shouldn’t really be too much of a hardship for users, however: websites still work well, as do most iPhone Apps, and there are plenty of international Apps on offer. But the immersive, interactive benefits of the iPad for publishers, art directors, readers and advertisers have only been realised by a select few so far.

Obviously it’s early days in New Zealand and there’s not much of a domestic market for the Apps yet. No doubt there will be a few more to come out of the woodwork soon, but at the moment it seems to be more of a ‘look at us, we’re market leaders’ approach.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The NZ Herald App, which does all the newsy things you’d expect it to do, looks good. It’s at the top of the download charts at present and it’s received some very positive reviews so far. And the App, which was developed in partnership with Shift and Carnival Labs, is free to download for a limited time thanks to the Herald’s principal sponsor Mercedes and its advertising partners Air New Zealand, Vodafone and Yellow.

Spencer Bailey, general manager and publisher, says the Herald has focused its attention on “delivering an App that appeals to iPad users—it’s image-driven and showcases the striking photography we have—as well as offering our advertisers new ways to reach a high quality audience. We realised very early on the huge potential iPad has in New Zealand. Even before its official launch we were already seeing up to 1,000 users accessing nzherald.co.nz on a daily basis via their iPad. So an App was an obvious step for us. It offers consumers more choice and advertisers a new set of opportunities.”

Editor Jeremy Rees says readers can now get the latest news from a “brand they trust combined with the interactivity of the iPad”.

“We already have a leading newspaper, website and mobile offering so our iPad App is simply another way for our readers to access their favourite Herald content in real-time everywhere they go. And because the content is hand-picked by our editorial team it steers users towards the most important stories of the day and the latest news updates.”

ACP Media has just gone live with its App for North & South. And while it’s free to download, each issue costs $6.49 (each issue is also 50mb, so you better make sure you’re connected to the wireless or have a good data plan).

ACP chief executive Paul Dykzeul says North & South is the first title of many destined for the device.

“We have been itching to do this for years. We can not only retain the ‘look and feel’ of the printed page, but enhance it by embedding high-quality video, hyperlinks and more details and images. It provides us with another amazing way to deliver the content we are incredibly proud of.”

North & South editor Virginia Larson says the magazine has faced up to the modern world and embraced the opportunities the technology presents to publishers. As a result, she expects it to be popular with the expat readership.

“Shipping hard copies of magazines across the world just became redundant,” Larson says. “Why would you do that when you can enhance your read with rich and colourful content such as video and a peek behind the scenes of the stories? … “You can’t ignore progress. That’s not to say people won’t continue to enjoy holding a fresh, crisp magazine in their hands. But as publishers, we have to consider those who prefer to get their in-depth current affairs digitally.”

The North & South App was designed by Cactuslab and director Karl von Randow says it has been working on the project since April, developing Apps simultaneously for the iPad and iPhone.

Radio New Zealand and George are also offering iPad Apps at $1.29 and $2.59 respectively (ah, the financial joy of the App, where humans seem content to pay despite the fact it’s long been free to stream the sations on your boring old computer).

Much like building a stadium for the Rugby World Cup, there’s obviously been quite a bit of pressure on the bigger media companies to have the goods ready on time. So where’s TVNZ offering, we hear you ask. Well, the launch of TVNZ’s App, which TVNZ’s Digital Media team has been working on for the last couple of months, is apparently “imminent”.

“We are initially focusing on delivering news content to the iPad—a dedicated news, weather and TV schedule iPad app is the priority, but TVNZ is prototyping a separate iPad application for the highly popular TVNZ Ondemand service as well”, says Tom Cotter, general manager of TVNZ Digital Media.

TVNZ’s news iPad app will also include comprehensive weather information and a TV schedule that will cover all TVNZ and free-to-air channels. Additional functionality and features are already in the pipeline and will continue to be rolled out to the iPad and iPhone apps over the next few weeks, with a focus on video.

Ecostore’s marketing manager Melissa Fletcher says the gang was “quite dismayed” about the claims and the fact that the Herald ran it without talking to ecostore. So, having stood firm on its eco-credentials for over 18 years, it decided to act quickly with the help of its agency Special Group and its PR agency Wright communications by making a stand and trying to set the record straight.

“We wanted to nip it in the bud and the only way to do that was to go big and take out a full page ad.”

She admits it’s a slightly perverse dance when the Herald can run what she claims is a misleading article and then get $30,000 plus from an aggrieved party that wants to respond. But Ecostore felt so strongly about it and stands by its products 100 percent so it needed to splurge and act fast to get the point across that it doesn’t use petrochemicals or cheap bulking agents, and that it only uses all natural ingredients.

Originally, a story about All Natural appeared in Consumer magazine in May (it appeared in the Sunday Star Times soon after, so it’s also old news) and the ecostore folks were also alerted to a discrepancy in its PH labelling. Obviously, as it trades on its reputation, its honesty and its integrity, Fletcher says the company remedied the oversight independently as soon as it found out about it.

“That was an honest mistake. We were using a PH number that was fractionally incorrect [laundry powders in New Zealand are supposed to have a pH of 11.5 and ecostore's was 11.8], she says. But that’s only part of the story: when it comes to washing powders, she says it’s about total alkalinity. And that is kept low by using good quality, natural and more expensive ingredients.

Fletcher says ecostore does feel repercussions from other greenwashing companies, as consumers, some of whom may have been burned before, are often quite cynical when it comes green claims. For example, terms like biodegradable, she says, are quite vague. Technically nuclear waste is biodegradable if you wait millions of years. So who can you believe? Well, given ecostore has been in this game for such a long time, Fletcher thinks it should be asked when there’s a need to weed the truth from the porkies.

As online advertising continues to accelerate, advertisers and agencies need to be confident they are maximising the return on their advertising investments. There is, therefore, an increasing need for clarity and consistency in the metrics being taken to market.

Since the 2009 revised Page Impression standard was announced, TVNZ has been concerned the increasing gap between reported page impressions and actual advertising impressions could confuse advertisers about competitive site performance.

It has effectively resulted in the creation of two different types of page impressions: one that reflects ad impressions and one that does not. However, these two types are not distinguished in the information reported to market under the current standard.

The practice of using in-page interactions to register additional page impressions without providing additional ad impressions is not an approach that TVNZ has pursued.

“We therefore welcome the opening of a debate about the current Page Impression standard”, said Sharon Daly, general manager research and insights at TVNZ. “We hope it leads to a resolution that ensures advertisers and their agencies receive the best possible information on which to base decisions”.

The magazine is to be dished out to New Zealand Herald readers on the first Tuesday of every month starting in January and Chris Jagusch, general manager of The New Zealand Herald, says he is excited to be involved with Red Bull.

“This is a mutually beneficial partnership. We provide Red Bull with a ready-made, intelligent audience, while Red Bull gives our readers a high-quality publication that will be unique in this market,” he says.

The Red Bulletin will be accepting local advertising and will also be available from selected retailers nationwide from January. StopPress has a few copies to give away, so if you’d like one, send your details to editor@stoppress.co.nz.

And all this talk about Red Bull brings us nicely to a video of kerrazzee extremos doing absolutely ridiculous things with winged suits in Norway.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• The NZ Herald Online adds shopping to its portfolio. But how exclusive are its offerings?
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• Microsoft on attack in the Great Search Engine War.

Get the e-goodness. eBuzz 26-November-2009