Posts tagged ‘Special Group’
March 21st, 2012 by StopPress Team
You may have noticed a few pictures of Special Group’s flash new Drake St offices gracing the homepage of StopPress last week when it was helping to edit the site as part of our Hog the Blog Axis prize. And the 16th fastest growing company in New Zealand/Creative hotshop nominee has recently added a few humans to help fill those flash offices up, with Hilary Cootes being promoted to the role of general manager, Nigel Sutton and Rahat Chaudry joining as head of production and strategic planner respectively, and Claire Beatson returning from maternity leave. Read more »
March 14th, 2012 by Special Group
The Ad Contrarian is Bob Hoffman, chief executive of Hoffman/Lewis advertising in San Francisco and St. Louis. He also writes one of the world’s funniest (and painfully truthful) blogs on advertising and marketing. Bob is former chief executive of Mojo USA and ex-president and creative director of Allen & Dorward. And in a former life he was a middle school science teacher. It’s with this objective point of view that he has burst many a hype bubble. His honesty and straight-forwardness is refreshing in a world of marketing mumbo jumbo. So if you like what Bob has to say, you’ll enjoy his books, The Ad Contrarian and 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. Read more »
March 13th, 2012 by Special Group
Nigel Roberts is one of London’s most highly-awarded copywriters. Starting life as a junior copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi in the late ’80s, Nigel worked his way up through some of the best agencies in London with his art director Paul Belford. For many years, their potent combination of brilliant copy and conceptual art direction earned them a reputation as the best print team in the world. Creative directorships at Ogilvy London, AMV BBDO and CHI & Partners were followed by a return to Leagas Delaney London to run the creative department. Over the years he has won nine D&AD Silver Pencils, six Cannes golds and four One Show Golds (the full list is too long to publish). Nigel spared us a few moments to answer our questions and share his thoughts on the industry. We hope you find it as inspiring as we did.
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March 12th, 2012 by Special Group
Sir John Hegarty is one of the world’s most famous advertising creatives and was knighted in 2007 for his services to advertising. He’s founding partner and worldwide creative director of BBH, an agency he set up in 1982 with fellow ex-TBWA staffers John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. The network now spans London, New York, Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai and Sao Paulo and is famous for pushing the boundaries creatively and transforming its clients’ businesses as a result (Levis and Lynx are two great examples). Hegarty’s values have never wavered, he is as driven now as he ever was and BBH’s work is consistently entertaining, irreverent and insightful. We sent him a few questions and, as always, he was happy to give us a bit of his time and share his views. Read more »
March 8th, 2012 by StopPress Team
Special Group has managed to get itself a spot alongside BMF and The Monkeys as a finalist for Creative magazine’s coveted Hotshop Awards, while Finch and Curious got the Hotshop nod in the production categories. And in the AWARD nominations, DDB Group picked up the most finalists with seven, followed by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop with six each. In the craft categories, Finch received seven finalist nominations, Thick as Thieves three and Curious Film also received a nod for its poignant Helena’s story, made for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation. Read more »
March 2nd, 2012 by StopPress Team
The Marketing Association celebrated the use of insight-driven marketing and data last week. And CAANZ will soon be celebrating what could be seen as the opposite end of the marcomms spectrum with the creatively-focused Axis Awards. And after 50 judges—and presumably the wonderous Axis Metal Detector—spent three days scanning the very best work in New Zealand this year, regular creative award-hogger Colenso BBDO came out on top with a massive 57 finalist nominations, followed by Special Group with another excellent showing on 21 and DDB Group and Clemenger BBDO on 17. Read more »
February 29th, 2012 by Cath Winks
The January/February round of voting for The Glossies has been tabulated, and FOUR’s Home of NOT Rugby in ACP’s Metro, cooked up by FOUR and Special Group, has taken top honours with 27 percent of the vote. Yellow Pencil BrandSharp’s effort for Red Paris in NZ Marketing got them tantalisingly close, with 26 percent, and Chris Dobbs was third for Working Style in Metro (10 percent). That’s two in a row for Special Group…
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February 14th, 2012 by Cath Winks
As sponsors of the Wellington International Sevens, Nikon set out to build brand awareness amongst the thousands of fans that turn out for New Zealand’s biggest annual party. With a bit of help from BRR Ltd, it created an integrated campaign that stood out in the stadium and saw its fan base rocket up a whopping 850 percent. Read more »
February 14th, 2012 by Ben Fahy
Last year, Special Group launched a campaign for America’s Next Top Model that featured a naked lady pulling the old hand-over-the-side-boob-on-the-back-of-the-ute trick. It also launched a campaign for Top Chef Just Desserts featuring the words Backstabbing Slut on a cake. Both campaigns were complained about to the ASA, and the complaint about the offensive cake was upheld. And it’s taken a similarly attention-grabbing approach with new poster campaigns for Four’s America’s Next Top Model All Stars and Family Guy. Read more »
February 3rd, 2012 by Cath Winks
Special Group duo Kim Fraser and Sarah Frizzell took the combined Dec/Jan ORCA with their ’91 Days of Summer’ campaign for Streets Ice Cream. They made 91 different ads, turning each day of summer into a national day. “December 4. National Weta Freak Out Day. Nothing says summer like a weta under that thing you just picked up. Is it a giant insect or a tiny brown crayfish? Doesn’t matter, your boyfriend still needs to man up, and grab a glass and a piece of cardboard.” Read more »
