New Zealanders seem to have something of a love/hate attitude when it comes to marketing and advertising. Some despise it because it tricks people into buying things they don’t need, makes the nation fatter/drunker/more dangerous and is an industry supposedly filled with wankers. But others seem to be able to look past all that and simply enjoy biting into the fruits of the industry’s labour. Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt Kiwis are interested in it, as evidenced by the fact that the Fair Go Ad Awards is regularly among the country’s top rating shows. And CAANZ and TVNZ are hoping to tap into this interest and showcase the creative, innovative side of the business by filming the Axis award show and screening it on Ondemand. When footage of last year’s Axis awards was shown on the Ad Show, the powers that be cringed at some of the knobbishness on display and felt it showed the industry in a bad light (mostly because the filming was done quite late in the evening after the awards had been dished out, so whistles had been well and truly whet and lips were fairly loose). Not surprisingly, they don’t plan on making the same mistake again, so on 31 March TVNZ, a major sponsor of the awards, will film the ceremony before (to see glamorous ad folk turning up in hired Lamborghinis), during (to see tables of creatives talking amongst themselves as the MC dodges flying bread rolls), but not after.
An edited show will then be available on TVNZ Ondemand and it will include exclusive interviews with the international judges explaining why they awarded golds.
“New Zealand has an incredible world class advertising industry. This is all about the industry promoting itself as such,” says Axis convenor of judges, Special Group’s Tony Bradbourne. “The Fair-Go Best and Worst ad awards is one of the country’s highest rating shows. It proves that there is huge public interest in what our industry produces. But it is probably not the best ad for how innovative our industry is…The Axis awards is the pinnacle of creative advertising thinking, but there is no real record of what wins. There’s no annual. This is a truly modern and innovative way to change that.”
