Table of contents for March 2017 in NZ Marketing

Where did the idea to create the TV ad come from? We couldn’t escape the constant stream of news surrounding the (then) upcoming American election. It was hard to take, sitting on the sidelines. The fate of the world was up in the air and the world didn’t have a say. Without our own vote to cast, or without telling people who to vote for, there was only one thing we could do: remind Americans how important their vote was. It seemed like a fitting goal. In the 2012 U.S. election, 32.8 percent of eligible adult voters didn’t vote. The idea was to run a TV ad completely free from bias—paid for by the world—encouraging Americans to vote. Can you explain the crowdsourcing process? The plan was for the crowdfunding…

Richie McCaw Dan Carter All Blacks Valerie Adams Eliza McCartney Nadia Lim Stephen Fleming Jeremy Wells Leigh Hart Sarah Walker Sophie Pascoe Lisa Carrington Julian Dennison Nigella Lawson John Kirwan Jerome Kaino SSI is the trusted global leader in survey and research solutions for market research firms, B2B and B2C companies. Visit surveysampling.com…

LIKE A STAND-UP comic taking his show from town to town, Mark Ritson, adjunct professor of marketing at the Melbourne Business School, took to the stage at a MediaWorks presentation in February to deliver one of his favourite gags, a muted two seconds of Gone with The Wind across half the screen. The point being that in the digital world, videos are reduced to practically nothing, with views counted as watching for two seconds. How can that compete with TV, he asks? To him, it can’t. In the past year, both Ritson and Bob Hoffman, AKA The Ad Contrarian, have visited New Zealand, thanks to MediaWorks and TVNZ, arguing that the reverence marketers and agencies have for digital is misplaced and that TV remains very much alive here and around…

They call it the 81 rule – 19 percent talk, 81 percent action. Most agencies will do the opposite, spending most of their time on talking and ideation, the partners say, but at EightyOne they’ve flipped the script. “EightyOne was born out of a little frustration with how long it took to solve problems,” Constable says. “We thought there was a smarter, faster way of doing things and the answer to that was to be nimble.” He says reverse briefs, constant back and forth and flawed processes often meant it was weeks before anything was generated. “We found if you sat in the same room with some smart people who could think on their feet you get to solutions much faster. So we created EightyOne to be agile with the…

Red Cactus is a global agency working on global brands. CEO Chris Chong and business partner Mike Pearce were working as senior designers at large firms when they had the vision for the speciality agency. More than two decades on, Red Cactus works in international markets with some of the world’s most well-known brands including KFC and Wrigley’s. The agency does all KFC’s packaging in the United States and a portion of its below the line work. This means understanding the US economy and market, and watching a lot of Donald Trump, Chong says. They do the same for their clients across Asia and the Pacific. “At the end of the day we’re here to sell products.” GLOBAL GAZE Working globally has given Red Cactus scope and experience, valuable skills…

THERE’S A FABLE that tells the story of the scorpion, a notoriously bad swimmer, asking the frog for a ride across the river. At first, the frog, cautious of the scorpion’s reputation, declines out of fear of being stung. But then, the scorpion puts on his legendary second-hand car salesman smirk and says: “That’s ridiculous. For if I were to sting you, I would go down as well.” Of course, by the time they reach the other side, the scorpion does what it does best and leaves a neat hole in his amphibious buddy’s back. And as the frog sinks into the water, he asks, “How could you?” To which the scorpion replies: “Because it’s in my nature.” While much of the emphasis in the story is usually attributed to…

Healthy by Sovereign Sovereign Insurance / Chemistry Interaction INDUSTRY GOLD - FINANCIAL SERVICES // CHANNEL GOLD - CRM MULTI-CHANNEL // CHANNEL GOLD - DIRECT RESPONSE (ANY MEDIA) // CRAFT GOLD - EXCELLENCE IN DATA STRATEGY // CRAFT GOLD - EXCELLENCE IN STRATEGY // NEXUS GOLD - CUSTOMER & MARKET INSIGHT // CRAFT SILVER - EXCELLENCE IN CREATIVE // NEXUS SILVER - INNOVATION // NEXUS SILVER - MARKETING PRODUCTS & SERVICES // NEXUS BRONZE - CRM & DATA MANAGEMENT Healthy by Sovereign (HbS) is New Zealand’s first loyalty programme to reward Kiwis for healthy behaviours, not purchases. Aggregating big data, HbS gives customers a unique single view of their health, measuring health status online by calculating their Health Age and providing a plan for improvement. Points awarded are redeemed for an…

How did High Road come about? Around 2006 I wanted to find out if I could write a TV show. So I knocked up a six x 22-minute show called High Road which involved a few story lines, and one of those story lines was about a DJ called Terry Huffer. Fast-forward to 2012 and I watched a web series called High Maintenance from New York, which inspired me to try this new fancy thing called digital media. So I pulled a couple of scenes out of the big script and Mark (Mitchinson) and I and some awesome techies went down to the Piha campground and shot them. That become the first episode. Everyone who worked on it loved it, so I pulled the rest of the Terry Huffer scenes…

On Y&R’s success in 2016 Any fool can make an ad. But you need to work damn hard and have an agency model that’s efficient and nimble with exactly the right mix of talent to be successful in this new advertising world. I would argue that Y&R is just that. We have the enormous advantage of being a full service or integrated agency. Our creative teams generate media solutions and our media teams generate creative solutions. Other agencies don’t work this way. They’re regimented and roles have boundaries, and those boundaries become barriers to creative media solutions. When speed to market and efficiency is king, a client can’t afford to have multiple agencies. It simply no longer makes any sense. But this approach only works when the talent mix is…

In 2006, NZ Marketing interviewed ‘longterm brand strategist’ Brian Richards, in his all white offices in Newmarket, for an article that presented the views of successful brand strategists on how to build brands. Eleven years later the company name has changed from Brian R Richards to Richards Partners but the white walls are still there, representing the blank slate where each Richards’ strategy begins. In the intervening years, the library housing an unenviable myriad of strategy documents has grown much larger, and the building next door now houses Chrysalis, an innovation studio that has added greater firepower in the continual battle to transform the businesses of a number of local and global marketing clients. “The work we get involved in is extremely diverse,” explains Richards. It operates across a number…

There’s a perception at the moment that an iPhone pointed in the right direction can take the place of the production companies and the fees that accompany them. It’s a belief largely driven by the explosion of user-generated content (often shot in amateurish conditions), which viewers chew on, insatiably, every day. In this new—and sometimes grainy—media context, brands have started to consider whether they need to invest in experienced production companies, sometimes opting for the cheapest option available instead. Flying Start executive content producer Sam McCauley understands the appeal of looking to cut costs at a time when budgets are spread thinner than ever, but advises marketers against casting aside experience in favour of shiny tech trinkets. “Owning a pen doesn’t make you a writer, in the same way that…

At its zenith, the Mongol Empire stretched as one mass from the Yellow to the Black Sea, occupying the largest contiguous land empire in history, with no borders separating one nation from the next. But, as is the case with all empires, infighting between stakeholders led to lines being drawn in the sand, which eventually eroded into national borders. As centuries passed, these borders would move to the left, to the right and would sometimes disappear entirely, only to reappear later in a slightly different shape. Adland, and all the players that make up its terrain, is not dissimilar in this regard as the clear borders that were once etched into this world have tended to shift over the last few decades. Media agencies, for instance, have gone from being…

Some of the most interesting stories start in the most inconspicuous places, hidden from the continuous scrutiny of curious onlookers and developed bit by bit without anyone taking too much notice at first. One such a place would be a poorly heated Dunedin flat, which, in 2012, served as host to three University of Otago students thoroughly uninterested in slogging away for The Man. “I’ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial streak I guess. I’ve never wanted to work for anyone else,” says Sam Stuchbury, who quickly realised the best way to achieve this was by selling the skills he honed in the university lecture halls—and thus Motion Sickness was born. Stuchbury didn’t have to travel far to find his first buyer, with the university commissioning the early Motion…

Consumers today feel no responsibility to act their age. That means the old generational designations apply less and less, and brands need to respect and respond to that by being much more open-minded about who they’re targeting and why. Instead of isolating down into Millennial or Gen X or Boomer, a better approach is to focus on what consumers are motivated by rather than communicating to a checklist of characteristics. Increasingly, the brands Milk works with are talking with consumers that span the traditional generational boundaries, and take an open-minded view of who their customer is. They communicate based on personality and needs rather than pre-set age-based clusters. The work of leading psychologists like Michal Kosinski – whose psychometrics research shows that factors such as openness to new experiences, conscientiousness…

IT’S FAIR to say that for most of the 20th century, magazines have had it pretty good. Internationally renowned titles like Time, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Marie Claire have been capturing huge audiences (and advertising dollars), while in New Zealand, titles like Metro, North & South, Cuisine and New Zealand Geographic have helped shape the country’s media landscape. But with the rise of the internet, a shift in consumer habits and a change in economic structures, the magazine industry has faced an increasingly uphill battle, fighting off a plethora of troubles from falling readership and circulation to increasingly disinterested advertisers. The emergence of the digital sphere has been a killer for some traditional publications as the old adage of ‘adapt or die’ has played out across the developed…

When and where did you work in advertising? In South Africa I worked for Caxton Newspaper Group as its advertising manager for twelve years. When I moved to NZ I first worked for Ogilvy for exactly a year and then got approached by Y&R to go work there, which I did for three years before being made redundant during the recession. Then I contracted to Twenty for six weeks, before leaving advertising completely (hopefully!) for comedy. How did this turn into a career in comedy? When I worked at Ogilvy, we worked very long hours, we always used to have such a good laugh that my colleagues used to say; ‘you should do comedy!’ and I thought they were out of their fucking minds. But when I left to go…

THE TV AD begins with a room full of people. All Danish, but different. Men, women, teens and children look uncomfortable standing together and the voice over begins. “There’s us and there’s them. The high earners and those just getting by. The people from the countryside and those who’ve never seen a cow. The religious and the self-confident.” People look awkwardly at each other until a man asks whether anyone’s been the class clown, and a handful of strangers step up. Then he asks whether anyone’s a step-parent, been bullied, or seen a UFO? Have they had sex recently? Are they lonely? Or have they ever saved a life? As people come together with shared experiences, the viewer sees how quickly we can go from categorising to feeling part of…

Carefully planned rawness Craft isn’t just about the way something looks. A lo-fi aesthetic might seem like it’s easier on the wallet but that’s not always the case. Even the simplest idea often requires intricate thought—and just because something is “raw” doesn’t mean it’s cheap. As Mok points out, “people can pay a lot of money for rawness. Rawness can actually be a craft in itself.” He adds: “I always want to look at the task we have and I always ask myself, ‘so where should the money go? Where should we be spending the money?’ If we haven’t got very much money, let’s make the idea incredibly simple but within the simplicity of execution, the idea is very, very powerful.” One of Mok’s favourite examples is a 2012 Nike…

Keep it real, help a brother out, make it awesome and see the gold are some of the brand values the team at Woods has developed for their workplace. The last three - do what you say you’ll do, live healthy, and importantly, have fun - are key drivers for maintaining a work-life balance, managing director Reuben Woods says. “Our culture and core set of values drive the work we do, the results we get and lifestyle we lead. It attracts the type of clients we want to work with.” Constantly adapting to changing technologies, the Woods team hasn’t faltered in its commitment to helping regional New Zealand businesses create brands, tell stories and connect with customers for the last 13 years. As a brand agency, Woods partners with innovative…

Walking through the corridors that lead into Chemistry’s office, it’s clear the agency takes a strategic approach to its problem solving as the white walls feature rainbow decals that point you in the right direction. ‘You’re almost there’ the walls read, before you find yourself in a room of its 24 team members with directors Mike Larmer and Joseph Silk sitting among them. The pair started Chemistry four years ago with Pat Murphy and Susan Young, creative directors, and have since built up a “Blue Chip” list of clients looking for support to connect with and retain customers. And though that may seem like the work of a direct agency, something neither deny they are, in today’s expanding and fragmenting media environment, it’s not a strict definition of their work.…

The relationship between attracting consumers and winning shopper decisions in-store has always been one fraught with uncertainty. Marketers constantly wrestle with unfulfilled expectations, despite believing that all elements of the marketing mix have been executed to near perfection by a group of several competent practitioners. With the ever increasing fragmentation of communications into specialist silos, the ability to harness a communications plan into a cohesive and holistic whole remains problematic. The purchase of Energi by the industry-experienced duo of Louise Henderson and Lew Bentley in July 2016 may just be the answer to companies struggling with the concept of Shopper Marketing. “Our job is to build Shopper Marketing programmes that maximise demand with shoppers,” Lew says. “Our objective is to determine the relationship between attracting consumers and winning shopper decisions…

Countdown New Zealand Countdown, one of the three big brands in the New Zealand grocery sector, operates 184 supermarkets nationwide. Each store offers a unique set of thousands of weekly specials for purchase in-store or online. Each week, Countdown uses mass-market communications such as traditional unaddressed letter box advertising (mailers) and TV/radio ads to tell Kiwis about weekly specials — a tall task with so many specials on offer, each appealing to a different subset of New Zealanders. myCountdown launched in 2014 as Countdown's point of difference to mass-market communications. Driven by customer preference and transaction data, overlaid with segmentation and propensity modelling, the myCountdown email and web programme represented a significant investment, giving Countdown the ability to talk one-to-one with shoppers in a highly personalised, relevant way. Countdown's direct…

New World Clubcard – Making Every Shopping Trip More Rewarding: Foodstuffs (NZ) / justONE NEXUS SUPREME // NEXUS GOLD - CRM & DATA MANAGEMENT // NEXUS GOLD - STRATEGIC VISION // NEXUS BRONZE - CUSTOMER & MARKET INSIGHT The New World Clubcard has been one of the most successful loyalty programmes launched in recent years. Within a few months of launching in South Island stores, it has risen to represent 86 percent of all sales being accompanied with a swipe and 70 percent of all visits, compared to only 55 percent when it was just Fly Buys. Ambitious from the start, the objective was to transform New World into a store that understood its customers at an individual level and provide relevant data-driven offers in real time at the point…