Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 70 2022 i NZ Marketing

In mid-2021, having served as Managing Director at DDB Group Australia for three years, Priya Patel joined DDB Group Aotearoa as its first female Group CEO. Shortly afterwards, she developed a new role for Matty Burton, at the top of the ranks as Group Chief Creative Officer. Both Priya and Matty started their roles from the uniquely 2021 experience of their MIQ hotel rooms, eager to do whatever it took to sink their teeth into the Kiwi creative scene. “I’d spent the bulk of my career in London, and always looked towards the southern hemisphere for work that felt a little edgier, and more experimental and imaginative,” says Priya. “Conversely, working in the UK, I’d seen some of the advantages of scale and tech advancement. My role here enables me…

In 2021 we were privileged to witness a slew of wonderful, new advertising on our screens. While some came from overseas, many ads were produced locally, as a degree of normality returned to New Zealand at least for a while. Certainly, the narrative started to shift from how brands could help consumers through Covid-19 to themes drawn more from their regular playbooks. Throughout the year, insights company Kantar tested 176 TV ads in total – as part of its Ad Impact Awards – and saw a number of very high performing TVCs making their mark, with strong storylines, humour, nostalgia and music often playing a role in their success. From a field of very impactful ads, earlier this year Kantar announced the worthy winner of the 2021 Kantar Supreme Ad…

In 2019, when I made the decision to buy Ogilvy NZ back from WPP and rebrand it Stanley St, it was fundamentally driven by a determination to unlock the value we’d created back when we opened for business in December 1991. We realised that if we were to hold up against larger and better-funded competitors, we’d need to gain total control over every aspect of our delivery. We’d long determined that to be competitive, we needed to be both big and integrated, and only by controlling every aspect of our offer could we deliver against those two pillars. Some say one of the benefits of ownership is the ability to make faster decisions. The key to being in a position to make such decisions is based on a detailed understanding…

If we define the pitch process as ‘To assess, competitively, the suitability of an agency against several others’, then it’s clear this is something most advertisers need to do at various points in their career. The problem is that the industry has largely landed on two common processes that are neither universally appropriate nor sustainable, and there’s growing evidence of their negative effect on the mental health of agency staff. It’s also clear that the ‘standard’ industry pitch process — that’s increasingly being applied to test an incumbent agency — almost inevitably results in the appointment of a new agency. Rather than considering getting rid of the pitch process altogether, what we should be looking to do is refine the process to better deliver for all parties involved. To do…

For the launch of this year’s Axis Awards, Convenor Steve Cochran (who’s also CCO of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand) wrote a poem that spoke to the event’s 2022 theme: ‘A Kind of Magic Show’. Creativity in the commercial world is often referred to as ‘the magic’.“Bring us some of your magic,” says the CMO down the Zoom call.“It just needs a bit of magic,” reads the strategist’s brief.“But where’s the fu*kin’ magic?” asks the plucky young suit in thecreative review.Yep, we’re undoubtedly in the magic industry.It’s this magic that our clients come to us for.It’s (mostly) what they pay us for.Magic is the bit they can’t do on their own.Or that their freelancer cousin seemed unable to do.Magic is the mysterious, unquantifiable and surprising thing greatideas have.It’s the unique…

When Kiwibank launched in 2002, it was seen as a local foil to the four large, Australian-owned trading banks. In the 20 years since, it has grown into one of the most loved, trusted and recognised brands in Aotearoa. That brand is a precious asset; as Kiwibank Chief Executive Steve Jurkovich says, “It lets people know who we are, what we stand for and what we care about.” But a brand identity is never static. It needs to evolve to reflect the company’s future direction. With this in mind, the Kiwibank Brand & Marketing team, headed up by General Manager of Brand & Marketing Simon Hofmann, tackled the challenge of redefining the brand for a more ambitious future, and to reflect the overall transformation the bank is undertaking. “We took…

Agencies have always operated in a competitive market, but now, they must contend with brand clients bringing marketing tasks in-house and consultancies encroaching on their turf. 2021 saw significant changes to New Zealand Adland – from senior staff moves and the introduction of new market players, to the way marketers interact with their agency partners. Digital consultancies – the likes of Accenture, Deloitte and PWC – are becoming bigger than ever and representing expertise in the digital marketing and data-driven sides of the field. In the past, companies that fell under this banner usually focused on the technical side of marketing, leaving the creative side of the field to traditional advertising agencies. Recently, though – and a trend we have seen play out in other markets like the UK and…

In the three opinion pieces that follow, we hear from voices on all sides of the debate, including a big-brand CMO, an international pitch consultant and a local agency owner. They interrogate the above questions, share their personal frustrations, and examine the pluses and minuses of the pitch process.…

Pitching is the best and worst part of this job. [At EightyOne] we’re three from six. It’s not a bad strike rate, but it’s nothing to crow about. Two of the times we chose not to pitch creative, even though we were asked to. Both times it backfired and we lost. The other one we lost was fair cop. The better team won, although I maintain we were robbed! No, it was fair, agnostic and didn’t strain the resources of our shop. It was for Te Pūkenga and required a 15-page — max — document and a one-hour presentation on capability. The clients were open, helpful and relaxed in the presentation. We were gutted to not get it, but okay with the outcome, mainly because it was a straight-up chemistry…

Where’s the media agency heading? To answer this question properly, we first need to look back to appreciate where media agencies came from, and perhaps where many are still finding themselves today. AND SO IT BEGINS The origins of the media agency are simple. Media agencies were born to sit between a buyer (the advertiser) and a seller (the media owner) to buy the media space that the advertiser needed. With relatively few media choices to make, the agency was able to use wholesale buying to achieve discounts that the marketer couldn’t have achieved on their own. Meanwhile, media owners were able to manage their cost of sale by offering commissions to agencies, thereby reducing their overheads. Buying was the value exchange media agencies were based on and how they…

South Island locals John and Lisa Plato of Plato Creative are passionate about cementing Christchurch’s place on the agency map, but their quest hasn’t been without its hurdles. Shortly after they opened their agency’s doors in 2007, the global financial crisis hit, with businesses far and wide tightening their purse strings as it took hold. That was followed a few years later by the more local emergency of the Christchurch earthquakes, the effects of which the city is still recovering from. But despite these ups and downs going on around them, co-founder and Chief Executive John is philosophical about what it means for the agency. “One thing we’ve found in business is that every time there’s a crisis, we’ve taken the attitude that it creates opportunity and a chance to…

When Struan Abernethy took over as Chief Executive Officer of ReachMedia in 2019, the company had built a reputation for bringing together New Zealand businesses and their ideal customers — a success based on letterbox marketing. In the subsequent years, he’s transformed the company by applying a scientific approach to marketing, using data insights to help mostly larger businesses make smarter marketing decisions and close the gap between businesses and buyers. This year, Struan is moving forward based on a passion to help the majority of New Zealand businesses — the SME sector. He’s evolved the company brand to become REACH, and increased staff with a robust team of marketers and data scientists that provide the gamut of marketing services, all conveniently under one roof and underpinned by a unique…

MARKETING ASSOCIATION is introducing a new programme designed to support emerging marketing leaders to hone their skills before making their big step into a head role in the marketing, advertising and media industries. The idea came from a programme that has been offered overseas fora while now, but rather than import something, the MA board and CMOs felt they needed to have a dedicated Kiwi programme. Until now, there has been a gap in development opportunities for senior marketers, and the MA Accelerator aims to fill this. In creating the MA Accelerator, MA formed an advisory panel of 10 CMOs, who helped design the programme that’s set to assist future leaders to redefine what their potential can be. It covers contemporary leadership, strategy and marketing issues in a New Zealand…

Under CEO Cam Murchison, who bought it in 2017, Harvey Cameron has evolved from advertising agency to business and marketing solutions company. Today’s holistic, fully integrated offering sees strategy, creative, digital, media and PR all come together in a powerful package geared entirely toward giving Harvey Cameron’s clients an unfair advantage. This successful evolution has seen Harvey Cameron go from strength to strength, and form a solid base from which to weather the Covid storm that’s ravaged others in the industry. “Getting the foundations of what we do right has been vital,” says Cam. “But our processes, capabilities and values also play a role in our business’s strength, because they’re the essence of how we work and who we are. “We’re relentlessly focused on our clients. We get great pleasure…

When the team at NZ Marketing reached out to ask whether I’d like to provide my opinion on the evolving creative agency landscape, including my view on pitches, I immediately asked my wife — a hugely talented account service professional — whether it was a good idea. Her response was, “Sure, the last thing the agency world needs is yet another opinion from a client about how they should run their business.” So here goes. It’s probably worth me pointing out that if you work in an agency and are frustrated by the content of the first part of this opinion piece, I think it’s worth reading until the end. THE AGENCY LANDSCAPE I believe that commerciality is a critical success factor in business, marketing and advertising, but when I…

The evolution of the advertising industry is constant. For years now, the big multinationals have bought, merged and sold agencies like chess pieces on a chess board. At some time in our career, we’ve probably all been a benefactor or a victim of these seemingly random moves. The latest evolution in New Zealand is from one of the ‘big boys’ of the consultancy world, Accenture, who along with KPMG and Deloitte have for some time been increasingly looking to acquisitions in their quest to move down the food chain and into the execution sandpit where agencies have traditionally played, presumably to bolster earnings and encircle their client base. The purchase of The Monkeys by Accenture in 2017 and the subsequent opening of an office in Auckland is the latest trans-Tasman…

WHAT MADE 2021 SUCCESSFUL FOR SAATCHI & SAATCHI? I was pleased with the agency’s progress. We came together, and we achieved the first phase of our ‘Specialise, Weaponise & Connect’ transformation. We specialised around our focus on cultural creativity. We weaponised through the launch of our Cultural Studio, and we accelerated our connect strategy to provide many clients with wider capability, technology solutions and digital transformation services from the Publicis Groupe connected platform [which Saatchi & Saatchi is part of], creating connected ecosystems and experiences at pace. We’ve now entered this year with the right balance of scale, talent, capability and focus. We’re excited about the possibilities ahead, and ready for whatever external forces may be thrown at our clients and any opportunities they wish to seize. WHAT’S THE COMPANY…

Retail media has gained huge traction in the turf once held by large, traditional broadcasters and publishers in the US — and although there are fewer retail players in New Zealand, the outcome may ultimately be the same here. This emerging retail landscape features a blend of physical and digital shopping, and increasingly savvy consumers who traverse both worlds. In fact, 30 percent of shoppers are now omnichannel. And as a result, with new habits and raised expectations, consumers’ relationships with brands are evolving. It stands to reason, then, that this new normal also has major implications for marketers, who must now address changing consumer preferences related to retail advertising, personalised shopping experiences and loyalty. The good news is that despite growing concerns about digital privacy, consumers are interested in…

Having dreamed of becoming a novelist, screenwriter, painter, film director or even the person who writes cool taglines like ‘Just Do It’, Tammy Kuo has always had a passion for storytelling. “I see it as in integral part of society and of being human,” she says. It was her creative flair that led her down the design route at Victoria University of Wellington, but when she picked up a marketing course as an elective, she says things just clicked. “Marketing encompasses creative problem solving and connection, and connection is the essence of the human experience. Since then, I feel like I’ve grown into it naturally and I’m utterly in love with it.” Tammy’s first marketing role was with Retail NZ, for whom she criss-crossed the country talking to business owners…