So lets dial it back to before the world was changed. Americans Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole were in Africa planning to make a film about another anonymous African war when they got sidetrack by a couple of stray bullets (as you would) possibly fired by the Lord’s Resistance Army. So they re-focused on the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony. Invisible Children formed (2004) to bring LRA  and Kony to the attention of people outside Africa. Kony is or had been land and child grabbing in Central Africa for some time. Earlier this year Invisible Children produced a number of videos, got some celebrity endorsement and stepped-up their social media presence with a campaign called Kony 2012. The aim was to indict Kony as a war criminal and have him arrested.

The director, Russell, of the Kony 2012 video compares the life of his child with the lives stolen from the Ugandan children by Kony and its compelling.

I was invited to a Kony Facebook event a few weeks ago, when the word “kony” didn’t spark any recognition at all – in fact I thought it was a bar opening. I mean I was being invited to Hamilton.

Kony2012 and Invisible Children is not without significant criticism and this one and here as well. They have raised a lot of money, and they use Kony imagery on t-shirts and bracelets which has upset Kony’s victims.  Yet Invisible Children publish all their financial information, and obviously, Jason Russell is wound pretty tight if this Stuff story is exaggerated.

This campaign might need some scrutiny, possibly Kony may have some defence – maybe he was provoked or felt intimidated. I would like to think that I can change the world. I would like to encourage my kids to think the same (imagine if I taught them the opposite).

This campaign was obviously not an overnight sensation or a fluke. Invisible Children have grafted for eight years to get to this point. Many super successful online campaigns look easy and they are kind of seductive because they do. I know that they aren’t.  The eight years the Invisible Children put into their campaign surely ground a sharper promotional blade.

This campaign is great. I think that it gets scoffed because its gone “viral.” Invisible Children targeted Twitter celebs like Ryan Seacrest (and I think Oprah). Once on-board Seacrest went out to his twitter follows – only 6,266,327 of them. Great strategy. And it  WORKED!!!!!!!

African despots are a dime a dozen and this fact is taken for granted in the west. It appears that it takes millions of Africans to be murdered in Africa before the western nations raise an eyebrow. Kony2012 has made me look and many others look, and it might change the world.

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Phil Bilbrough (@philbilbrough) is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

by
Phil Bilbrough

Weetbix is the best brand in New Zealand. Trusted healthy and for a breakfast cereal… very active.  And I can’t think of a better sponsored event than the Weetbix Tryathlon.

My oldest, 9 years, trained diligently for this triathlon, and just that got me over the line to thinking that this was a great thing. I didn’t make the event, my partner did and she was well prepared from watching Weetbix Triathlon  “All you need to know” instructional videos. The pack arrived, there was a bit of waiting for the race, then all on and recorded on video and professional photographed.

The triathlon was a nice mix of competitiveness and participation. I was afraid that my daughter might burn off  her training partner, and she did (because she is my child and therefore doesn’t value friendship), but no worries, her partner just biked one less lap, caught up and everyone was cool.

I have worked on sponsored events before and none came fractionally close to the success of this. Years ago I thought that “Skellerup Young Farmers” was a great fit (and it probably was) and the Milo kids cricket sponsorship also looks very good. Yet I can’t think of many other sponsored events with the emotion, excitement and longevity of the “Weetbix” (this being the only word to describe it that my daughter would allow).

We all know that sponsorship can build brand awareness. I played for Wellington United Football Club and in the 70s they were sponsored by Diamond pasta and we were still known as the Diamonds (not that anyone I played against knew why or bought any more pasta). Yet I don’t know of any sponsored event that builds the kind of emotion and energy in parents that the Weetbix does – its quite extraordinary.

For twenty years Weetbix has been behind this trythlon and that’s the key. There are great ideas, great concepts but a company has to stick with them to realize their value and Sanitarium has. Probably not without some discussion each year, but they have stuck with it and realized more value from an oldie but a goodie brand.

The current Weetbix box features photos of a young and fractionally older triathlete Aaron Barclay. First competing in the Weetbix tryathlon in 2002 and then another photo 8 years later at the 2010 Junior Olympic Games. OMG – that’s as inspirational as you could wish for.

My daughter swam, biked and ran and was professionally photograph most of her way and a professional video cameraman captured her finishing. All online a couple of days later and for a fee they were ours. The good feeling before during and after in our house was tangible. My partner and I beamed at the photos and videos being pitched to us and we were ringing people, posting photos, sending up smoke signals, buying space on the sides of space rockets…we were all super chuffed with Weetbix, except my daughter. She had moved on.  She’s training for the Contact 1:21 triathlon now.

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Phil Bilbrough (@philbilbrough) is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

By Phil Bilbrough

The easiest was my first. The hardest I’ve yet to do. I’m not talking about taking grief and a “hard” time getting the campaign out the door. All campaigns that I have development had wobbles, difficult clients, and dickhead creatives. I’m talking about being asked to tackle a problem through advertising that is tackled each year by many agencies in many countries for many years. That’s hard.

But the first the easiest. Early in my career I was a marketing co-ordinator for a Christchurch electronics firm. One day they decided to run an international advertising campaign – their first ever – and they told me to do it by the means of dropping a bunch of telecommunications engineering (telephony) magazines on my desk. They didn’t use words back then.

I went to work and came up a with a concept using ocean going racing sailing yachts to illustrate the “must-not-fail” and performance benefits of our industrial telecommunications products. My bosses said nothing about my concept, but queried the costs. As the ads rolled out, and media invoices rolled in and the exchange rate dived the bosses queried the costs with intent… until the first inquiry came in.

A telecom from a large persian country called. The earnest silence of the company quietened further, a few people went pale, and then the scurrying began and didn’t stop. Million dollar orders weren’t uncommon, tens of millions happened twice a year – this order promised another zero. This came from their first ad in the first publication of their first campaign. Nobody showed any interest in the campaign or me after that… I should put this success down to my genius, but I haven’t. The lesson here is that if a company has never advertised then the first time that they do, with a decent budget, it will be a success.

The hardest campaign is when you are the latest in a long line of campaigns about the same thing. Most ad agencies have done an anti-drink or anti-drink driving campaign. The measures of success could include less fatalities on the highways, less late night fires in the kitchens, less domestic violence, less fights, less vandalism, less vomit on streets, less all blacks in the news….If I were asked to come up with the lasted campaign after 40 years of ad agencies trying, I would feel some trepidation.

The Gruen Transfer discussed Australian and English ads in this drunken sector. It was a pity that they didn’t have a look at us, because, as I’ve said before in this blog that I think NZ agencies develop great campaigns for the Government, and to prove me right there is the “Ghost Chips” ad.

The Gruen panel were generally pretty hard on the Australian (and British) alcohol abuse ads. The exception was an ad made by the Australian alcohol industry and that irony wasn’t lost on anyone. My feeling was that the panel were too tough. I thought that they were all pretty good. (I’m embarrassed that this Gruen episode is not yet online.)

I think that ad agencies and whoever briefs them do OK, because its an impossible task.  Ad campaigns can only do so much to limit drug abuse. Alcohol, a socially acceptable drug, temporary releases people from their mundane lives and clumsy banter and nervousness and that is more than enough to give it god like status.

The examples showed on Gruen Transfer offered different strategies. And each strategy seemed (to me without having read the research) valid. So where would I go if I got briefed to do a stop drinking or start drinking responsibly campaign? I don’t know. Perhaps try not to feel weighed down by the great work that has gone before… so I would probably re-watch Gruen and try and get them to make me feel more superior to everything that has gone before.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

Rexona’s ad is not about rituals its about bodies. Do women buy men deodorant? From this ad I suspect so. I can’t connect slo mo pre game really deep  rituals with applying deodorant – it rolls it on too thick for me. I hope the All Blacks’ pregame regime is less about smell and more about tactics, and game plans.

The Heineken ads annoy me because they have been annoying me ever since they dropped the ad where the war photographer didn’t use a telephoto lens – he just got closer. Now the ads take the piss out of the game and blokes that watch it, which is OK but they”re not funny and I don’t want to be like those guys.

The worst ads are the Bunnings’ ads (can’t find them on Youtube except for these guys). Are they about rugby of the RWC? No. On straight after the haka, Bunnings should have done better – though until on two separate occasions in two different pubs, when two different punters vocalized their hate for these ads – I had thought it might have been a good strategy – but hate is a strong thing to overcome.

Maori TV do a good promo and I think the best commentary and they remind us of who I’m talking about.

As much as I like the TAB’s ads, short funny very kiwi very memorable – I think that Sky’s “Match fit” series takes the RWC advertising prize – possibly one of the best campaigns ever seen in NZ – actually it doesn’t – this ad is the single best one of RWC 2011.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

by  Phil Bilbrough

The UNITEC stories mostly work for me. The trainee photographer, the nurse and the architect all beginning their careers at UNITEC and (at least I believe) to go on.  I don’t know how successful these ads are, but for me they mostly resonate. They are stories of hope, determination and persistence.  Yet it isn’t those attributes that resonate with me, its the people and their teachers. Their situations feel real, their challenges likely, and their goals genuine – and there it is. Its a lovely truth.

I’m very conscious of context. There is no truth without context, someone far smarter than I said. And I said as well. So what else is going on in my world which makes these ads spin for me.  The London riots? Arab revolutions? The RWC hype? Massive Government ball-out of finance companies? Yes its all these things. I’ve just stopped believing. I have trust issues with the world, and my guess is that many NZer’s do.

The UNITEC ads might be completely made-up they maybe all actors but they feel complex, textured, challenging and real. There is something protestant about these ads. Hard work is good for your soul (said a protestant priest sometime in history)and telling it like it is almost mostly as sweet.

I want these people to succeed. From my complete world of disbelief I have been brought around to believe and hope. I’m sure this campaign will be successful.

The TVCs are great the UNITEC website is cool and the Facebook page. Good job. I mean the education market is pretty competitive, so this makes the get real tell it like it is UNITEC campaign feels quite brave. They could have landed us with a usual suspects of successful people who have come from UNITEC or flash some $$ in a young person’s eyes and bribe them to UNITEC.

I think disillusionment with the world is a cyclic – except for me that is, I’m permanently disillusioned. Yet in the 70s Coke met the needs of the very angry Vietnam / Korean War / Cold War generation with their “Its the Real Thing” campaign. The 80s over the top bullshit era followed by a more considered 90s and then consumer driven optimism rebuilt the bullshit hill in the first decade of the new millennium.

But now its different. Why is a decade seemingly always the defining period of time? The wars, credit crunches, the bullshit finance deals (even salt-of-the-earth men losing billions), corporate bailouts, and then nature throws a serious tantrum. Who can we turn to? Who can we trust? Nobody. We can only trust ourselves. Its back to basics and hard work and the best we can wish for are mentors who do no more than guide us in the right direction.

OMG don’t I sound protestant?

Its just that these UNITEC ads don’t sparkle – enough. They are a lovely truth, but they need more and more might come. These ads are about enabling change. There is a lot of drama in these ads. Just some sparkle in them might make them easier to write about. To inject some energy into the viewer. I hope its coming.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

by Phil Bilbrough

It IS fantastic. Its a campaign that just keeps on giving – how fantastic is that? A campaign that will be remembered for all time.

I’ve written this blog 3 or 4 times over. Each time I complete it a new thing comes up. And did we ever see the whole campaign? Are we going to hear the whole story? Telecom claims that this campaign was leaked. That’s extra cool. Much cooler than Telecom will ever be.  A leak that adds spice to a spicy ad.

I was one of the few that thought that the Fitzy and the abstain campaign was great. Fitzy in the twilight zone. The pen-ultimate sacrifice is asked for. Black rubber rings are xtra weird, and I didn’t initially recognise the pink fist, but once I did the weirdness scale went through the roof.

How successful would this campaign have been? What more could a marketer wish for before his/her campaign actually goes live? All over the TV “news” programmes and sites, its just that these guys weren’t into it. TV3′s @JohnCampbell wasn’t into it.  Twitter people #abstainforthegame were unconvinced and outraged, yet there were a few…

“@MrMikeMcRoberts: So no sex during the rugby world cup Fitzy? and this from our country’s best known hooker #abstainforthegame”

..who made a joke about it. And that for me is what the campaign is about. Lighten the leaden air. Relax. You are all uptight. New Zealander’s are tight ass. Being uptight (or being relaxed) isn’t going to win us a world cup. There’s the irony of it.

I was surprised that Telecom ditched it – until I heard that it was leak – or was it? Maybe if we saw the whole thing, if there was more, more time to let people to run it around their brains for a while, a bit longer it might have come good.

This campaign had a nuance, an irony that appealed to me. Humorous yet still recognising that fans want to do everything that they can to help our All Blacks win the world cup. I think Fitzy got the joke. Uptight NZers could use a bit of humor in this nervous house pacing holding pattern pre-world cup kick-off time. But I don’t think that they think so.

Telecom has never really got going with the NZ public. I remember when they came into existence and immediately changed the colour of the phone booths from red to blue.  New Zealander’s liked the ads with cute animals and great cover music – but there hasn’t been much about Telecom that NZers has loved.

A TVC with an executive tele-conferencing from a beach house (which felt like an ad that  Teresa Gatting would have made) was bourgeoisie, and then a high profile Richard Hammond campaign didn’t make XT work any better.  When Vodafone turned up it really felt that we were being saved from a bullying insecure big brother, but then Vodafone went the Telecom way, nevermind.

This year’s World Cup has already had a few bad omens. An earthquake (no Lancaster Park), Adidas have turned into a multinational nasty which they always were but we previously didn’t care. Anyway this isn’t the time to make jokes – Rugby is serious shit.

So the lessens from this campaign: 1. Telecom probably shouldn’t make jokes close to the Rugby World Cup, in fact nobody should. 2. NZers don’t want to breath badly in case in case it affects the All Blacks chances. 3. “PR disaster” is on the lips of everyone…. we aren’t predisposed to look kindly at anything (until we win the cup).

My colleagues got the joke but didn’t think it funny. NZers take sex seriously. When did we become so staunch and uptight?  Probably around the time the French last knocked the All Blacks out of the cup.

Still like this campaign. Suppose I’ll just have to go back to bonking.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

By Phil Bilbrough

Five guys each beyond forty, with kids to prove it, meet to drink beer, eat pizza and talk football. That was the good part. But this cursed pizzeria has a beer/pizza/movie ticket deal. Buy beer and pizza and get a movie ticket. Why not? We were half we there. We all cruised, as only 40+ fatigued men can cruise to the local theatre and found Harry Potter or Transformers 3D and we went with Transformers: Dark side of the moon.

My first disconnect was me wondering whether the movie advertising were 3D or not. A Faber Castell coloured pencil colouring competition was being advertised without anything being coloured in – prestidigitation came to mind. It looked like it should be in 3D – pencils ninja-like flying past my head or something. What a piss-off when I found that my dorky glasses were on for no reason. As if I needed any help to look dorky.

The next ad was in 3D – advertising 3D movie technology.  The next ad was a Sony advertising internet connected 3D TV. I think that that was in 3D, I dunno. My first 3D movie experience since Nightmare on Elm Street 27 3D and it was completely underwhelming.

Transformers opened with a shot of an super attractive girl’s bottom walking upstairs. The bottom was attached to heroine called something, but played by Victoria’s Secret actress and new Burberry body Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. There may have been dramatic tension between the hero-geek with an unlikely hot girl friend but it was drawn out and blatant and ssslllloooowwww. The geek hero jumped around because he had a stoat up his ass and spoke frenetically (same reason) and was boring – so that really that takes some talent. This film reduced me to a game of spot the cameo; John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, and Buzz Aldrin and baddie, Patrick Dempsey. Voices of the Transformers included Hugo Weaving and Leonard Nimoy. There was also these strange cuts – like the director editor really decided to cut shots out of the film, “You didn’t CUT ENOUGH”

The film had some great gags and they almost kept me awake – and ALL of those that I can remember were delivered by John Turturro and his side kick called something and played by the fab Alan Tudyk.

There was too much stuff going on for me and 3D wasn’t adding much or enough to lift this ooze. I didn’t have the will to suspend my disbelief for this movie. So I went to sleep. Transformer Sentinel Prime says “Sleep!” Just beyond my drift off,  Rosie Huntington-Whiteley did something, which prompted my “mate” to nudge me and say something about our Rosie and his …. I dunno.

Yet I took a lot from this movie. That I am to old for Transformers. That aliens when they communicate between themselves, choose to do so in English. That the butter smell of pop corn makes me nauseous. That my friend has remembered all the words that we used for sexual intercourse.

That a Monday night beer/pizza/movie deal works a treat – just not for 40 pluses.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

by Phil Bilbrough

Love a good bit of social. I love that feeling of being able to reach out and a grab it, only for it disappear. Kind of like a mirage but one that is just at the end of your arm, one that keeps on reappearing. Its a mirage of easy money, easy influence, or of a bigger audience. Its an excitement puff. An illusion that a new big thing might be your new big thing.

And that puff might just be Empire Avenue (or Google+). I’m beginning to understand Empire Avenue, enough to write about it (not that that is any requirement for a blog). This social media site puts a value on your social media activity and just maybe your influence. It does this by running a stock market based on the frequency of your social network activity, the number of likes and comments you get, endorsements of your blog, and the demand in your stock. It has a currency, Eaves, and many many other things… It is a very cool site. One of some sophistication.

I don’t know if I had missed the Social Avenue bus or not, but the hype reached me only after I was on it and wondering what I should be doing there. There did seem a slow burn to this one.  It has been going for a year (released July 2010) – a year! That long! One year in social is like 10, 20 years in real life. OMG!

It is a place for social media people and brands. Many of the clientele are already well connected people yet this site still pushes its followers to connect more. It  incentivizes us to  tweet and post and like, favourite, endorse each others blogs and buy shares in each other. I don’t know how long this will go on …..it has been good for me and it’s fun.

And it should be fun because its a game and gamers made it. Every action is rewarded. It has communities within communities tips and hints, a shop for virtual goodies, you can buy advertisements – so it probably has an agency as well. I haven’t found it yet but it will be there somewhere, the  EV Strategy Agency. There are also conspiracies and complaints, and people slagging it.

Nevermind its a game.

Eaves are earned through sharetrading and dividends, can be redeemed for rewards or virtual items. If you think that you are a bit poor and want to get ahead a bit quicker you can reach for your credit card and buy more of the virtual currency. Its a non-linear FOREX (do they exist in the real world?) – 90,000 eaves for $US50, 40,000 eaves for $US25, and 30,000 eaves for $US20. Screams “Business Model.”

I don’t know how many people are on it – lots. Empire Avenue doesn’t replace any of the social networks that I am on – it kind of adds to them. It makes social media fun again and its reinvigorated me – those game guys know how to get engagement. Through rose tinted glasses I would also at a stretch say that it adds a bit of organisation to my social media life through its indexing and its incentives for getting you to reveal your interests.

But its a game. One can be philosophical about it’s real world purpose. One could say that everything is a “game” – with strategies and players therefore a game and the label “game” should not be derogatory or demeaning. I don’t think games are without relevance, yet I wonder if the people on Empire Avenue reflect each other too much. That this social network for social media people is too small a sub-set of society, a bubble of super-like minded people – a bubble where any influence or traction within the community is irrelevant as all people in Empire Avenue are driven to connect. They connect for connecting sake, few other factors are considered, like the personality of the person, or the interest of the quality of a person’s material. All those elements are part of Empire Avenue but down the priority list of what scores a high share price.

I thought Twitter, Facebook and Youtube were probably enough for me. Thousands think that any social site is one to many. But I recommend that you take a stroll down Empire Avenue – because its fun.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

By Phil Bilbrough

I don’t usually defend bureaucrats. Yet every day I feel for more and more of them. Many will have an uncertain job future. Many are perceived badly. I have heard many stories of public service bureaucrat’s do-nothing tangles, yet one part of me feels for these people. Its because they work in a vice.

Years ago people chose to work for the Government, to be in the service of the public. In Wellington, people left their houses to the Government in their wills. This is not the case of  not making a Will so it all goes to the Government, no some Wellington people chose to leave their houses to the Government for the benefit of New Zealand. MPs and their families live in those houses when they move to Wellington. That was another time. People don’t join the public service to serve the public anymore. Our ministries and Government departments probably had to change – they had to get more efficient and show much more accountability than the old fashioned – trust in your employee and their own sense of responsibility.

And where is our public service now? I expect that most ministries are offering the New Zealand public much more for less money. This is not to say that the occasional IT project does not go massively haywire or that a great new idea swallows large amounts of money before it gets pass go (only to then be dismissed), or a bungle sees whole suburb of state houses being left to a local mob chapter or an incompatible data format means that a couple of education departments can’t share data and meaningfully work together.  There is also the consultant or contractor that comes in to “consult”, but finds the only thing needed is to do the job of the current employees.  Never mind.

I still feel for many bureaucrats.

The public sector are criticized in isolation. The private sector screws up as well. The massive takeovers and buy-ups of brands that by the very action of being purchased immediately lose value. ANZ buying Postbank and perhaps ANZ buying National Bank are cases in point. I have also been aware of private sector companies charging into transformation projects only to revert to the previous ways of business – much like the public sector. Then there are the Hanovers and Blue Chips of this world – great finance companies those – they probably lost money quicker than any public sector enterprise. Lets not forget how much money South Canterbury Finance blew. Also, the Government deserves some managerial respect. Has the private sector ever run – simultaneously – 20+  hospitals, 1000s of schools, a justice system, a punishment system, a welfare system, a roading system, and even a biosecurity system?

Either way I know that many bureaucrats do want to do something. They probably want to achieve something for themselves or quite possibly for the public that they are serving, but many can’t or don’t because of their political masters.

Maybe it started with Helen Clark or maybe way before her, but there are a number of Ministers currently demanding “no surprises” and “no bad news” from their ministries. And that’s what they get. Ministries running complex programmes in difficult situations with difficult sections of the domestic or overseas public. Like industry development programmes, overseas market development projects, youth offender programmes, perhaps health education programmes, any criminal rehabilitation programme, management of the mentally ill or severely physically handicapped. Will all news be good news in programmes like these? No. Will mistakes be made – yes. Does the New Zealand public want a ministry to learn from the mistakes and do better – I DO. Obviously politicians don’t think that the NZ public will accept any failure and that un-acceptance will be actioned at the election.

So your boss only wants to hear good news and you can’t always provide it. What do you do? Well what do you do? Pick some bits out it, merge it with another report of a similar project, keep it a draft report or rewrite it so it looks neither good nor bad, just unintelligible. What you then do is get massively frustrated.

So the news becomes good or negligible early in the process. There is not a ministry of propaganda but then it isn’t required. Because bad news doesn’t get generated.

What do the public hear from our Government ministries? Good, bland or irrelevant news. Maybe bad news reports from Ministries aren’t being suppressed, but that is because the reports aren’t actually getting published. The facts drift off somewhere. Will any Government learn from their current work and hopefully improve management of the ministries and their programmes and projects? Probably but very very slowly. Squeezing the bureaucrats happens much quicker.

By Phil Bilbrough

Some ads need to be recognised for their above and beyondness. This list probably give you an insight into me more than anything. I would love to see and hear your best ad list. While I’m waiting for that here is my best ads for 2010 and their categories are…

1. Best ads for telling us what to say
Great year for public service ads. And when a line from your ad is repeated in club rooms, bars, on 7 Days and in workplaces you have truly succeeded.Regardless of the tone of how that line is repeated,  if people are using a line from your ad you are across the line. The “Ease up on the drink” from ALAC is a winner. Its given us a language – the words – to confront an alcoholic friend.

Similar yet a fraction off the mark is the “Are you OK” TVC , whose campaign site is www.areyouok.org.nz. A campaign by the Ministry of Social Development, the Families Commission, supported by ACC , and the New Zealand Police.

This ad asks us to confront an acquaintance over his violent behaviour and ultimately ask him to seek help. Similar to “Ease up on drink” we are being encouraged to take action although we aren’t the victim or perpetrator. This misses the mark because it doesn’t give us much of a script to confront someone and it underplays the heroic person who actually does stand up and asks, “Are you OK?” Its a key role yet a bit down the priority list of for this ad. Forget those last lines this ad is in my list of top ads of 2010. The cardboard people resonate with me deeply.

“Ease up on the drink” and “Are you OK” worldclass public service ads.

2. Political correctness scrutinised!
Are our true feelings toward Yetis as charitable as the law tells us to be. Perhaps not. This an uncomfortable ad. Would I let Yeti sell me a DVD player? I need to examine my feelings hard. This is a supreme Yeti ad, the Yeti Eclipse Mints ad, and there is another in this series.

3. International recognition ad
Another Phil, with whom I am acquainted, plays  the dehydrated masseur excruciatingly well and the overseas ad sites loved him for it. This is Fresh-up’s Thirst is creepy.

4. Best use of exclamation marks
Just love Primo Extremo. A creative director with whom I once worked with had the favourite saying of, “It is what it is.” He would pull it out any time and it probably made sense on one or two occasions. This ad reminds me of him saying those words. Its a milk product. Milk is a commodity. It is what it is. Its up to the Agency to give it some personality, a NEW reason for being (“its an energy drink!!” someone yells), and I think the Primo agency people did just  that.

5. Best use of old people, a sprinkler and dolphins
How can you lose with catchy upbeat pop music and a cast of thousands and jumping dolphins – well you can’t, I mean, you can’t  and Instant Kiwi doesn’t. I also identify with his singing talent.

6.  Online Mastery
I didn’t see this campaign advertised on any websites or TV, but I was a recipient of the email from them, fine its great. AA Travel come on down for this great summer campaign 101 Must do’s for Kiwis.

One hundred and one holidays in New Zealand and a chance to upload the 102nd. Yeah the online marketing basics of some interactivity, some information (and link for more), a bit of empowerment (vote, rank and submit your own idea) combined with an offer (win $2k towards to your holiday) and executed in a manner truly be-fitting of our beautiful country. One hundred and one reasons to ditch going to the Gold Coast for another year.

There is a bit of bucket list trend in NZ at this moment – thing to do before you die – is climate change really freaking us out that much?

7.  Best ad under austerity
Production budgets were probably cut in 2010. I don’t like beer ads, well that’s a lie.  Heineken keeps me entertained (in many ways) with numerous ads like the Expedition Leader,  and the Entrance. High production values there. Speights like a good but of production, but this Speights ad looks to be shot in 16mm and in an urban environment. Austerity yes, yet quality. Lower the budget and boast creativity. There, just made myself public enemy no. 1 of agencies everywhere.

And the winner is….from Sprite. This is just cool. It evokes the heat of a polluted sun searing a hot court in confined urban environment. It surprises without having a punchline. Most of all it shows what Sprite feels like.

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Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who is blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.