WORK: Telecom

I’ve spent a great six months on contract at Saatchi and Saatchi, working mainly on Telecom. I’ve really enjoyed the range of projects that my art director Matt Campbell and I have worked on. We’ve made more eyelights, retail ads, banners, webtiles and landing pages than you can shake a reasonably priced handset at, but also had the opportunity to do some nice big pieces.

TV

We’ve got quite a few Tommy and Boris spots in the pipeline that we are very excited to see out next year, but one currently out  is this Escape spot. It placed number one in the Admedia Top Ten for November.

This is another out now:

Radio

We’ve also produced a fair few radio ads. Here are two favoutites – this one above  for the tough Motorola Defy XT used only two words (outside of the plentiful offer, of course).

And this was a fun Tommy and Boris multiple calls gag.

Print

Another highlight was the full page headlines that ran around the Vodafone TelstraClear takeover.

Life was good all round. Gus and Corey were great CDs on the work, the clients loved making the Tommy and Boris work and it is great fun to be thinking of ways an 8 year old full of wonder for the world might be using technology.

Logo: Summer’s for Sharing

Another element we worked up was this logo and line that could act as a sub-brand over Telecom summer activations.

Retail

And there was plenty of retail, which is always great for economy of writing and finding ways to make offers fresh.

WORK: Lexus

Another great client this year has been Lexus. Working in at Saatchi & Saatchi with Matt Campbell we’ve done a couple of TVCs, four brand films, billboards, a lot of print and digital, written a website and generally learnt a lot about Lexus!

The brief was interesting –to show the Japanese difference in the vehicles. We wanted to show the special culture of production and refinement that has made Japan the world leaders in precision manufacturing, but also the culture of craft that lifts the results above simple machining to something…more. The Kokoro Wo Komete / Soul Meets Machine idea came out of the way that Lexus use Takumi -Master Craftsmen -- to oversee elements of the production to a fanatical standard. It really is the culmination of a life’s work to hold such a position.

Advertising is easy when there are real, very cool stories. So we tried to showcase these.

The TVCs acted as the window in, with a kind of perfume brand feel that really stands out amongst the retail shouting in an ad break. The approach has been very well received by Lexus international, and the spots have been exported to a number of major territories. They’re playing our ads there.

The website was where we told the stories, including through these brand films.

Print, billboard and digital all supported the Kokoro story. It was quite cool to tell a Japanese story in NZ by actually advertising in Japanese with the massive kanji character.

We also worked up this retail campaign that’s been performing really well. Playing off the fact that most of their adverts are placed in business media, and having to point to a number heavy offer, we created the Success Strategy construct.

WORK: Urbis

Writing Off the Hip columns for Urbis over the last couple of years has been great fun. Here is one that rather unfortunately includes a massive picture of my face, but that more people have talked to me about (the story, not my face) than pretty much any other piece I’ve ever done. File this under: kids like the darndest things.

WORK: Tui

One of the fun clients at Saatchi & Saatchi is Tui. Here are a couple of our Yeah Rights that got through.

WORK: Simon Denny Passport Film

Here is a piece commissioned by artist Simon Denny to be part of his exhibition at Art Basel, perhaps the world’s most prestigious art fair. His exhibition looked in part at the life and death of TVNZ7. This doco on the introduction of the black, Silver Fern emblazoned NZ passport was filmed in the style of a TVNZ7 news story. Denny’s exhibit went on to win the Baloise Prize, one of the top international art prizes.

It was a great privilege to be involved and to direct and produce this work for Simon.

Writing: Aortica -A Love Letter to Auckland.

This is a ‘Love Letter’ that I wrote for the German publication Aortica. The editors/publishers, Piero and Mone, were lovely people that talked to Ingrid and took some photos of our place for their Auckland issue. It’s available now at Mag Nation, and is great -it interviews people like Gavin Hurley, Rebecca Snelling and Pikachunes and gives an interesting perspective on the city.

The format of the letter, a regular feature in their magazine, is normally more poetic -like from an actual lover, emotional. I tried to say that in Auckland there isn’t a lot of unbridled love, but it is growing. I’d be interested in what you make of what I thought of Auckland- it took a wee bit of thinking to understand a bit more of what I did feel about this funny city.

Anyhow, go and get the mag -it is great!

A Love Letter

Ah Auckland,you insecure doe of a city. Nowhere else in the world are inhabitants of a place at once so disparaging about their hometown, yet so worried what a visitor thinks.

‘There’s not much to do here’ locals will apologise, before asking with great pride if you‘ve liked the West Coast beaches, Hauraki Gulf, island escapes, coffee, fresh food, mountain landscape, Pacific flavour, Chinese restaurants and so on and so on.

They’ll then ask ‘Do you like it here?’

It’s a funny old city, and one I do love, not that Aucklanders often say such a thing out loud. Auckland is a city where people smile at you on the street and then avoid eye contact on the trains. It’s a small big city with the spread and scope of a metropolis, but often the horizons of a province.

What do I Love? Well, for a start the way you’re feeling almost grown-up of late –with a central train station and Britomart precinct around it that feels urban. There is even talk of perhaps more than one train line being built to service that station. That’d be something, but let’s not belittle how far we’ve come–at last we have a focus near the greatest city attribute: the Waitemata Harbour.

The harbours are never far on the isthmus. Auckland’s known as the City of Sails for all the pleasure craft that moor around the water’s edges and cruise the island-dotted harbours. Yet perhaps the real title of interest here is that it’s the biggest Pacific Island city in the world. But for many of the people on the boats that is not their Auckland, and vice versa.

Because Auckland is many cities. It sprawls, a series of dormitory suburbs connected by shopping malls. To travel ten kilometres by public transport can take you an entire day, but that’s not really a problem because every real Aucklander has at least one car and they drive everywhere.

It is possible in Auckland, population 1.4 million, to live here for years and never visit suburbs just ten minutes away. Few people living in the older Auckland suburbs, the whiter ones, would really know that Mt Roskill was arguably the most successful multicultural suburb in the world. Having gone to school there I believe it.

And, oh, where people live –is there another city anywhere that is so obsessed by home-ownership? Auckland will stretch to either tip of the North Island by the time we’re through. With religion a relaxed affair, the city’s real churches are the home improvement supplies stores, cavernous cathedrals that hum with devoted purchasers all weekend. Open homes are a pastime; real estate listings the sports pages.

The Maori call Auckland Tamaki Makaurau -isthmus of a thousand lovers – a place desired by so many. Auckland doesn’t acknowledge its Maori character, because that is the past and this city of property developers always tries to renovate to remove the past, living in a slippery present, a constant do-up.

That’s not to say that Auckland isn’t charming already.
With the Art Gallery, the downtown, the restaurants, the cafes, the produce and to be honest –the internet and much-used airports providing a link to the rest of the world –we can feel like a real city here, heaving and growing and getting somewhere. Although getting somewhere is not the main goal. It isn’t a thrusting city. In fact, I think I love the fact that a lot of the people who only care about money and getting ahead leave Auckland for brighter lights.

I love Auckland like any true Aucklander: equivocally.

The truth is that you have to work at having a great life here. You can’t simply step out the door and get caught up in activity. You have to spark it yourself.

A friend of mine I was working with in a bar put it best. It was a Tuesday night and visitors from out of town walked in.  They saw it was quiet and asked ‘So where is the party tonight?’ To which my friend replied. ‘In Auckland you have to be the party.”

And it can be a party. It was over a good summer I fell in love with Auckland, when my family would travel out on morning excursions in wispy sun.

Auckland of a million different Aucklands within a forty-minute drive. Auckland of a million peoples and a slow understanding of it. Auckland of an optimism and transient character. Auckland of a million sun-showers and disappointing buildings.

Not many people here say it, busy as they are making their own things happen, but Auckland, thanks for being just as you are.

Yours,

Simon

—

Work: Radio Live

Here is a spot getting some good play at the moment that I produced for Satin & Lace. Mikee Carpinter directed and edited, Warren Green DOP.

Named as a TVC of the week by stoppress.

Work: Ingrid Starnes

The thing I spend most time on these days is the fashion label my lady Ingrid Starnes designs. It is a lot of fun having shared goals and helping get some beautiful things into the world.

Last year we took part in Fashion Week. It was a great experience.

Arcadia NZFW show ticket

The show had a great response, with some very cool stories coming out of it. For media we work with Showroom 22, who are the best.

Fashion Quarterly Story on the show process

I work on the bits of the business that don’t involve the talent of designing and producing women’s clothing. So I look after retail, online, business etc.

We have a store in Herne Bay that we share with Tessuti and we share promotional activity also.

Shared campaign poster

We were lucky enough to be named runner-up in the Metro Best of Auckland list for Women’s Fashion retail,  that was a wonderful surprise.

We recently launched our online store:

And I look after the facebook and twitter -so come say hi!

Come say hi!

Work: We only get one chance

This was a project that Simon Farrell-Green and I put together for Heart of the City. We worked with Militia.co.nz on the website and design.

Screen shot of front page and survey

We put together a number of ads, a website, a bit of writing, a video, an on-the-ground survey  and other bits and bobs.

We managed to get many thousands of submissions in a climate where the Rena and the RWC finals were dominant, exceeding expectations and helping to increase the time available to Aucklanders to submit on the plans that determine Auckland’s future.

The story appeared and was debated through the NZ Herald’s pages, and supporting ads ran there too.

Work: Primal Earth

This was another fun project with Matt Campbell and Indiego. We came up with these lines to anchor the product in its ingredients and try to tell the organic story without being too preachy.

Work: Dominate

This was very fun indeed. For Indiego Matt Campbell and I worked up a shower gel name, design and got to do this fun writing. Perhaps the only supermarket product to get the words testicle and anus onto the back.

COPY:

Musk Shower Gel

MUSK SHOWER GEL 400ml

This stink is Musk.

Fun facts about Musk:

1. Musk was originally made of deer anus. True story.

2. The word musk comes from the sanskrit word “muska’ – meaning testicle.

Sometimes  two wrongs make a right.

…….

We also made some fun positioning ideas up for them

Work: Avis self drive

This was a fun project with Indiego. I got to write up the 15 or so must-do things for each region in the country. A lot of words and research later and this helped Avis jump to the top of all the searches they were after and, more importantly, helped them provide something useful to their customers.

Example of one of the area stories – not many tourism related ideas let you talk about shipping the dead out of a place…

The start of the Avis West Coast entry

WORK: Stories beat stuff

This is a cool campaign that Contagion have out  for Tourism New Zealand. It was fun to work on this with Matt Campbell on the way through and contribute a bit to it -including the line Stories Beat Stuff.

Work: Radio NZ TV Review

Here is a wee review about changing TV consumption habits I put together for Nine to Noon.

Recent Work: Ake Ake Kia Kaha

This is the video promo for a doco I recently produced with Satin & Lace for the Auckland Museum, with my good man Warren Green the director.

It was a very cool project -- telling the story of Maori Rugby through the words of great players.

We spoke to Buck Shelford, Muru Walters, Hosea Gear and Tane Norton. The full doco includes a stirring Timatanga led by Hosea Gear and a bunch of very very cool archive.

The exhibition finishes at the end of Feb 2012.

Ake Ake Kia Kaha: The Spirit of Maori Rugby.

Recent Work:Idealog

Here is a story recently published in Idealog about Smallworlds. An inspiring local company.