The campaign is to run in DNA Magazine, Star Observer, Grindr, Gay News Network, Guide to Gay, Manhunt.net, Pink Sofa, Lesbians on the Loose, JOY 94.9 digital and Q-news.

Another creative execution targets lesbians with Durex’s women’s lubricant range.

The campaign was created by Euro RSCG, with media by ZenithOptimedia and gay and lesbian specialist sales network Pink Media Group.

Ben Mulcahy, MD of Pink Media Group, said: “We are delighted to be working on so many exciting campaigns during the Mardi Gras period, but this market spends all year round so it’s the advertisers who continue to promote relevant products and services who will truly establish brand loyalty.”

The ad is launching to mark the first anniversary since Coles cut the price of Moro Olive oil. The advertiser did the same with milk in an ad that launched a fortnight ago.

“We are reminding customers that Coles is serious about cutting prices and when we say prices are down and staying down we mean it,” said Coles communications director Jon Church.

The ad was created by Ted Horton’s agency, Big Red.

Carl Ratcliff, who was executive planning director at Elvis Communications, a direct and digital agency owned by the Cossette Group, joins the Photon-owned agency on April 16.

Before Elvis, he held senior planning roles at Lowe and TBWA London. Clients he has worked with include Waitrose, Sky, Sony Playstation and Cadbury Schweppes.

Ratcliff will helm the agency of 30, with clients including Kmart, GE Money and Simplot brands Leggo’s, I&J, Edgell and Birds Eye.

BWM Group CEO Paul Williams said in a statement: “We have been scouring the globe for an individual with the right talent to lead our Melbourne division to the next level and we have found that person in Carl.”

“In addition to his gold class background in strategic planning, Carl also brings a unique combination of strategic smarts, global experience and relationship management at a senior level. His appointment is a great addition to our talented Management Board which includes Melbourne Creative Director Shaun Branagan.”

Stephenson and Silva

In another key early development at Aegis Media this year, digital agency Visual Jazz has been merged with Isobar to form one of Australia’s largest digital agencies.

The combined operation, branded Visual Jazz Isobar, has a national presence of 180 staff – 15 from Isobar and 165 from Visual Jazz – with offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.

Konrad Spilva, a founder and current MD of Visual Jazz, will be MD of Visual Jazz Isobar, reporting to David Stephenson, MD of Aegis Media Pacific’s digital creative division.

The Sydney office of Visual Jazz Isobar, which now will have a team of over 30 people, will be led by Grant Henderson as GM and Verity Tuck as senior account director.

The newly merged agencies key clients are Holden, HSBC, Medibank, JB Hi-Fi, David Jones, Lend Lease and Treasury Wine Estates.

Stephenson said, in a press release:

Since Visual Jazz was founded more than 10 years ago, it has grown from a start up to one of Australia’s leading digital creative agencies and named B&T’s 2011 Interactive Agency of the Year.

Isobar Sydney has a strong creative team plus the backing of one of the world’s biggest and best digital agencies. We have a very powerful offer to our clients and a very positive story to attract the best talent going around.

We’re bringing together the very best people on the ground with the ability to further tap into the extensive global resource and knowledge bank of Isobar. Asia is a growth market for many of our clients and Visual Jazz has already worked with Isobar to deliver client work in several Asian markets. This is really great news for our team and our clients.

The news comes in the same week as Aegis Media announced the launch of innovation unit Jumptank, and just over a fortnight it announced it was relaunching media agency brand Vizeum.

The event will take place on Thursday March 1 at Darling Harbour in Sydney.

Speakers will look at the risks associated with social media marketing – and how to mitigate them.

Pearson

von muenster

Cornwell McKean

The speakers include a legal perspective from lawyer Stephen von Muenster, the journalism perspective from Prof Mark Pearson and a regulatory perspective from the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Julia Cornwell. The session will also examine case studies of brands that have found themselves in social media firestorms – and how they got through the crisis.

Kim McKay, boss of digitally-led PR agency Klick Communications will moderate the event.

At last week’s Mumbrella marketing summit, managing risk in social media emerged as a key issue for those involved in marketing.

The event is aimed at members of marketing teams whose brands use social media as a promotion tool, marketers whose brands might be discussed on social media; agency staffers likely to be responsible for assisting brands on social media strategies; agency staffers – whether from PR, media , digital or creative agencies – responsible for developing and overseeing social media strategies.

Speaker details:

• Stephen von Muenster is an attorney who has specialised in advertising, communications, marketing, promotions and media law for more than 15 years. He is a regular advisor to the Communications Council, the Media Federation of Australia and Social Media Club Sydney.
• Mark Pearson’s latest book, Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued, is due to be published next month. He is a former section editor of The Australian and has written three editions of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law. He is Professor of Journalism at Bond University in Queensland, Australia.
• Julia Cornwell McKean has been manager of the anti-spam team at ACMA for the last three years. her focus includes issues where digital marketing interacts with spam legislation.

Tickets are priced at $299. Details of how to book are available here. (pdf)

The Indian cooking brand, which is owned by AB World Foods Australasia, is Host’s third win since its acquisition by Havas in July last year. The agency has also won Rentokill and Coke Zero.

Sharon Doyle, marketing manager for Patak’s at AB World Foods Australasia said: “Host and The Glue Society really impressed us with their strategic approach to our brief. A collaborative way of working and a great creative idea means that we feel really confident in our decision. We’re looking forward to building on our recent successes and are excited about further strengthening Patak’s leadership position in collaboration with the team at Host.”

Richard Birkby at Host said: “It’s great to get the opportunity to work on a brand that has such an authentic heritage. Patak’s has a really great story underpinning the brand and its whole ethos remains true to making the flavours of India accessible for Australian consumers. We’re really excited about the creative opportunities that working with Patak’s presents.”

The agency behind the campaign was Wilson Everard.

Drummond Golf marketing director Ravi Abeyaratne said, in a press release: “Wilson Everard has created a campaign that continues to create a disturbance and grow both our sales and the Drummond Golf brand. Golfers have really responded to the humour in the commercials and the fact that they’re different in the category.”

The announcement:

SYDNEY, 8 February 2012 — The Playroom today announced that it has launched its new Transmedia Services Division and hired two new digital specialists in the process.

The new Transmedia Services division is headed up by The Playroom Digital Media Director Cora Spear who said, “The Playroom Transmedia Services Division is our digital experience engine room and offers a number of services. We are predominantly working with clients to extend their content IP across digital platforms and also developing and extending brands into new platforms and experiences.”

As a result of the Transmedia Services Division launch The Playroom has hired Mitch Harris (previously with EA Games) as Digital Creative Director and Magnus Morris (previously with Cummins Nitro) as Lead Developer.

Spear continued, “Getting Mitch and Magnus, our two new digital specialists, means we can extend our digital services offering to Australian content makers.  We are already designing and developing projects that extend the commercial opportunities for film and television properties across digital platforms, including App development for connected TV’s and tablets.  We see transmedia as distinct from pure cross-platform digital marketing, where implementation on mobile or online would be used to build awareness – we see transmedia as enriching or extending the experience.”

The new team will work closely with head of IPTV at the Playroom, Scott-Bradley Pearce who says “consumption of IPTV based content is quickly moving to television and mobile based apps, and with the addition of this new team we are able to provide our clients the opportunity to innovate and extend their audience reach to capitalise further on their content.”

The Playroom has been growing for the last couple of years and according to MD Tom Kennedy launching the new Transmedia Services Division is the next natural step in their evolution. Kennedy added, “The Playroom understand broadcast and video intimately and how to connect viewers to a diverse range of platforms and devices. We also manage content and IP for our clients and sister companies and we have been in the digital space across the entire content production workflow for many years. The Playroom Transmedia Services Division is the first of many announcements this year where The Playroom will be expanding and growing further still.”

Source: The Playroom press release

Bohemia director Chris Christofi said: “Our objective was to demonstrate that achieving your goals through education is easier than it seems with Open Colleges.”

Credits:

Agency: Bohemia in collaboration with Human
Production company: Red Deck
Director: Jason Wingrove
Producer: Alan Robinson
Agency Producer : Mandy Payne
Creative Director : Justine Metcalf
Writer: Sarah Marshall

This is the first digital campaign from HardHat digital and BWM since the agencies won the business at the end of last year.

Leggo’s senior brand manager Kate Murphy said in a press release: “Leggo’s Personalised Lovesongs is a fun way for us to share the love on Valentine’s Day and ties in beautifully to the warmth and romance that is at the heart of this campaign. The collaboration between BWM and Hard Hat has seen the campaign evolve from a great concept into a special and memorable way for us to interact with our consumers.”

Earlier this week, BWM released its first TV work for Leggo’s.

The cooking show took 1.66m, peaking with 2m, across the five city metro for total individuals, according to preliminary reports from OzTam.

MKR has won every night it has aired so far this year.

The show was well ahead of Seven News in second place, which rated 1.144m and Nine News which rated 1.1m.

The Biggest Loser was Ten’s top rating show, with 696,000 and placing tenth overall. It beat Nine’s Excess Baggage, which rated with a disappointing 474,000 – Nine is to move the show to digital channel GO! and replace it with Big Bang Theory in the 7pm timeslot, it emerged yesterday.

Rounding out the top five programs was Seven’s Today Tonight 1.04m and movie The Proposal on Seven with 1m viewers.

ABC News was the ABC’s highest rating show taking 931,000.

A software development firm called Sentia already exists in Australia, although the company told Mumbrella they had “no real issues” with Sentia Media sharing the name, as the two companies operate in different sectors.

The announcement:

The 8th of February 2012 marks the launch of Sentia Media, the new corporate parent for the group of companies previously operating as part of the Media Monitors Group, and owned by Quadrant Private Equity since July 2010.

Sentia Media CEO John Croll said: “Ours is a company with a long and proud history in media monitoring, with a record of industry leadership, providing ever faster and more accurate media information to our clients.

“Over the last five years, our growth path has become much broader, with the company commencing operations in a number of Asian markets as well as rapidly expanding our media analysis and introducing advisory and online business intelligence services. In all, we now have six industry leading brands providing services to over 6,000 clients across 15 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

“To put it simply, we are much more than a media monitoring business, we are a group of media services companies that can provide a broad range of information, analysis and advice, with solutions tailored to just about any type of organisation, large or small, single country or international.”

“Sentia, derived from a Latin verb with three primary meanings, 1) I perceive, 2) I understand, 3) I have an opinion, more accurately reflects the comprehensive and customised nature of the company’s services. The new corporate structure will allow each of our service brands to develop their unique service proposition and meet both broad and niche market requirements across the entire region.” Mr Croll said.

Sentia Media now owns: Media Monitors, the leading media information supplier in the Asia-Pacific with 12 offices across Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore; MediaBanc, South East Asia’s largest monitoring company with offices in six countries; Brandtology, one of the world’s leading online business intelligence companies, headquartered in Singapore and experiencing exponential growth; 360m, our advisory and analysis company providing research-based insight and unrivalled experience; China Clippings, the leading provider of monitoring services to communications agencies across China; and Slice Media, Australasia’s most effective and comprehensive budget monitoring solution. Click here for a video on the Sentia Media story.

Source: Sentia Media press release

Nine has been heavily marketing the show with the slogan ‘The weight is over’ on buses and billboards all over Australia.

But the show has rated poorly since going head to head to The Biggest Loser on Ten in the 7pm timeslot.

Last night, Excess Baggage rated with 474,000 – well behind The Biggest Loser’s audience of 696,000.

A Nine spokesman told Mumbrella: “Marketing will start to come down this week. By next week suppliers will endeavour to remove as much collateral pointing to 7pm weeknights as possible.”

From Monday, Excess Baggage will air on digital channel GO! at 6.30pm.

The Big Bang Theory, reckoned to be Australia’s favourite show in a Roy Morgan survey last September, will air in its place in the 7pm slot on Nine.

Last year, Nine showed slightly more patience with Ben Elton show Live From Planet Earth, which was axed just after the ratings season had started on February 23.

Today’s event , featuring a handful of zombies, will be followed by a march of what FX hopes will be hundreds of zombies through Sydney’s Hyde Park on February 25. The same day will also see a zombie-heavy premiere at Adelaide’s Mainline Drive In.

FX goes on air on February 26 and says that it aims to be Foxtel’s most watched channel within a year.

The channel is putting a budget of $1.5m behind its launch with marketing being run by agencies including The Shop and Gasbag PR.

The announcement:

The Communications Council Announces ‘Circus’ Speakers round II

Former Gap marketer John Aylward, Hollywood Storyboarder Jeff Julian, Joseph Crump, SVP of Strategy & Planning Razorfish and Tom Uglow (Google Creative Lab) will be joining the line-up for the 2012 Circus Festival.

Circus speakers will cover areas such as global retail trends, the digital DNA of brands, and sustainability.

They will be speaking alongside contributors Nick Law (R/GA), Vince Frost (Frost Design) Faris Yakob (MDC and KBS+), Sarah Robb O’Hagan (Gatorade), and Rosanna Iacono, (Jurlique).

Tickets for ‘Circus 2012 are now on sale.

This year, the festival is introducing a Master Class stream which will get to the heart of the most innovative thinking in creative communications relevant to the day to day work of those in the industry. Further workshops have been confirmed with agency Wieden and Kennedy hosting a seminar, while Faris Yakob and colleague Rosie Siman, Social and Emerging Media Strategist will be hosting a Master Class focusing on innovation, idea generation and improved briefings and workshops.

CEO of The Communications Council, Margaret Zabel said: “From my own experience in the industry, I have found that to break new ground in communications, my team had to be exposed to international experts, trends and case studies to raise the bar on our own capability and expectations.  Up to now, only the Cannes Advertising Festival provided that kind of international and high quality exposure. However, Circus was successfully launched last year to create an inspiring, insightful world class forum on our doorstep.”

“The speakers we’ve secured hail from all different corners of the business, and different regions, promising to give us a rounded view of the way the industry is evolving.”

Source: Circus press release