Thursday, May 14, 2009

How to get free advertising in the Herald

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get a large, quarter-page ad on the front page of the New Zealand Herald? $100,000? $1,000,000? Get real - my foolproof plan can get you an ad on the front page of the Herald for free:
  • Step one: Be a large corporation - Telecom would be good.
  • Step two: ???
  • Step three: Look at your free ad on the front page of the Herald.
Of course, it's not quite that simple - you can't just have a big Telecom logo and some twat from Top Gear on the front page. You have to be subtle. Make an article about, I don't know, some guy called Mike Mizrahi - "the man behind glamorous Louis Vuitton events" - lighting up the Auckland Town Hall to 'celebrate' the unveiling of Telecom's new 'XT' mobile network. It's presumably only mildly embarrassing that it no longer coincides with the actual launch, after an out-of-court settlement with Vodafone. Still, advertising is advertising.

But the good part is that you don't have to pretend for long:
[Mizrahi] was given the responsibility of transforming the Auckland architectural icon to celebrate the launch of Telecom's new mobile network.

A text message sent over the new XT Network by 11-year-old heart patient Helena Young "flicked the switch" on the display.

Intriguingly, the following paragraph is in the paper, but has disappeared from the version on the website:
Telecom had hoped its internet-friendly 3G service would be good to go yesterday. But its launch date was delayed two weeks in a settlement after a legal row with rival Vodafone. Marketing "noise" around the multi-milion dollar network is likely to intensify closer to the revised May 29 launch. [Oh good.]
Conspiracy theories as to why are welcome below.
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3 comments:

  1. JordanMay 14, 2009 at 8:52 PM

    I can't help but think it would have been much cheaper just to give away two tickets to a rugby game over two years away: http://editingtheherald.blogspot.com/2009/03/thursday-march-2009-front-page-fury.html

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  2. Russell BrownMay 17, 2009 at 10:53 AM

    C'mon, James. I mentioned the work in glowing terms, and linked to a video of it too.

    Mizrahi and the people he works with do high-end video installations all over the world, and I was personally delighted to be able to see their work in their own country. It was amazing.

    Does Telecom buy coverage by commissioning an installation? Yeah, of course.

    But I'm not sure you can say the Herald's in Telecom's pocket: it's less than a month since Vodafone paid to paint the Herald website in its colours.

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  3. LyndonMay 18, 2009 at 2:18 PM

    You might remember Mike Mizrahi from the Giant Rugby Ball

    http://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00125.htm

    ReplyDelete

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