The Pond - latest news

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Barney McDonald (ex-Pavement) joins The Pond

If you’ve got a story that needs telling look no further than the latest consultant creative/specialist writer to join our team, Barney McDonald.

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Tone of Voice 2.0 - The Big Conversation with Customers

Everyone’s buzzing about social media and Web 2.O. But hang on a minute - you can’t have 5,000 employees starting a conversation with customers without laying down some ground rules. Can you?

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Meet The Pond's first ever strategist - Lew Bentley

The Pond launches new strategic offering. Following huge demand from agencies, we’ve decided to add strategists to our growing list of consultancy services for you to tap into.

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MoneyManager

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ANZ developed MoneyManager to help people manage all their bank accounts in one place, including your mattress if you wanted to*. Problem was that nobody knew what do when you have all this information in one place. The website informs people of the benefits that MoneyManager provides to encourage people to create an account.

Gingerbread Ed

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Through Blackwood King, Phil Parsonage worked on the call for entries for New Zealand Bakery of the Year. Here's the Sir Edmund Hilary themed viral ad.

Nike Football Widget

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In one of those rare occasions where a pro-active idea successfully makes it into reality, this widget demonstrates an understanding of how digital can be implemented the right way. Instead of sending people away from sites like Facebook & Myspace, we brought the content to them.

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Barney McDonald

CONSULTANT / CD . Specialist writer

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Best known as founder/publisher/editor of Pavement magazine for 13 years, Barney’s a prolific writer whose style is as engaging as it is thoughtful. (His interviews with the likes of Coldplay, New Order, Russell Crowe, Christopher Lee, George Clooney and Milla Jovovich show this.)

Lew Bentley

CONSULTANT / CD . Strategist

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With more than 20 years of experience working as a strategic planner, Lew knows a thing or two about business. He's helped brands like The National Bank, Positively Wellington and 100% Pure New Zealand reach their full potential. So if you want an insight into consumer behavior, Lew's your guy.

Alister Coyne

SENIOR . Designer, Digital

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profile

In Edinburgh Alister journeyed into the world of SEO to get a casino website to number one on Google. In London he created the largest digital campaign in the history of Yahoo! In Sydney he launched Virgin Atlantic to the world. And in Auckland he led Toyota into new digital spaces with campaign 'Believe'.

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Winner of the Illinois Governor's Tourism Best of Show award

Congrats to Daniel Thomas (ex-kiwi Sky Tower GM) and Carey Randall for taking out Best of Show at the top Illinois Governor's Tourism awards for their marketing campaign which transformed John Hancock Observatory top to bottom and upped sales significantl last year. VIEW

You’ve got to be in to win. Congrats Tribal DDB’s David Rhoades

David Rhodes is the winner of our $50 petrol voucher. No one else bothered entering in so sadly we haven’t been able to give away our 4 x 4 cents off New World dockets.

Boobs are bombs! The Pond supports Cancer Awareness Month

October's breast cancer awareness month, so we're donating $20 from every job booking to The Breast Cancer Foundation. It's a fantastic cause that you too can get involved in by matching our donation. Simply tick the donation box on our special pink job brief form, when you make a booking (remember to check with finance first).

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5 seconds of fame for The Pond

If you’ve had a recent urge to come and visit The Pond, but can’t work out why, then I’ll let you in to a little secret - it’s no coincidence. Think back to where you were on the evening of Thursday 23rd of July. Because, if like many, you were sat in front of the telly watching TV One News, then you may recognise the image above. Just like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, we’ve been sneaking subtle images into mainstream mediums. The story was about design, and shot at DINZ offices, where The Pond’s Writer’s Block sat in the background as a BeST Award Winner. Below the line, above the line, and subliminally behind the line - you name it... The Pond is everywhere!

Who’s cooking tonight? Norman Bates is.

This is a chopping board featuring Janet Leigh from the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. Conceptualised and designed by Pond-members-to-be Drus Dryden and Sanjiv Menon. Watch this space.

$60. To purchase, contact Drus Dryden on drusdrus@gmail.com

Popular t-shirt design crashes web-server

After being publicised by several international design blogs, demand for Pond member Arjan's 'love' t-shirt design went through the roof. It proved especially popular in Brazil when the t-shirt sellers were bombarded with online questions in Portuguese. It was the build up of questions and random clicking of Brazillians trying to find the 'buy' button that caused the website's server to crash, consequentially ending sales. Which just goes to show - too much love can be a bad thing..

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Enviro-Mental Secret Agents

A spy-style movement for social change which has captured the imagination of young urban New Zealanders is rallying its ‘agents’ to set a national record for mass tree-planting on Auckland’s Motuihe Island on May 16. Nikolai Organisation leader and Pond member, Hadleigh Averill, hopes to beat the existing record which sits at around 5,500 trees planted on Motutapu Island in 1996 by 219 volunteers.”

The Mint Chicks Puppet Designs

The brief was to design a set of original toy band puppets for The Mint Chicks Music Video '"I Cant Stop Being Foolish".

View project here

View music video here

Kiss cold showers goodbye

Pond art director Richard Gourley has unofficially been crowned 'genius' after winning the Supreme Award at the PSP Design Challenge. If you're sick of cold outdoor showers at the bach the SunShower is the perfect solution! Just plug into mains pressure water supply and voila – you have a constant, regulated flow of heated water. Nice work, R.

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