A flaming great lunch from Inghams.

To launch Inghams new Flame Grilled Burger to the media, Acumen Republic cooked up a novel idea. We engaged George Zlatkoff, renowned Wellington chef and owner of several Burger Wisconsin franchises, and flew him to Auckland where he created a range of custom-made, gourmet burgers using Inghams Flame Grilled burger patties.

We then delivered them hot off the grill to key media representatives of several food and lifestyle publications. Feedback was excellent with several immediate PR gains, including features in New Zealand Fitness magazine, Healthy Food Guide and NZ Woman's Weekly, as well as developing and strengthening on-going relationships with the media.

An event to upstage all others.

In early September, New Zealand's glitterati, including the Prime Minister, the Mayor of Auckland City, distinguished guests, award finalists, industry leaders, sponsors and the stars themselves, came together to celebrate the Qantas Film and Television Awards 2009.

639 entries, 177 finalists, 84 judges, 61 categories and 1,000 hours of judging later, the winners of 62 categories were recognised and celebrated over the course of two days and two dazzling events.

This was the second of these prestigious events. following on from the successful amalgamation of the Screen Directors Guild Screen Awards and the Television Broadcasters Council's TV Awards in 2008. Acumen Republic was tasked with the challenge of combining the two awards, evolving a new visual identify, developing entry categories and criteria, managing the entry and judging processes, sponsorship procurement, and delivery of the award events and associated media relations. In other words, an ideal brief for our multi-disciplined offering!

Dazzle, our events management team, worked closely alongside the Awards committee to seamlessly combine the two existing award programmes, ensuring categories and criteria were developed to reflect industry requirements. Dazzle also managed the entry processes, judging, recruitment and support, and sponsorship procurement.

Meanwhile, Hot Tin Roof created a new visual identity, which was then translated through the website and HTML communications, award and event collateral, trophies and certificates, creating a striking and memorable new identity, which was further developed for the 2009 Awards.

DB Shouts the Nation.

In 2005, DB were planning a major advertising campaign to celebrate their 75th anniversary by 'shouting the nation' - a free beer for every New Zealander of legal drinking age. While they hadn't planned on a PR campaign, we identified a significant opportunity to address many of the issues then impacting on DB's image and reputation.

Media packs were distributed to all target media the day before the advertising launch. They included a media release, company history, product vouchers and of course, we shouted them a few beers. Without exception, this generated a massive level of media interest, including news items on TV3, a New Zealand Herald front page story, an ASB Business feature story and extensive radio coverage including interviews with DB spokespeople.

Go Red gets heartfelt reception.

Go Red for Women is an initiative designed to remind women that heart disease is the leading killer of New Zealand women, taking four times as many lives as breast cancer. Go Red is an opportunity for the Heart Foundation to raise awareness of this risk and also to raise vital funds for heart research and cardiac care.

Dazzle Events worked with the National Heart Foundation and their new corporate sponsor, Jennian Homes, to launch the Go Red for Women campaign. Our objective was to create an appropriate, memorable launch event with long lasting impact - one that engaged both key stakeholders and media.

Dazzle Events consulted at a strategic level on the development of the launch event and managed all aspects of event planning and delivery. We organised a launch function that combined cocktails and canapes for 280 with a special Go Red fashion show, featuring luminary designers such as Karen Walker, Zambesi, Tanya Carlson, Kate Sylvester and Anna Stretton.

The event achieved and surpassed the NHF and Jennian objectives, attracting significant media coverage for the campaign and providing an entertaining and unforgettable evening for attendees.

Intercity foils again.

There's nothing like a well-planned, well-executed April Fool's Day joke to getting people talking about your business. For our client Intercity we pulled off just that, launching their revolutionary new 'hydrobus' on April 1.

Supposedly this ground-breaking vessel could operate on both land and water, with specialist hydrofoils enabling it to become 'foilborne' and travel cross the Cook Strait in less than an hour - and for only $30 per person. The media and the public fell for it, with articles in several news papers and magazines, followed by further articles fuelled by huge public interest in the hydrobus. The campaign also generated hundreds of phone calls to Intercity from the public, who were generally very amused to discover it was an April's fools prank.