Phantom Blog

Fill yer trolley

How to shop for supermarket customers.

The local supermarket has become the local town square. Lockdown or no lockdown, we all need food – and if you can’t grow it or catch it, you’ll need to head to the nearest large-format grocery retailer (along with everyone else).

At Phantom Billstickers, we’re obsessed with street movements. Before anyone had heard of Covid-19, we were mapping the addresses of New Zealand’s supermarkets. We compared this data to our street poster network – and had a bright idea.

What say we overlaid our poster sites onto a map of the nation’s supermarkets? That would make it easy for marketers to reach huge numbers of people who were on a mission to fill their trolleys.

So that’s what we did.

 

 

The easy way to buy an audience.

Phantom has put this data into an interactive planning tool. With a few clicks you can select supermarkets down to the individual store level, and see which Phantom sites are located nearby. You can buy a nationwide schedule or cherry-pick the stores that stock your product. It’s all up for grabs.

Then all you have to do is request a quote. The planning tool makes that easy, too.

If you’re curious, we’ve also got some intriguing new case studies that show how street posters near supermarket sites can trigger a sales surge. Coordinate your Phantom schedule with your PR, digital or TV campaign, and watch how your target audience reacts.

Shopping for shoppers has never been easier.

 

Lion launches new Tokyo Dry campaign

Slice of the streets

Lion breweries used Phantom’s extensive list of iconic street poster sites to launch their new campaign for Tokyo Dry. The campaign got Japanese artists to reimagine Dave Dobbyn’s classic song slice of heaven. The results were some outstanding street poster creatives that got heads turning and eyeballs looking. Check out the stunning takeover at 304 Queen Street, Auckland

Flyer distribution will help your sales soar

How flyer distribution can help your sales soar

Advertising flyer distribution has always been one of the most effective ways to promote local gigs and public festivals. Passed hand to hand, the flyers of yesteryear usually found the right people – but you never knew how quickly your flyers would be ‘recycled’ into the bin.

That’s why we developed a street-smart flyer campaign system which gets your sales message into people’s hands (and heads) like nothing else. Our secret? Targeting.

Phantom Billstickers has built up a network of custom-designed flyer distribution racks and placement opportunities in 2,500 cafes, venues and other outlets around New Zealand. Our staff in hard-to-access local markets from Whangarei to Queenstown have painstakingly put together New Zealand’s smartest network for targeted flyer campaigns. And now we’ve added a further layer: accountability.

With our state-of-the-art placement and reporting software, you can create a campaign that delivers your flyers to the demographics that match your objectives. Specify the timing, locale and type of outlet. We will put together a flyer-based schedule that delivers the audiences to match your campaign objectives.

 

flyer distribution phantom billstickers retail rack out of home advertising

Phantom’s flyer channel is particularly well suited to the events and arts sectors, with their need to deliver time-bound information that carries a clear call to action. It’s great for offers and incentives too. Coffee drinkers and diners notice our smartly designed flyer distribution racks, pick up the flyers and take them away. Sales follow on cue.

No wonder big names such as the NZ Film Festival rely on Phantom’s nationwide flyer distribution network to drive sales. Maybe your brand should too.   

Wellington manager Myele: Music and new sites

Making music, booking sites and defusing punch-ups in Wellington.

Myele Manzanza is Phantom Billstickers’ Wellington Manager. Like many of our team, Myele has multiple talents and a passion for the arts. Sometimes you’ll find him making music and touring the world, but you’re equally likely to find him negotiating with landlords for new street poster sites.

Myele shares his thoughts on de-escalating fights with angry groundskeepers, why offering landlords free money isn’t always enough, and how clients can make a bigger splash in New Zealand’s creative capital.

Myele Manzanza Wellington area manager

What’s your official title at Phantom Billstickers?

Chief Diplomat, Wellington Bureau, or Wellington Area Manager. But what’s in a name anyway?

How did you come to be working for Phantom? 

I’d been working part-time for Phantom for four years, taking flyers and posters around Wellington cafes and other outlets. Throughout that time, and still to this day, I’ve been maintaining an active music career. I’ve been able to tour and travel the world on a whim, but still have a job to come back to, and make sure the rent’s covered.

Earlier this year I took on the Wellington Area Manager role, which has definitely been a step up, but it’s the challenge I needed.

Take us through a typical day on the job.

Probably the best thing about this job is that there isn’t really a typical day.

The biggest part where I’m adding value is site development. Finding wall space that I think would work, figuring out who the owner is, and getting it signed up.

It seems simple enough as I’m giving landlords free money for something that doesn’t require them to do any work, but there are many different motivating factors. At root there’s a financial incentive, but it’s also been fascinating on a psychological, economic and social level to see how different people think about money, property, business, advertising and aesthetics. That’s where the diplomacy part of the job comes in.

I’m fortunate that the team is at a point now where day-to-day operations can more or less run themselves. This frees me up to be more outward facing and find ways to move things forward.

What’s the weirdest challenge you’ve faced?  

I won’t name names or locations, but there was one groundskeeper who got physical with one of our pasters after a dispute over ladders, glue and property rights. It started to veer into strange racist and abusive terrain. Some personalities are trickier than others but we got to a workable solution in the end.

Any tips for clients, to help them get more bang for their buck?

The A3 format is a cost-effective way to get lots of little pings all over the place, especially for the independent arts and events. While bigger posters have a more obvious impact, if you’ve got 100 or 200 A3 posters around the city, the cumulative effect is pretty powerful.

What’s it like working for Phantom?

There’s a culture of relaxed-but-onto-it energy that I enjoy. We don’t wear suits but we get shit done. Also, since moving into the manager’s role I’ve learnt a lot about business from Rob, Jamey and Jim. They’ve been good mentors who’ve been able to offer guidance, kick my ass when needed, as well as give me room to figure things out and find my own voice in the organisation.

What are your thoughts on Wellington?

For a city that trades on being the creative capital, the actual creatives have minimal capital. The talent is definitely there but it’s a small city so the opportunities to take it to a level where it can be sustained as a career are pretty limited.

It means the city has a lot of wasted potential, either with brain drain where the talent has to go overseas to get recognition or make decent money or with ‘bankruptcy’ where the artist has to find other work to sustain a life. In my case, I’ve fallen into both categories.

One of the reasons Phantom makes sense for me is that our principles align, in helping artists communicate what they’re doing. Whether it’s being able to hook up 25 A3s for free, through to taking care of big commercial clients that give us the financial headroom to keep things affordable for artists. It’s a tough balance to strike but I think Phantom makes a pretty good go of it.

Summer Festivals with Phantom Billstickers

Get ready for a summer of festivals and arts, brought to you by Phantom.

We’re not promoters or performers (well, not full-time performers). But we’re proud to say that summer gigs and festivals wouldn’t be the same without our posters.

At last count, there were well over 200 festivals, gigs and outdoor events booked into Phantom’s poster frames. All the biggies are there –SploreWomadLanewayWondergardenand Pride (both Auckland and Wellington) – as well as a host of niche festivals. Fancy heading to the Summer of Pinot or Whare Flat Folk Festival? Our street posters will give you the heads-up.

Festivals splore music festival street posters out of home

 

Even in this age of websites and social media, promoters know nothing beats a street poster when you want to reach the casual fans and trigger ticket sales. They can also fit all their acts and attractions into one of our frames, so fans can see at a glance who’s going to be on stage. Try doing that with a tweet.

Summer’s when New Zealand lives outdoors. Your campaign should, too.