Author Ben Fahy

We’re big fans of dad dancing—and of the powerful parenting technique of embarrassment—here at StopPress. And those two things have been combined to good effect in a new campaign for the Health Promotion Agency (HPA) via its agency DraftFCB that aims to draw attention to an upcoming law change around the supply of booze to young’uns.

2degrees’ entertaining duplication and BMW’s New Zealand excursion bring joy to the hearts of all this week.

There’s been a fair bit of carnage in the local business and trade press in recent years, with The Independent closing, Fairfax flicking on a few of its titles and moving Unlimited online, and Mediaweb seemingly hanging on for dear life at present. But Vincent Heeringa, publisher of Idealog and NZ Marketing, is hoping to fill what he thinks is fairly large information void with The Briefing, a membership-style media offering aimed at leaders from the C-Suite “who share the determination to transform their business in a world of radical change”.

There’s perhaps no item more symbolic of an owner’s personality than the car they drive. Creative types seem pretty keen on interesting cars. So every few weeks we ask someone in the biz to tell us about their steed. Last time it was TBWA\’s chief creative officer Toby Talbot and his Volvo P1800 and this time it’s DraftFCB Media’s general manager Simon Teagle and his 1966 Ford Mustang GT.

David Kester, director at Thames & Hudson, and the ex-chief executive of the UK Design Council and D&AD, recently ventured back to New Zealand as part of NZTE’s Better by Design CEO Summit and talked about design’s relationship with innovation, how successful companies explore and experiment and how smart companies use design within their business to remain flexible as markets rapidly change. We sat down for a chat.

DraftFCB has had a stellar year in 2013 and a few of its award-winning campaigns seem to be the kind that inspire the ‘I wish we’d thought of that’ phenomenon among competing agencies. That marks a change from previous years when it wasn’t quite as highly regarded for its creative output. But it’s tough to imagine its new Paper Plus campaign featuring anthropomorphic rapping presents will sit in that category.

Whether you like it or not, the things we buy can say a lot about us (or, at the very least, can be used by others to make assumptions). And there’s perhaps no item more symbolic of an owner’s personality than the car they drive. Creative types seem pretty keen on interesting cars. So, with all the switcheroos in the automotive space at the moment, we thought it was an opportune time to launch a new section on StopPress that aims to showcase some of the vehicular proclivities of those working in the marketing, advertising and media sectors (and will presumably cement the general public’s view that this industry is infested with rich wankers). Every few weeks we’ll be asking someone in the biz to tell us about their steed and first up is TBWA\’s chief creative officer Toby Talbot and his Volvo P1800.