Author StopPress Team

Banks aren’t generally renowned for the clarity of their language. Some cynics might even argue that they’re intentionally confusing. So it’s commendable that ANZ, which relied on pretty simple messaging and big media spend to let New Zealand know about the ‘merger’ with National Bank, won a few more Plain Language Awards recently. But, in what could be seen as a new strand of Muphry’s Law, where you inevitably make a mistake when criticising someone’s writing, it’s certainly not commendable to promote a post on Facebook with so many basic errors in it. Or is it a bad joke about reading like a ten-year-old that just made them look a bit thick?

It’s a Christmas miracle. An Auckland man came back from the dead this week after Housing New Zealand reported him dead.

Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.

During the press conference announcing the deal and their new Auckland to Los Angeles route, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and American Airlines chief executive Doug Parker were both very complimentary of Air New Zealand, heaping praise on the quality of the service offered. And the team at Air New Zealand was clearly watching these proceedings with interest, because not long thereafter the airline released an auto-tune mashup, via creative agency True, in which the pair of executives are shown seemingly pointing out the quality of the Kiwi airline’s service.

It’s not easy to get past all the tech gobbledygook and make customers understand the benefits of the cloud. But Microsoft has done it by asking a simple question: what would your office do with the extra space if you could get rid of your server room?

Walk around the streets of many of New Zealand’s urban centres and you’re more than likely to see people on the streets, in stores and sometimes even on sports fields clad entirely in the latest activewear from the likes of Puma, Adidas or Nike. Viewed from a distance, it would be easy to mistake these individuals as veritable fitness freaks, doing the hard yards to get abs on abs. However, upon closer inspection, it quickly becomes apparent that activewear serves broader purposes than just exercising. In fact, as illustrated in a recent satirical video by content creators the Van Vuuren Bros, activewear is often used for purposes quite contrary to getting fitter.

The ideas have been dreamed up, the work has been displayed, the sucking up to creative leaders has been done, the leftover nibbles have presumably been wrapped up in napkins and taken home, and another bunch of advertising students have learned a few tricks to help them into gainful employment. Here are some of the highlights from AUT and Media Design School.

Around 17 years after it all began, Trade Me is on track to reach its one billionth listing in early December. And the online trading company plans to celebrate this milestone by through a range of activations over the next few weeks.

Every year, UK retailer John Lewis blows its budget to tell epic stories in its Christmas ads, and company usually claims the accolade for most memorable ad of the year. However, this time, it faces some strong competition from the Spanish National Lottery, which has released tear-jerking ad that has media companies around the world proclaiming it the most sentimental spot of the year.

Honda’s new demo video by RPA combines three different stories to show off the Civic’s features. Each one follows the same series of events, a man picking up a woman for their first date, but as it unfolds the viewer has control of how the date is going. Will he greet her with a high-five or some flowers? You decide.

If the top five ads of 2015 (so far) are anything to go by, then agencies might want to rethink the rule of working with animals.

Bcg2 and Mediacom have won the competitive pitch for realestate.co.nz’s creative and media accounts, fewer than 18 months after Contagion won the real estate site’s business in July last year.

Last night, as the action unfolded at the 50th edition of the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, this new media opportunity was clearly at work as Kiwis across the nation contributed to over 200,500 story views of content uploaded to the Vodafone Snapchat handle during proceedings—an experience far removed from that of fans 50 years ago, whose could only have seen the talent of the day if they were actually in attendance at the event.

Industry happenings at Vodafone, Accenture, Tracta Advertising, Urban List and Z Card.

Comedian Danny McBride and the creative team at Wieden + Kennedy have conspired to create an infectiously catchy tune for Southern Comfort that has every possibility to become the pre-gaming anthem of millennial across the US. As with all hit tracks, ‘ShoattaSoco’ comes with a music video—and it’s utterly outrageous. Featuring McBride flying through a retro video game universe, the music video should be terrible, but you simply can’t pull your eyes away from it.

‘Snackable content’ seems to be the buzzword of the moment and while some believe this trend may lead to ‘obesity of the mind’, Air New Zealand has joined the feast, releasing nine clips showcasing various Auckland activities in an effort to get Australians to come over and support their NRL team during next year’s NRL Auckland Nines event.

The Victoria Taxi Federation’s #YourTaxis social media campaign backfired spectacularly recently when, instead of sharing good experiences, plenty decided to mention some of their bad experiences instead. So we couldn’t help but notice an ad on nzherald.co.nz for Alert Taxis labelled, intriguingly, ‘Confessions of a Taxi Driver’.

Earlier this week, Oxford dictionaries declared the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji its word of the year. While certainly an unusual decision, those behind the publication justified it by pointing to the proliferation of these animated caricatures across all forms of communication in recent years. And Durex is now calling for an expansion of the emoji catalogue currently available to users.

Kiwi celebrities get minted for good in new Movember Mo-dollars campaign to raise funds toward prostate cancer research.

Wellington Tourism is trying to catch the attention of Australians in Sydney and Melbourne through a new online campaign that features several well-known Aussie business people experiencing what the capital city has to offer. Developed in partnership by Tourism New Zealand, Positively Wellington Tourism (PWT) and Destination Marlborough, the three-part ‘Inspired by Wellington’ campaign, which was executed by Whybin\TBWA Sydney, is currently being rolled out via the Wellington Tourism website.

Before the laws loosened up in the US, Snoop Dogg was already well known for his love of the Mary Jane. Now he’s aiming to profit from his habit with the launch of his new marijuana brand, Leafs by Snoop AKA LBS, which consists of flowers, concentrates and edibles and will be sold in Colorado medical and recreational dispensaries. And it looks pretty classy.

Despite the initial controversy surrounding Daniel Craig as the new 007, the blonde Bond has proven to be extremely marketable whether it be Land Rover, Heineken or Omega as these Spectre-related promotional spots demonstrate.