Author StopPress Team

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

Some believe the Blackcaps are in the best form ever and have the best chance of winning the World Cup. And, given it’s taking place here, there are no shortage of supporters. Even the the World Wrestling Federation, which, as some have pointed out, are renowned match fixers, is backing us.

The Super Rugby season is about to start. And we all know what that means: ads directed at farmers. So, to show the toughness of Seed Force perennials, Tracta enlisted the services of renowned hard man Buck Shelford and got him to tell the now-famous and eye-wateringly painful tale of a dangling bollock.

The earnestness, thousand yard stares and various cliches seen in fashion ads are a fairly easy target, as seen in anything from Zoolander to Mercedes-Benz’ tongue in cheek Fistful of Wolves. But, given the importance placed on aesthetics in this industry, they generally look good and that’s certainly the case with a film shot by Vince McMillan, a director’s assistant at Exit Films, for AUT University’s fashion department.

It seems like almost everything is becoming ‘smart’ these days, or is at least in someway linked to the digital realm: smart phones, smart televisions, smart coffee machines, Google Glass, the Microsoft HoloLens, we could go on. And now Luna has found a way to bring the digital into the bedroom, with a prototype of the world’s very first smart bed.

With much of the world turning to digital media, book makers generally aren’t in a position to turn down potential readers. But a prototype cover for the Art Director’s Club annual in the Netherlands does just that by scanning the face in front of it and, like some kind of literary chasity belt, only opening if it deems the reader to be in a non-judgemental state of mind.

Series three of House of Cards is set to go live at the end of February, and, given the response to the first two seasons of the show, there’s plenty of excitement about it. So there was plenty of surprise when ten episodes of the new season went up online early today. Some wondered whether this was a marketing ploy and if Netflix has ‘pulled a Beyonce’. But Netflix says it was a technical error. Judging by the House of Cards Twitter handle, however, maybe it wasn’t quite so accidental.

Apparently, idle hands are the devil’s plaything. So, with mobile phones ensuring there are very few idle hands these days, you might think that’s a good thing. But what does that devotion to the screen mean for creativity? And should we be switching off and looking around rather than down? A project by WYNC podcast New Tech City thinks so and it’s aiming to get people to appreciate the joy of spacing out with Bored and Brilliant.

A paranoid man, indepen-dancers, a personified disease and Aesopian characters star for Westpac, Kiwibank, the New Zealand Heart Foundation and Air New Zealand this week.

Kiwibank has been beating the drum of independence since it was founded in 2001 and it made it very explicit in its last ad when it printed out a bunch of bank records, made them into a huge banner and shouted it from the rooftops. That ad featured a range of proudly independent staff and its next effort, also via Assignment, features proud customers dancing a dance of financial independence.

New Zealanders love when famous people mention their country. Eating Media Lunch devoted a section to it back in the day. And, with Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul premiering in New Zealand tonight on Lightbox, we’ve got a special (manufactured) message from Bob Odenkirk, better known as seedy strip-mall lawyer Saul Goodman.

Just over 30 years ago, on 1 January 1985, while standing in London’s Parliament Square, Michael Harrison called his father Sir Ernest Harrison, the founder of Vodafone, using the (barely) portable Vodafone VT1—a moment that would go down as Britain’s first commercial mobile phone. Over the next three decades mobile phone technology would progress and proliferate and become a ubiquitous part of the modern landscape.

ANZ launched its GAYTM campaign last week, following on from a successful effort in Australia. And this video shows how Kiwi artist Reuben Paterson spent 300 hours bedazzling a Ponsonby cash dispenser with 120,000 rhinestones. PLUS: Is Kevin the ATM destined for a jzushing?

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

Carnivore Club, an artisan meat club thay delivers monthly to its members, has launched a hilarious new advertising campaign under the guise of a fake insurance company called ‘F-up insurance’.

Coca-Cola has been forced to suspend its #MakeItHappy campaign after an elaborate prank from blog site Gawker had the brand relaying several lines from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

According to TVNZ’s Lyndsey Francis, Tech in a Sec is the only piece of communication that crossed over from the Telecom rebrand into Spark. And, as evidence of its popularity, it’s into year three and has added a few new mascots. Vodafone also wants to help customers ‘Do their thing better’ so it has released a clip online promoting a digital activation that lets users pick their top three interests from the Top 30 Things Kiwis most love to do and then delivers a selection of the best smartphone apps and online articles. But it’s not of the quality you’d expect from one of the world’s biggest telcos.

Redditors are renowned for their unique sense of humour/aggressive trolling. And, following on from some interesting discussion about the legality of gardens in New Zealand recently, now the world is learning some interesting facts about New Zealand’s penchant for arachnid cuisine.

As mentioned last week, ANZ decided to embrace the rainbow by bringing GAYTMs to New Zealand. And, as of today, they’re out and proud in Auckland and Wellington.

The young’uns are an attractive, but constantly moving, target for marketers. So how are they consuming media? As Colmar Brunton discovered, often illegally.

Love and family steal the limelight this week as Michael Hill and Our First Home impress with slick spots.

Reebok is a big player in the Cross Fit business. And its latest campaign, its biggest in a decade, attempts to show the benefits of exercise by showing that it’s not about being a better tyre flipper, people carrier or rope climber, it’s about being a better human.