Author StopPress Team

As Southpark recently pointed out, messages of moderation from alcohol companies often seem slightly paradoxical. But Diageo has nailed it with the help of manly moustachioed man and regular booze brand ambassador Nick Offerman, who, as part of a wider campaign called My Tales of Whisky, sings about the things you shouldn’t do while drinking.

Throughout the course of the last year, Getty Images has been making a point of identifying the visual trends that define business culture in the modern age. In addition to seeing changes in media representations of women, middle-aged people and beauty standards, Getty has also drawn attention to the way technology is influencing photography through extreme close-ups and point-of-view cinematography. And as the world stands poised to draw the curtain on 2014, the team at Getty have taken a moment to look at what the future in a new article published on its website.

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

New Zealand is set to become the 82nd country to have a homeless store, with an ordinary kiwi bloke at the helm of organising a pop-up on Quay Street in Auckland Central.

Nothing gets brands more willing to spend dollars on advertising than a special event. Be it Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or Christmas, brands throughout the world embrace the moment, throw caution to the wind and try to capitalise on the consumer frenzy that often accompanies these days. And in the lead up to to Christmas 2014, brands have not disappointed, delivering yet another entertaining dose of humorous and tear-jerking spots.

The one major advantage of a digital billboard is that it can be updated instantly to reflect something that is happening at a specific moment. During the election, TV3 used this to its advantage by feeding live updates of the results onto APN Outdoor’s collection of digital billboards in Auckland. And now, DDB and ZenithOptimedia are collaborating with Mother Nature on a new outdoor campaign for Speight’s that adjusts in accordance with the temperature.

There’s plenty of discussion about whether the 100% Pure campaign has had its day and the country appears to be reaching peak Hobbit, but there’s no doubt New Zealand’s clever tourism marketing tactics over the years have done the business and attracted more tourists to these fine lands.

If you don’t like Iggy Azalea, Lil John or Maroon 5 but love a good mashup, we have got just the thing.

Photographer Viktorija Pashuta took the phrase ‘online fashion’ very literally by showing what women would look like as web browsers. And now she’s returned with the logical follow-up: what men would look like as social networks.

Spotify recently admitted that YouTube is the world’s biggest music streaming service. And many of the most popular music videos can be found on the Vevo channel. So, as is the custom at this time of year, it’s crunched its annual numbers and released a top ten list of the most-watched music videos across Australia and New Zealand in 2014.

We live in increasingly digital times. And the language often used to explain some of those digital developments is downright confusing. Fear not, dear luddites, for String Theory has created a dictionary “to shine a little light into the impenetrable murk of digital terminology for the benefit of the non-expert, the vaguely interested or anyone who just wants to give the flimsy impression they know what they’re talking about”.

You can generally rely on ads for cameras to look good. And Canon has been obliging for years on that front, with one of last year’s efforts winning an Emmy. Now, as part of its Come and See campaign, Canon Europe has employed the services of photographers Christopher Pillitz and Jamie Hall to do their thing—and show off some of its new technology at the same time.

At this year’s edition of the Young Gun Awards, Colenso BBDO’s Ben Polkinghorne and Brett Colliver, FCB’s Matt Williams and Y&R NZ’s Liza Dupre all picked up awards, standing again as testament to the quality of the creative work that comes out of New Zealand every year. But, most often, the journey to these awards doesn’t start within the agencies; it starts at the nation’s ad schools, where the students’ creative talent is shaped into commercial tools capable of developing campaigns that resonate with the masses. Thus, each year as the academic curriculum comes to a close, the industry takes a brief moment to look at the work that the students have produced. StopPress takes a look at some of the best student work from the previous year.

How does one make a IT storage hardware solutions and cloud computing company look cool? How about sponsoring a giant truck to jump a speeding Formula 1 car, setting a world record in the process?

Nothing says Christmas like a massive hunk of steel. And nothing says Honda like a bunch of toys like Jem, GI Joe, Skeletor and Stretch Armstrong.

“What would you recommend that looks good on Instagram? I’m not gonna eat it, it’s just for my food blog.”

Everybody knows somebody who has become obsessed with a ridiculous health regime. Aussie burger chain Grill’d has released two new ads that take the mickey out of those people, who often just can’t resist sharing their fantastic new diet and exercise discoveries.

In September, Microsoft Surface and FCB hooked up with street artist duo BMD to showcase the utility of the tablet in allowing artists to collaborate and bring ideas to life. Since StopPress ran a previous story on the campaign, the pair of artists have actively been engaging with fans via the Surface Facebook page and collecting ideas with the aim of bringing one to life on a wall in the viaduct at 100 Halsey Street. More than 500 ideas were shared with the artists over the course of the campaign, and the duo eventually settled on an entry from a Facebooker Rob Thorne.

Totino’s Pizza recently released what is undoubtedly one of the strangest ads ever after it let Tim and Eric loose on their brand. And it’s continued the madvertising trend by proving Buzzfeed wrong and using some supposedly unusable stock images.