Author StopPress Team

Ad creep—where commercial messages are placed in previously uncommercialised zones—has been on the rise for years as consumers increasingly turn away from traditional media. There have been ads on Japanese schoolgirls’ thighs, on foreheads, on lakes and practically anywhere else a pair of human eyes might be forced into seeing an ad. Product placement is one of the biggest areas of focus and big bucks are spent to get brands into movies, TV shows and, increasingly, games. So, given the music industry’s relatively parlous state, it’s not entirely surprising to see that Universal Music is doing everything it can to get some extra cash, including letting brands pay to be retroactively included in its previously released music videos.

Staring at computer screens for extended periods of time has become an inescapable part of living in the digital age, condemning office workers to red eyes and artificial air. Interestingly, rather than attempting to escape the glow of a digital screen after office hours, we substitute our work laptops with mobile phones, smart TVs and tablets in our spare time.

Jeff Goldblum is a beautiful man, even when he’s half fly. And he’s also very successful. But, as this new ad for GE’s Link shows, it’s good lighting that got him to where he is today. So he’s obviously the perfect frontman for two minutes of Tim & Eric-inspired fake infomercial madness.

After major hits like the Walkman and Playstation, Sony has been struggling to compete recently. It has recorded losses for six of the last seven years and it’s been all but left behind in the smartphone race by Apple and Samsung. Some analysts say its major issue is a simple one: it’s just not cool enough. So it will be hoping a few brightly-lit snowboarders and smoking skaters aimed at promoting the Xperia Z3 might go some way to changing that.

Who should we believe? Is Kate ashamed of “off-the-rails and out of control” Pippa, as New Idea suggests? Or is she in fact proud of the fact that Pippa’s getting married, as the country’s recently crowned supreme magazine of the year, Woman’s Day suggests? Due to a pictorial whoopsie in this week’s women’s mags, you can take your pick.

In the world of marketing, oneupmanship is a powerful motivating force. And Domino’s one-upped itself last week by delivering a pizza via a skydive. PLUS: other pizza-related stunts.

Our weekly collection of good things, funny things, weird things and other things from inside the intertubes.

Oreo’s new ad looks at a novel new way of using the iconic cookie: to make sweet, sweet music.

Volvo Trucks and its agency Forsman & Bodenfors had the world eating out of their hands last year after Epic Splits and a few other entertaining live tests showed how easy the trucks were to drive—and how B2B didn’t necessarily have to mean boring to boring. And, to show off its new i-Shift dual clutch technology, it’s continued that trend with a complicated stunt on the Italian Riviera featuring a rather confused-looking valet who gets a big shock during his first night on the job.

Parks and Recreation’s Rob Lowe has used a new pair of BBDO-created TVCs for DirecTV to illustrate that his acting skills extend beyond the remit of portraying an emotionally disconnected health fanatic. In fact, he is more than capable of playing two very different versions of himself in the same ad.

Plenty of people with kids—and many without—greatly enjoyed the brutal honesty of Adam Mansbach’s best-selling children’s book Go The Fuck to Sleep (and Samuel L Jackson’s audio book rendition). Now he’s written a follow up based another major parental frustration called You have to Fucking Eat.

Over the last couple of days, some dedicated Apple fans have discovered a little-known feature of the new iPhone 6 Plus and they are not too happy about it.

“The average human goes from 0 to 60 in less than two billion seconds,” says the narrator in the new BMW spot via Ogilvy’s Gurgaon branch in India. And during the 44 seconds of the ad, this premise is visually represented through a series of photographs and short video clips showing the progression of a person moving from youth to old age in only a few seconds, and tying in perfectly to the ‘Don’t postpone joy’ positioning of the new campaign.

News is increasingly heading online, but paper still has its place and, increasingly, that place is the weekend. And The Guardian and Observer have released a great new ad via BBH that sums up what the weekend is all about—and the paper’s role in it.

Lady Gaga may not have performed in Rangiora (yet). But she is using some visual marketing software from a company that’s based there. PLUS: how the company is expanding into the US market.

Almost 5,000 New Zealanders have taken to the polls and their votes have declared Mallowpuffs Original the nation’s favourite biscuit as part of Griffin’s ‘Bikkielections’ campaign. This result marks the first time in the poll’s four-year history that Mallowpuffs has featured as one of the nation’s top three biscuits, let alone won the entire event. But is an elaborate election-themed campaign around election time even legal?

John Oliver has torn strips off everything from native advertising to Tony Abbott in his HBO show Last Week Tonight, and he’s been getting plenty of online love as a result of his entertaining opinions. And now New Zealand has come under his microscope, with a clip discussing the National Party’s run-in with Eminem over the track it used in its election ads and Steven Joyce’s description of its use as “pretty legal”.

Although no Kiwi agencies picked up a Grand Clio at the 55th edition of the prestigious American Awards show, the list of nine winners in the various categories provide a concise summary of another fantastic year of creativity from across the world. Of all the agencies to pick up one of the big gongs, only Harvey Nichols’ ‘Sorry I Spent’ and British Airways’ ‘The Magic of Flying’ won across more than one category. And There were also several winners that carried their Cannes success across the Atlantic, with Chipotle’s ‘The Scarecrow’ and Volvo’s ‘Live Test Series’ collecting the major gong at the Clios.

MediaWorks’ channel Four is continuing along the same lines as its The Home of Not Rugby during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, with the current campaign with Special Group of ‘The Home of Not Election’. It has been promising an “entertaining escape from the political coverage dominating other media to Election Day and beyond: an invitation to take a break from the Judith Collins saga, and enjoy the brand new season of America’s Next Top Model; to get excited about upcoming new fast tracked episodes of [various shows].”

Our weekly collection of good things, funny things, weird things and other things from inside the intertubes.