Author StopPress Team

Wanting to prove there’s more to Australia than theme parks, Tourism Australia and Air New Zealand have launched a content marketing campaign with Yahoo and Tangible Media to lure Kiwis for a holiday over the ditch. The campaign goes for a fresh, inspiring view of Australia beyond trips to the East Coast gateways – beginning with Western Australia.

Bulbous hairdos, inspirational pep talks and plenty of fireballs: The new Clash of Clans ads are out.

Join Pandora Internet Radio’s head music analyst Steve Hogan in Auckland next Monday for a free, intimate, one off session as he describes the inner workings of Pandora’s groundbreaking Music Genome Project and why humans will always understand music better than machines.

Using the premise that innovative ideas can at first be ugly, intimidating or even scary, US-based technology company GE has released a new spot, via BBDO New York, that aims to show how that ugliness can be converted into something beautiful when placed in the right hands.

Samsung New Zealand and Colenso used the recently reported “black cats aren’t adopted because they look bad in photos” story to create a social campaign with renowned animal photographer Rachael Hale McKenna. The campaign created a solution for cat photographers, whilst at the same time highlighting features of their latest smartphone, the Samsung GS5.

You voted, and Steinlager Pure and DDB NZ’s Born to Defy campaign won the People’s Choice Award in the annual Stoppress/Mediaworks TVC of the Year. Co-op Bank Record Profits and Augusto’s Lydia Ko goes Pro were second and third.

If you liked the sound of wood, then you’ll probably like the sound of racquets and balls. James Murphy, he of LCD Soundsystem fame, has teamed up with IBM for the US Open to make unique songs from the data generated from tennis matches. And it’s predicting it will have almost 400 hours of ‘music’ by the end of the tournament.

Spark Ventures’ subscription video on demand service Lightbox launched yesterday (here’s our take on the various streaming options) and while plenty of early adopters seemed pretty excited about that, it’s launched a campaign via Consortium to get the rest of the country to pay attention.

When a bunch of high-powered Silicon Valley female leaders strip off and model underwear in their workplaces, is it demeaning or just a bit of brave fun? Lingerie brand Dear Kate’s campaign photographed senior women in the high tech industry modeling its bras and undies, touting it as ‘high performance underwear for high performing women”.

Comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, who currently stars in Netflix original Derek, has branched out and stepped into the lead roles of several of Netflix’s shows for a new campaign that aims to promote some hit programming available through the online streaming service. The 60-second spot sees the rotund actor stepping into House of Cards, Lilyhammer and Orange is the New Black as he becomes part of the storylines that he has followed on Netflix.

It’s no secret that football has become a massive business enterprise, which relies on the appeal of handsomely paid sports stars to drive revenue. And while Cristano Ronaldo’s abs and Neymar’s consistently changing hairdos are successful at attracting interest from fans, Italian playmaker Andrea Pirlo has something that no other player has: a sullen face that seems incapable of being pleased. And in a move that shows it’s possible to even capitalise on things conventionally considered undesirable, Pirlo’s Turin-based club Juventus has now launched a campaign that encourages viewers to send in videos that might be able to impress the player.

Barnes, Catmur & Friends has taken some time off torturing pizza eaters and giving RTD drinkers “Woodies” to ask Kiwis some important questions. In a new print and online-based campaign for its client Boundary Road Brewery, the agency has compiled a series of questions for an initiative called ‘ The Unauthorised Beer Census New Zealand 2014’ in an effort to find out more about the nation’s beer drinkers.

Marty Neumeier, best-selling author, designer and renowned business adviser, is on a mission to “revolutionise the way business does business in the 21st century”. And you can find out how he plans on doing that at an event on Friday 29 August where he will share his insights on modern brands and the importance of being credible in an age of transparency.

There are so many ways to pay these days, and MYOB is aiming to draw attention to its new mobile card reader in a fairly unexpected way: by showing how it would benefit sex workers. But there’s a bit of a twist.

Hallenstein Brothers has managed to add a bit of cool factor to its brand in recent years, with some raunchy ads, some trippy ads and some cheeky stunts. Now, on the anniversary of Burt Munro’s land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, it’s released an extreme ad that has called on Crusty Demons legend Carey Hart and his crew to put its new high performance suits through their paces.

Slingshot has shaken a few trees in recent months with its legally dubious Global Mode, which makes use of a workaround and lets Kiwi viewers access sites like Netflix and Hulu, and it’s fully embraced the Streisand Effect to get some more attention after a few major broadcasters decided not to show the ad. Now it’s continuing on that quest in a slightly different way by backing a new website called frontup.co.nz that shows how much Kiwis pay for goods and services in comparison to other markets.

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