Author StopPress Team

There’s nothing better than a good venn diagram. Nothing. But it’s fair to assume the designer who made this ad for Thomson Reuters probably wasn’t going for it to be perceived that way.

A Facebook page that popped up on June 24 aims to expalin New Zealand politics with the wise words of Mr Kanye West.

Just as spring follows winter, so too do parodies follow election ads. There’s been plenty of billboard ‘art’ (some of it quite funny). There’s been a song about John Key (that’s been banned from being broadcast by the Electoral Commission). And there’s been a satirical Colin Craig website (that can’t be shut down because it’s outside New Zealand jurisdiction). And now YouTube user Gabriel Page has tweaked National’s first campaign TVC to show a slightly different type of rowing.

There are a few brands that are excellent at taking the piss. Newcastle Brown Ale is most definitely one of them. In their latest campaign for the US market, the beer brand is asking fans to send in their mediocre photos because they blew their marketing budget on “paying celebrities to pretend to drink our beer”.

After a competitive pitch, Dentsu Aegis-owned iProspect has won the digital media account for Bigpipe, a stripped down naked broadband offering that’s part of Spark Ventures. Plus: chief executive Rod Snodgrass on the thinking behind the Spark Ventures strategy.

As the greasing up kicks into high gear for the upcoming election, there are a range of digital tools being put to use, either to tempt youngsters out to vote, give guidance or join parties. Here are a few of them.

We rely on technology for so many things, but from time to time that reliance goes comically awry. That happened when Spark used find and replace to get rid of the mentions of Telecom on its website and, in a classic case of the law of unintended consequences, ended up creating a new word: Sparkmunications. But there are plenty more entertaining find and replace oopsies.

While Tinder’s main purpose is well-known, a number of brands and agencies are using it in interesting, slightly subversive ways, like increasing dog adoption or raising awareness of women’s issues. Now Jacinda Ardern is embracing the medium—for politics, of course—in a continuation of her Ask Me Anything campaign.

Given that Gatorade has come under significant criticism for selling its high sugar energy drinks to people who don’t necessarily need them, the company has now launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign that depicts a possible step in-store staff could take to ensure that the products are only sold to the right people. Rather than just pandering Gatorade to anyone who enters his store, the clerk in the ads requires customers to be sweaty before agreeing to sell the product to them. And to ensure that no violence ensues on account of the ridiculousness of the request, the campaign also features a series of cameos from NFL greats Peyton Manning and Cam Newton.

It’s Madden Season, which apparently turns actor Kevin Hart into a complete psychopath.

The All Blacks are attractive endorsers, and they spruik everything from undies to batteries to deodorant. Hell, even the coach Steve Hansen is the (relatively surprising) face of Kitchen Things. Now Repco has enlisted the services of Cory Jane for its father’s day-related Dad of the Year campaign.

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

The business world is infested with buzzwords, which is why it’s important for comical raps to try and jolt people back into reality and show them just how douchey they sound when using them.

Air New Zealand is crazy about rugby. And, given the number of Aussies that come to New Zealand for the snow, it’s also quite a big fan of skiing. Now, with the help of Host Sydney and Diaries Downunder, it’s combined the two in spectacular fashion as part of its online video campaign ‘Meanwhile in… New Zealand’.

A new anti-obesity campaign released by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has gone nuts on the internet for its portrayal of a pair of parents driving their child to an early grave by enabling his poor eating habits. The spot, shot in reverse chronology, moves from a scene of the son in the hospital through various key events that link to the moment. As the narrative progresses, it soon becomes evident that the parents have been integrally involved in not only creating the son’s bad eating habits but also in facilitating them.

While Apple is busy showing off some of the esoteric ways you can use its smartphone, downloading an app that could make fart sounds is, for many, still one of the most attractive features of this technology. And Beat Bowel Cancer Aotearoa (BBCA) and Whybin\TBWA have decided to embrace the entertainment value of anal whisperings with bumsarefullofsurprises.org.nz, a website that lets the public add fart sounds to any YouTube video.

Mensa-wannabes rejoice – you can massage your neuroplasticity with a Mensa-supported Brain Training Zone by Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs. It’s a site with hundreds of brain training games, puzzles and IQ tests “to get your cognitive thinking up to scratch”.

Over the last few weeks the nation’s political parties have been furiously hammering stakes into the ground in an effort to erect their campaign posters. And while most political ads feature smiling politicians with perfectly combed hair, the Conservative Party’s Colin Craig has instead opted for a monochrome death stare for his campaign.

Vine is still fairly nascent platform and, aside from V Energy, we haven’t noticed a huge number of Kiwi brands using it too creatively. But, just a few spots further down the alphabet, Z Energy is giving it a crack and we enjoyed its attempt to draw attention to its super long hoses as part of its ZipThru campaign.

In an age where click-hungry online publishers are looking for their next hit, a celebrity death is basically manna from heaven. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the last major case (The Sydney Daily Telegraph got a telling off for this headline). And Robin Williams was found dead in his house this morning, so, unsurprisingly, the story has been dominating many of the world’s major news websites. So is it a case of a bottom-feeding media doing everything it can to increase its audience, or a concerned media attempting to offer a fitting tribute? Or both?