Author StopPress Team

Not knowing about sports and then commenting on them is a surefire way to get some laughs, as Bad British Sports Commentary shows. That relationship was flipped around by NBC Sports last year to promote its coverage of the English Premier League when it got some laffs by creating an ad featuring a US football coach (played by Jason Sudeikis) who became a UK football coach. That didn’t go so well, and now Coach Lasso is back in a new role, with star US goalkeeper Tim Howard in support.

David Seymour, the Act Party’s Epsom candidate, released a campaign video in May that has been bouncing around YouTube for the last few months. And from the evidence on show in the nearly three-minute clip, it appears that Seymour might be a little new to the on-screen political game.

Following its identity change on Friday, Spark released its first ad campaign over the weekend. Dubbed ‘never stop starting’ and created by Saatchi & Saatchi NZ, the campaign’s first 60-second TVC brings the imagery used in the teaser posters to life by featuring a protagonist walking toward and talking to the camera. As the ad progresses, the actor takes on a variety of different characters and speaks about the importance of starting anew.

We took a quick look at the popularity of slow TV in Norway.

Technology allows us to do many things, such as detect monsters, take a horse’s heartbeat or stop drunk dialling. And a creative athlete from San Fran has found another use: puerile but entertaining GPS art.

As Spark’s Jason Paris said in this story, the biggest part the rebrand “is valuing our existing customer base and turning them in to advocates so they become an acquisition channel in their own right”. So before the launch of the new brand, Spark set a series of Automatic Thanking Machines loose on the nation to do just that. And while it calls it a world first, perhaps there’s some morphic resonance/independent multiple discovery at play, because just this week TD Canada Trust had a hit on its hands with its own benevolent machine.

Big Pipe, Telecom Digital Ventures’ naked broadband offering, officially launched a few months back and, to draw attention to its offer, it recently asked its followers to have a bit of fun with its logo for the chance to win some loot. Here are some of the results.

Tango is moving away from being a full services agency creating brand campaigns to a marketing services company that will provide digital services to medium-sized businesses who want to grow. And managing director Boyd Wason says it’s more than just tinkering with a logo.

Whether it’s TV, taxis, travel or titillation, the world is becoming increasingly ondemand. And Flossie.com is aiming to tap into that trend with a new smartphone app aimed at the hair and beauty industry that connects willing buyers with willing sellers.

Shakira’s new ‘La La La’ music video, which doubles as three-and-half-minute advertisement for Activia yoghurt, has officially become the most-shared spot on the internet, knocking VW’s ‘The Force’ off its perch after three years.

On 2 August, Facebook went down for what was reported to be about 19 minutes. And while no one in New Zealand seemed to pay much attention to this catastrophe of social media breakdown, the rest of the world responded with a combination of fear, confusion and downright madness.

On Monday, APN Media launched TrueCommercial, a digital hub dedicated to commercial property and ‘businesses for sale’ listings. For the most part, the initiative serves as an online extension of the Herald’s Commercial Property section, which has until now been published twice a week. The section, which according to Nielsen has a readership of approximately 138,000 Kiwis, will now also be rebranded TrueCommercial from 6 August to give the offering uniformity across the print and digital channels. But how does it differ from the services already offered by Trade Me and RealEstate.co.nz. Updated with additional comments from TrueCommercial brand manager Maria Zolezzi.

Since Antonio Navas first arrived in New Zealand in 2011, there have been murmurings about his impending departure. “I heard that Antonio is leaving” almost became as common a phrase as “integrated cross-channel marketing initiative” in conversations between those in the industry (they had to get it right eventually). And despite this speculation, Navas just shrugged it off and focused on what he came here to do in the first place: create ads that get noticed. Here are a few thoughts from Navas on his time in New Zealand.

There’s been a whole heap of discussion about the rise of native advertising recently. Some see it as the future of marketing; a way to insert relevant commercial messages into editorial content. Others see it as subterfuge; the advertising equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb. John Oliver appears to be firmly in the latter camp, so, as he says in typically comical fashion, if you can insert an ad into news, why can’t you insert news into a product?

Touchcast will work with Tourism New Zealand to zjush up TNZ’s digital brand asset management platform that helps all New Zealand’s various tourism activities appear unceasingly epic to the world. TNZ has large image and footage libraries online that currently tourism industry businesses can apply to use, as long as it is used to promote New Zealand as a holiday destination, is mostly be distributed outside of New Zealand, and is not used in paid advertising. In the last year over 65,000 downloads were made from the system.

The Sunday edition The New York Times featured a full-page ad promoting medical marijuana, following state legislators’ passing of the Compassionate Care Act, which allows doctors to prescribe marijuana to people with serious ailments. This change in law does not however mean that thick plumes of Mary-Jane are going to be obscuring the view of the digital billboards at Time Square any time soon, because the legislation only permits the prescription of non-smokeable forms of marijuana.

The Sweet Shop’s Joel Kefali has done his fair share of ads (often along with Special Problems cohort Campbell Hooper), but he’s gaining a reputation for his music videos, having got behind the camera for Lorde, Tame Impala, The Presets and The Naked and Famous. Now he’s done the same for Katy Perry.

Getty Images takes a look at how online publishers (whether brands or bloggers) can use images to help tell stories that move audiences.

Telecom and Designworks unveiled Telecom’s new spark logo in 2009, and the move to fully rebrand as Spark—and change the orientation of the business from home phones and dumb pipes to a technology company and business enabler—has been out in the open for a few months. But now it actually has to make the change, and it’s taken the first, very symbolic step by removing the name from its HQ in Auckland.

The country’s last major teaser campaign aimed to get people talking about the pros and cons of money in the lead up to the launch of BNZ’s ‘Be good with money’ brand. And we’ve noticed another one recently, with a few unbranded Adshels featuring a man standing in a field surrounded by mountains popping up around Auckland. At first, it looks like another ad for a male clothing brand. But it’s not. So in the spirit of teasing, we’ve decided to let our dear readers guess who it might be for. The first to answer correctly will receive a copy of yesterday’s Herald and a 70g packet of Wattie’s Spicy Pumpkin Squeeze and Stir soup.