Author StopPress Team

A weekly wrap of funny things, good things, weird things and other things seen on the intertubes.

Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia has teamed up with upcoming Super Man movie Man of Steel (out here in New Zealand 27 June) to coat tail on its coolness – and boy is it cool.

From elevator frights, to dropping friends right in it, to dramatic surprises in town squares, to fake attacks, marketers and agencies seem to love nothing more than scaring the bejesus out of innocent bystanders with their social experiments. But UK road safety organisation Think and its agency Leo Burnett have taken it to a new level with their #PubLooShocker.

TradeMe Jobs recently launched a campaign showing that nominative determinism was a thing of the past. Try telling that to the BBC.

German beer brand Beck’s chose Semi-Permanent in Auckland to unveil its latest toy: a beer bottle where instead of a label there’s music.

‘Can you make it go viral?’ is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of all agency folk. But Swedish PR consultant Simon Strand, who has spent an inordinate amount of time philosophising on last year’s big YouTube hits and coming up with his own viral formula, is here to help.

Mention the word drones and images of indiscriminate bombing come to mind. But Ex-Wired editor Chris Anderson has a different take on things and he’s been extolling the virtues of—and making a business out of—unmanned flying devices for years. Now Domino’s has also seen the light and, as this video of the ‘DomiCopter’ shows, the pizza of the future might be airborne.

Getty Images’ Hulton Archive goes almost all the way back to the birth of photography. So, as part of an effort to highlight the breadth and depth of historic content available there, it teamed up with Short and Sweet to launch a film challenge with a twist.

While print media continues to tumble and find its footing in the digital age, online advertising is on a rocket ride to the top. According to PwC’s latest entertainment and media outlook, online advertising is expected to reach $543 million in annual revenue by 2017.

The Dollar Shave Club guy, otherwise known as Michael Dubin, earned legions of fans for his very entertaining launch video. And he’s back with no.2—and an array of no. 2 puns—to promote the arrival of his next product: butt wipes for men.

Just like its father/mother is in the online auction space, TradeMe Jobs is the most-visited New Zealand jobs site, reaching that goal a couple of years ago. And, it’s aiming to stay there with the help of its first-ever brand campaign via JWT.

Kiwi mobile advertising company Snakk Media has released its first annual revenue figures since listing on the New Zealand Alternative Exchange (NZAX) earlier this year, raking in $3,654,346 between March 2012 and March 2013 – an 83 percent growth year-on-year.

Raising money for charities and not-for-profits is a much more difficult job than it used to be, given the number of competing organisations and the economic strain of recent years. But there were plenty of impressive efforts showcased at the Fundraising Excellence awards in Wellington earlier this month.

Facebook has launched a new verification feature (in the form of a small blue checkmark icon) to set apart official brands and celebrity accounts from the faceless masses wanting to impersonate them.

Robot voice will never get old (especially if it involves getting a machine to say naughty words). And it’s also one way to avoid exorbitant talent fees. So, to launch its $1 options in the US, Taco Bell and Deustche employed the cheapest voice artist it could find.

JC Penney was recently named as one of ten US brands that might not be with us by next year. It’s certainly had a rough time of late and, to its credit, it came out an apologised in a new ad. But sometimes you just can’t win, and now it’s getting a pasting for a billboard featuring a kettle designed by Michael Graves that looks a little bit like Hitler.

Sustainability is an increasingly important issue for the business community. But how do you best show it? Getty Images’ research into visual trends aims to find out.

There’s been plenty of action in the produce section recently, with All Good taking a pot shot at the corporate banana with a recent campaign and Oxfam—and the Commerce Commission—questioning Dole’s use of the ‘Ethical Choice’ label. And it all came to a head yesterday after Oxfam released a report showing Dole’s apparently dubious labour and environmental practices in the Philippines.

As they always say, those in typo-ridden online glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones, but we couldn’t help but point out a little faux pas by our national carrier, which is using the 60th anniversary of the ascent of Mt Everest to promote $5 domestic fares on Grabaseat. Pity it—and nzherald.co.nz—spelled Sir Ed’s name wrong.