Author StopPress Team

Like us, you’ll probably feel a little bit dirty for even being interested in this, but Colenso’s Tim Smith, resplendent in a luxurious velvet jacket, and Saatchi & Saatchi’s Gemma Copas, dazzling onlookers with her polka dots, have left the other hideously unattractive finalists in their ridiculously good-looking wake after taking out APN Outdoor’s inaugural Advertising’s Next Top Model competition.

A group from New Zealand cloud software developer Genesis Interactive claim to have come up with a “possible world first”, a tool called Comet SEO that aims to simplify the search engine optimisation (SEO) process for Kiwi companies.

In-depth readership surveys have shown that over 96 percent of StopPress readers are money-grubbing capitalists who love nothing more than return on investment, fiscal skullduggery, skyrocketing sales and massive profits. So it seemed appropriate to give away five double passes to Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a movie that marks the return of disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider/finance industry divinity Gordon Gekko. And for wannabe Kiwi corporate raiders with absolutely no shame, we’ve also got five Wall St BlackBerry cases to dish out.

In a deal estimated to be worth A$150 million, BBDO Worldwide, the advertising network of global marketing beast Omnicom Group, is hoping to increase its shareholding in the Clemenger Group from 46.67 percent to 73.67 percent as part of an increased focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

It’s a long way from the Sundance Film Festival, but, hey, a man’s gotta eat, so big directorial gun Toa Fraser has decided to take on his first ever advertising project, a series of new commercials for Freeview and TBWA\TEQUILA.

Interbrand has released the 11th annual 100 Best Global Brands rankings and, out of the corporate turbulence seen over the past 12 months, it’s the high profile technology brands that have performed best.

The faces have been put forward, the votes have been cast and the six hottest humans in the marcomms biz have been chosen for APNO’s inaugural Friends in High Places Advertising’s Next Top Model.

As Air New Zealand’s young, slightly more controversial upstart brand, grabaseat has always been given a bit more marketing rope than its parent. It’s certainly come up with some slightly unusual promotions in its time and it openly claims to do things in a way “that sometimes offends, sometimes makes you laugh, sometimes makes you cry and sometimes is just plain dumb”. But whatever grabaseat does, there’s always someone out there who will tell them how to do things better, apparently. So instead of fighting against the haters, it has decided to harness the creative power of the masses with the grabaseat billboard website.

In this instalment of ads@6, Eco Strand gets a little bit ‘matrixy’, DraftFCB’s campaign to stop family violence strikes a chord, Axxis steel framing could be ramping up its presence after being given a fillip by the quake, State and Tower go head to head and a host of retailers yell loudly about their various specials.

Over 1000 New Zealand made photographs across ten different categories were entered in the 2010 Epson/NZIPP Iris Professional Photography Awards. And New Plymouth came out on top, with Tony Carter taking out photographer of the year for the third time, Chris Hill winning the commercial/advertising category and Niki Coates winning the portrait category.

For its latest customer service trick, ASB has fully embraced social media, gone completely virtual and launched a real-time, secure, person-to-person banking application on Facebook, something it claims is a world-first.

Charlie’s Group Ltd has appointed Hunter to look after its array of refreshing beverages, handing the Charlie’s and Phoenix Organics folios in Australia and New Zealand to the trans-Tasman indie “cloud agency”.