Mimi Gilmour’s restaurant chains Burger Burger and the newly opened Fish Fish have adopted the no-reservations policy increasingly used overseas. But as queues form, she is planning technology to take the agro out of waiting for a table.

SBS bank has introduced Kiwi audiences to a Kiwi couple, Eric and Sandra, who are randomly interrupted by luminescent text featuring messages from the bank.

V Energy’s latest campaign sees the company moving beyond guarana-infused beverages into streetwear, with the launch of a new range one-of-kind T-shirts designed by street artist Mr G Hoete.

Air New Zealand is once again poking fun at rival airlines with a facebook post jibing airline Jetstar for its claims to be “New Zealand’s most punctual airline”.

Auckland’s Karangahape Road, known to locals simply as K road and formerly the hub of the city of sails’ seedy underbelly, has long been a subject of curiosity and ten short films soon to be released will tell stories inspired by one of New Zealand’s most famous locations.

It’s no secret that the Internet and its capabilities to give anyone an audience alongside budget cuts and redundancies have shaken up the industry. So much of a shake in fact that the number of print journalists in New Zealand declined 61 per cent between 2006 and 2013 according to census data. But also worthy of a mention is the rise of PR. A 56 per cent increase between 2006 and 2013 resulted in public relations professionals outnumbering print, television and radio journalists three to one in 2013. So what this mean for the fourth estate?

It’s been a rocky year for German carmaker Volkswagen, with data from CNN money showing that global car sales fell 5.3 percent in October after news of the emissions scandal broke. But have these shockwaves stretched across the world to also affect sales in the local market?

Banks aren’t generally renowned for the clarity of their language. Some cynics might even argue that they’re intentionally confusing. So it’s commendable that ANZ, which relied on pretty simple messaging and big media spend to let New Zealand know about the ‘merger’ with National Bank, won a few more Plain Language Awards recently. But, in what could be seen as a new strand of Muphry’s Law, where you inevitably make a mistake when criticising someone’s writing, it’s certainly not commendable to promote a post on Facebook with so many basic errors in it. Or is it a bad joke about reading like a ten-year-old that just made them look a bit thick?

Web Series Channel founder unfazed by arrival of watchme, sees big difference between the two platforms.

It’s a Christmas miracle. An Auckland man came back from the dead this week after Housing New Zealand reported him dead.

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

Dropit hopes punters and retailers will say yes to ‘no reserve’ and sign up to take part in reverse auctions. Last week, Dropit soft-launched its auction website where items have no reserve price. However, this is a good thing for the punter because the longer the auction lasts, the cheaper the item becomes. We chat to the company’s chief executive and marketing manager Peter Howell about how this all works.

During the press conference announcing the deal and their new Auckland to Los Angeles route, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and American Airlines chief executive Doug Parker were both very complimentary of Air New Zealand, heaping praise on the quality of the service offered. And the team at Air New Zealand was clearly watching these proceedings with interest, because not long thereafter the airline released an auto-tune mashup, via creative agency True, in which the pair of executives are shown seemingly pointing out the quality of the Kiwi airline’s service.

It’s not easy to get past all the tech gobbledygook and make customers understand the benefits of the cloud. But Microsoft has done it by asking a simple question: what would your office do with the extra space if you could get rid of your server room?

To celebrate the impending release of the latest movie in the franchise, the Google has launched a pair of quirky digital activations that will almost certainly appeal to fans across the world.

A new public health campaign is asking young people to creatively and anonymously condemn those who smoke by sending images through Snapchat.

Walk around the streets of many of New Zealand’s urban centres and you’re more than likely to see people on the streets, in stores and sometimes even on sports fields clad entirely in the latest activewear from the likes of Puma, Adidas or Nike. Viewed from a distance, it would be easy to mistake these individuals as veritable fitness freaks, doing the hard yards to get abs on abs. However, upon closer inspection, it quickly becomes apparent that activewear serves broader purposes than just exercising. In fact, as illustrated in a recent satirical video by content creators the Van Vuuren Bros, activewear is often used for purposes quite contrary to getting fitter.

Last week, Stolen Spirits raised a toast after selling a controlling interest in the company to US-based venture capital funds Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for NZ$21 million. Before this premium vodka 42Below became a global brand when it was sold to Bacardi. And a number of other Kiwi craft spirits appear to be following close behind.

Mountain Dew has been banging the practice makes perfect drum for a few years as part of its long-running “to get to easy you have to go through hard” campaign. And now, along with Garage TV it’s calling on athletes to submit clips of themselves getting extreeeeeeeme for a weekly half-hour TV show called Easy is hard.

Here’s a psychic skeptics will struggle to debunk: IBM has developed an app that trawls customer conversations on the internet to help retailers and shoppers to understand which products will be popular. And it has already picked which items will be hot commodities for Christmas 2015.

The ideas have been dreamed up, the work has been displayed, the sucking up to creative leaders has been done, the leftover nibbles have presumably been wrapped up in napkins and taken home, and another bunch of advertising students have learned a few tricks to help them into gainful employment. Here are some of the highlights from AUT and Media Design School.

A kiwi app combines the tangible with the digital in collaborating with Warehouse Stationery to let New Zealanders print photos from their phones.

Around 17 years after it all began, Trade Me is on track to reach its one billionth listing in early December. And the online trading company plans to celebrate this milestone by through a range of activations over the next few weeks.

Every year, UK retailer John Lewis blows its budget to tell epic stories in its Christmas ads, and company usually claims the accolade for most memorable ad of the year. However, this time, it faces some strong competition from the Spanish National Lottery, which has released tear-jerking ad that has media companies around the world proclaiming it the most sentimental spot of the year.