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

It’s been a good year for Brother Design, with the agency winning first place for its Pams confectionary range in the ‘Confectionary, Snacks, Desserts’ category at the international Dieline Awards in the United States as well as nabbing the supreme award at 21st edition of the local Pride in Print Awards.

New products fail more than they succeed. But that doesn’t seem to stop brands from continually ‘innovating’ and making more of them, no matter how impractical they might be. And Rhodes and Rose has riffed on that with a great promo for the Flextrek 37,000,000,000,000.

A year ago, Angus Richardson introduced the first .kiwi URLS through his company Dot Kiwi. And since then, thousands of Kiwis have signed up to give their website—whether business or personal—a more Kiwi flavour. Included among these are the Mad Butcher, Porter Novelli, the Vodafone Warriors, Kiwibank (via a subrand), Tennis NZ and Rowing NZ. We look at some of the funny URLs registered thus far and chat to Richardson about how the business is going.

Google is always looking for creative and enticing ways to get people using its services, and its latest initiative is to give amateur paranormal investigators the power of Google Maps to search for the Loch Ness monster from the comfort of their homes.

Ever since Spark unveiled its new brand, it has worked hard to redefine itself as an innovative and nimble organisation capable of appealing to Kiwis across all demographics. And given that many within its target market are shifting their media consumption to the digital space, this has seen Spark follow the audience by releasing some major digital plays over the last year. And Kate Thomas, a senior communications manager at the telco, says this is only the start of the journey.

Last month, ANZ teamed up with the RSA to launch an online campaign (conceptualised by FCB) that gave Kiwis the opportunity to publicly honour the heroes who were part of the troops that landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, and the RSA says “its blown away” by the success of the campaign.

Adobe has released the finding of a survey of 648 marketers across the APAC region, and the report points out that senior players in the industry are struggling with similar issues as the importance of digital to marketing continues to grow.

There’s nothing more satisfying that than a good graph that shows trends over time and Bloomberg, one of the many media organisations focusing more on data journalism, has knocked it out of the park with a recent infographic that tracked the pace of social change in the US by looking at how long it took for inter-racial marriage, prohibition, women’s suffrage, abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana tobe legalised.

DSP, SSP, DMP, pixel, impression, ad network, ad exchange, API, SDK. There’s no shortage of buzzwords in digital advertising. So, in the first edition of a new series, Adroll managing director for Australia and New Zealand Ben Sharp demystifies some of the words that make things seem more complicated than they really are.

Orcon has also taken a few shots at its competitors by pointing out that they throttle customers’ broadband speeds. This criticism was first introduced via an Orcon TVC released last year that introduced Kiwis to Raoul, a revolutionary figure clad in purple military fatigues who seems determined to bringing to what he sees as ISP injustices. And this colourful character—with his oscillating accent—has returned in a new spot that is even more bizarre than those that came before.

There are many creative uses for bodily fluids, like semen being used for secret messages, religious icons being soaked in urine for art, or Whybin\TBWA adding the claret of some All Blacks to an Adidas poster (and going on to win a whole heap of awards). Now Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland and Austrian progressive men’s magazine Vangardist have taken that idea even further by adding HIV positive blood to its ink and trying to end the social stigma surrounding the virus.

A regal curtsey for ANZ, Fly Buys, The Salvation Army and Air New Zealand this week.

After an eight-year partnership, Spark has parted ways with its direct marketing agency Rapp and appointed Clemenger-owned Proximity to the account “following a review of agency requirements”. PLUS: ASB general manager of marketing Ana Curzon to start her new role as Spark’s general manager of digital first on 18 May. UPDATE: Air New Zealand Airpoints has appointed Rapp to its account following a competitve pitch.

The city of Cape Town has launched a new campaign designed to encourage South Africans not to give small change to those on the street, because it does little more than keep them there.

Justin Bieber said he was going to repeatedly do it on people in his track Boyfriend; Jay Z claimed to have invented it; journalists have predicted the death of it since 1982; it has made it onto various lists of words that should die immediately; and now Spark has added the word swag—derived from swagger—to its marketing vocabulary via an ongoing campaign that now includes two new spots.

Nude ironing isn’t generally recommended, unless you’re trying to win an Xtreme Ironing competition. But Meridian, its new agency Barnes Catmur and spokesman Jeremy Wells have decided to embrace it.

ANZ has launched a new cross-Tasman brand ad by Whybin\TBWA that gives a nod to the pioneering human spirit by featuring a series of snippets from innovators in their respective fields.

The Japanese are renowned for their kooky ideas, be it in the form of ads, businesses or game shows. And, to promote the speed of its new “premium 4G” ultra-fast data service, telco provider NTT Docomo has followed up last year’s elaborate high-speed fried shrimp ad with an elaborate high-speed gyoza dumpling ad.

From Ram’s patriotic effort to Cadillac’s knobby manifesto to Lincoln’s campaign featuring Matthew McConaughey, car brands often like to get deep and meaningful in their ads. Honda has given automotive cliches a bit of poke—while gratuitously promoting its new car to “a small but hard to reach demo”—with an ad featuring Abed and Dean Pelton from Community, which is being shown on Yahoo and sponsored by Honda.

Air New Zealand celebrated its 75th anniversary yesterday by holding various competitions and promotions, including a mid-air game show, a chance for customers to win back their fare and a themed flight across the Tasman. PLUS: a gallery of old Air NZ ads.

Back on Oct. 27, 1994, Wired (or, as it was then known, Hotwired) claims to have given birth to the web’s first banner ad. 20 years on and the web is littered with them, to the point where banner blindness has become a real thing. But how well do you really know your banner ads? Boonstra McDonald has created a site where you can learn a bit more about your favourite flashing friends. And it turns out large rectangle, square button, pop-under and co. have got quite interesting back stories.

Due to its rapid growth and ongoing success, Xero has on numerous occasions been dubbed the Apple of accounting by the media. And while the company is going through a rocky patch at the moment with reports showing its annual loss widening and speculation that the Australian Stock Exchange might investigate the company on account of failing to disclose information to stock holders, it remains a major Kiwi success story, which has already made strong headway in the Australian market and is also getting noticed in the US. And despite having his hands quite full at the moment with international conquests, the company’s chief marketing officer Andy Lark recently chatted to StopPress’ sister publication Idealog about taking on the US and why marketing cannot be a substitute for a great product or sterling service.