While most marketers in the action and outdoor industry attempt showcase their products as survival essentials, Mons Royale founder Hamish Acland has veered away from this trope to present his brand as a fashionable label that offers both utility and aesthetic appeal. And this approach has now been continued in a new promotional clip that showcases imagery that is both sexy and utility-based. Featuring Jossi Wells, Christy Prior, Connor Macfarlane, Will Jackways and beautifully shot in the Mons Royale hometown of Lake Wanaka, the over-minute-long video provides a glimpse at the lives of these extreme sports enthusiasts.

As Southpark recently pointed out, messages of moderation from alcohol companies often seem slightly paradoxical. But Diageo has nailed it with the help of manly moustachioed man and regular booze brand ambassador Nick Offerman, who, as part of a wider campaign called My Tales of Whisky, sings about the things you shouldn’t do while drinking.

Throughout the course of the last year, Getty Images has been making a point of identifying the visual trends that define business culture in the modern age. In addition to seeing changes in media representations of women, middle-aged people and beauty standards, Getty has also drawn attention to the way technology is influencing photography through extreme close-ups and point-of-view cinematography. And as the world stands poised to draw the curtain on 2014, the team at Getty have taken a moment to look at what the future in a new article published on its website.

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

New Zealand is set to become the 82nd country to have a homeless store, with an ordinary kiwi bloke at the helm of organising a pop-up on Quay Street in Auckland Central.

Nothing gets brands more willing to spend dollars on advertising than a special event. Be it Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or Christmas, brands throughout the world embrace the moment, throw caution to the wind and try to capitalise on the consumer frenzy that often accompanies these days. And in the lead up to to Christmas 2014, brands have not disappointed, delivering yet another entertaining dose of humorous and tear-jerking spots.

The one major advantage of a digital billboard is that it can be updated instantly to reflect something that is happening at a specific moment. During the election, TV3 used this to its advantage by feeding live updates of the results onto APN Outdoor’s collection of digital billboards in Auckland. And now, DDB and ZenithOptimedia are collaborating with Mother Nature on a new outdoor campaign for Speight’s that adjusts in accordance with the temperature.

There’s plenty of discussion about whether the 100% Pure campaign has had its day and the country appears to be reaching peak Hobbit, but there’s no doubt New Zealand’s clever tourism marketing tactics over the years have done the business and attracted more tourists to these fine lands.

House of Travel has confirmed the appointment of Ken Freer as its new marketing director. Having just started his new role, Freer is already working on the company’s marketing strategy, and a spokesperson tells StopPress that the organisation (which currently doesn’t have an agency on the books) would likely look to secure a creative partner in early 2015.

In June this year, Google Creative Lab unveiled The Cube, a six-sided digital video platform that can be used to simultaneously tell different stories in the same digital space. And in a pair of innovative campaigns, Google Play and Sony are showcasing how the platform could potentially be used for branding.

StopPress sits down with BuzzFeed Australia’s editor Simon Crerar for a chat about the website being like a Parisian café, Kiwis being better sharers than Aussies and why inane animal .gifs can co-exist with serious content.

If you don’t like Iggy Azalea, Lil John or Maroon 5 but love a good mashup, we have got just the thing.

Photographer Viktorija Pashuta took the phrase ‘online fashion’ very literally by showing what women would look like as web browsers. And now she’s returned with the logical follow-up: what men would look like as social networks.

There aren’t many things more tedious than trying to find a park around Lambton Quay, Wellington, even on a good day. But if there is one thing that can quell how harrowing it is driving around in circles just to be pipped at every post by aggressive drivers with sharp parallel parking skills, it’s free parking.

Spotify recently admitted that YouTube is the world’s biggest music streaming service. And many of the most popular music videos can be found on the Vevo channel. So, as is the custom at this time of year, it’s crunched its annual numbers and released a top ten list of the most-watched music videos across Australia and New Zealand in 2014.

We live in increasingly digital times. And the language often used to explain some of those digital developments is downright confusing. Fear not, dear luddites, for String Theory has created a dictionary “to shine a little light into the impenetrable murk of digital terminology for the benefit of the non-expert, the vaguely interested or anyone who just wants to give the flimsy impression they know what they’re talking about”.

In November, Jamie Curry orchestrated a treasure hunt in Sydney as part of the #colouryoursummer campaign, which Coca-Cola has launched in an effort to get millennials thirsty over the warmer months. And this campaign has now also spread across to this side of the ditch, with the launch of the Kiwi version. And in continuing the trend of collaborating with YouTube personalties, Coca-Cola Oceania has announced that two up-and-coming Kiwi vloggers will also create videos for the local campaign.

You can generally rely on ads for cameras to look good. And Canon has been obliging for years on that front, with one of last year’s efforts winning an Emmy. Now, as part of its Come and See campaign, Canon Europe has employed the services of photographers Christopher Pillitz and Jamie Hall to do their thing—and show off some of its new technology at the same time.

Richard Conway, founder of Pure SEO, came to New Zealand from the UK in 2008, and could not get any work because most employers won’t hire without any New Zealand experience. Those who were willing to give him jobs wanted to pay him peanuts.

When Apple first contacted the producers of ‘Sunday’, an independent film set in post-earthquake Christchurch, made by a group of New Zealanders and Australians, the producers weren’t surprised. What they’re doing is a world first in film distribution, and an experiment in tackling Internet piracy. As of 7 December, ‘Sunday’ will be the first independent film to be launched over five different distribution platforms at the same time.

At this year’s edition of the Young Gun Awards, Colenso BBDO’s Ben Polkinghorne and Brett Colliver, FCB’s Matt Williams and Y&R NZ’s Liza Dupre all picked up awards, standing again as testament to the quality of the creative work that comes out of New Zealand every year. But, most often, the journey to these awards doesn’t start within the agencies; it starts at the nation’s ad schools, where the students’ creative talent is shaped into commercial tools capable of developing campaigns that resonate with the masses. Thus, each year as the academic curriculum comes to a close, the industry takes a brief moment to look at the work that the students have produced. StopPress takes a look at some of the best student work from the previous year.

How does one make a IT storage hardware solutions and cloud computing company look cool? How about sponsoring a giant truck to jump a speeding Formula 1 car, setting a world record in the process?

Nothing says Christmas like a massive hunk of steel. And nothing says Honda like a bunch of toys like Jem, GI Joe, Skeletor and Stretch Armstrong.

Brand ambassadors remain an effective experiential marketing tool by which brands can connect with consumers, says EMANZ chair Mark Pickering. But more so than ever before, these representatives on the ground need to be trained properly.