Awards speeches are always the boring part once you get past the frocks and the big gongs. That’s why this crowdsourced Emmys concession speech by Grey Poupon was such a winner.

It’s not often you get insight into user experience from a tattoo artist and Samsung’s US-based creative director in one day, but that’s what organiser’s of Wellington’s UX Design Day next month have managed to pull off.

Roy Morgan data from the last five-and-a-half years is hard evidence of the tech behaviour we see in ourselves and others – like difficulty surviving without our mobile devices, the growing popularity of online shopping and the slow death of the desktop and the home landline.

Retail guru John Wannamaker is credited with the classic ad quote “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”. There’s still plenty of mystery in marketing, but there are certainly a host of sophisticated analytics tools that give those forking out for the ads an opportunity to measure their effect. And Adobe and Goodby Silverstein + Partners have launched a brilliant new spot to show how gut feel isn’t the best business strategy.

It’s not uncommon to hear media owners talking up the benefits of their specific media channels—and occasionally giving competing media channels a serve. It’s less common to see agencies doing it. But Auckland interactive agency BKA has given it a nudge, putting up a cheeky—and perhaps slightly ironic—billboard on its building on Great North Rd in Auckland to show that it’s actually “better than a billboard”.

Kia is shifting its focus from brand building to promoting a specific model – the Cerato hatchback – in a new campaign that features its first locally-shot TVC.

Ecostore founder Malcolm Rands recently released Ecoman, the story of his and his family’s journey ‘from a garage in Northland to a pioneering global brand’. And he’s doing a bit more pioneering to promote it—and educate more Kiwis about the nasty chemicals some of its competitors use—this time with the company’s first-ever end-of-aisle promotion in the two major supermarket chains. Plus: some glamour shots from the Ecoman book launch.

When you’ve written a book about subversively influencing the masses, what better way to promote it than to hijack election billboards? That’s what Nick McFarlane, designer by day and author of the so-called propaganda manual Spinfluence has done, sneakily adding prints to a handful of signs in central Auckland recently.

The marketing deal between Google’s Android and Nestle’s Kit Kat was celebrated by the marketing fraternity (the choc-tech website is worth a look) and met with surprise by some in the tech space (it was initially thought the new IOS would be called Key Lime Pie). But, as this cartoon suggests, real humans may have a different take on the deal.

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

Some of the best ads in the local newspaper business were celebrated last night at AUT. Unfortunately, no-one from Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington was there to pick up the Best Art prize for its Wellington Zoo ad. But News Works NZ’s Lorne Maltman was on hand to accept it in their absence, and he revelled in the win, giving the longest speeches of anyone and receiving resounding applause for so openly claiming others’ spoils. Plus: Special Group’s violent Agency League run-down.

In an effort to increase the numbers attending the ASB Classic and Heineken Open, Auckland Tennis has created a new umbrella brand called the New Zealand Festival of Tennis, changed its ticketing options and upped its game in terms of food and beverage.

Old Spice has undergone a major resurgence in recent years, becoming the no.1-selling antiperspirant and deodorant and body wash brand in North America, and it all kicked off with American actor and former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa on a white horse. That ad by Wieden + Kennedy was one of the most-talked about commercials of all time and won a Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix. And now, with Old Spice launching a range of products in New Zealand, he’s reprised his role for an online video in which he aims to “define what it means to be a New Zealand male”.

The BBC has suffered two embarrasingly public epic fails. Newsreader Simon McCoy, whose past gaffes include appearing to snooze on the job, has now presented an item while clutching a ream of photocopy paper instead of his iPad.

A great ad idea is nothing more than a cliche if it doesn’t achieve a specific outcome. And it doesn’t hurt to tap into the mood of a nation or hold a mirror up to people’s weird and wonderful behaviour if you want your ad to work. Those are some of the messages from Clemenger Sydney creative director Rebecca Carrasco, visiting for last night’s News Works Newspaper Advertising Awards.

While the judges deliberate on who will take home the other categories of this year’s Innovators Awards, it is time for you to decide who should win the People’s Choice. The finalists are in and voting starts… NOW!

Product demonstrations are a dime a dozen. Product destruction demonstrations, not so much. But that’s exactly what local footwear label Yours has done.

The 65th Primetime Emmys are coming up soon. But before they choose the best actors and TV shows, they chose the best commercial and it was Canon’s beautiful ‘Inspired’ spot by Grey and MJZ director Nicolai Fuglsig that took it out.

Small Auckland-based publisher and design studio Threaded Media has been showcasing New Zealand’s and the world’s best designers and creatives since 2004 via its “collaborative design publication” Threaded. And now, after a two-year investigation/evolution into expanding the digital division, it’s launched a new iPad app that brings some of its aesthetically-pleasing content to life.

Dunedin-based company Animation Research Limited is behind the amazing on-screen graphics and very popular mobile apps for the America’s Cup and while the chatter about the event is mostly positive, its chief executive Ian Taylor has penned a strongly worded missive saying that certain media commentators, politicians and, by extension, the general public are missing the point of the America’s Cup. Plus: Animation Research’s visual gift, ‘Kia Kaha San Francisco’.

Auckland production company Satellite Media and agency BelowTheLine’s new app for Fonterra Brands and Foodstuffs’ New World supermarkets brings dairy products and the Anchor cow to life. Little Fridge supports the New World Little Shop promotion with in store treasure hunts and a stand where shoppers can photobomb the Anchor cow.

Westpac has put a few of its besuited bodies on the line and created a giant human red sock in Britomart to show their support for Emirates Team New Zealand. Who says bankers don’t have a heart? And elsewhere in America’s Cup land, a few cheeky Kiwis decided Larry Ellison’s place “needed some decoration,” so they added a few New Zealand flags.

Mitre 10 is toasting the success of the online initiatives that form part of its Easy As campaign, designed to make Kiwis more savvy about their DIY projects.

Just when we thought we’d seen the heights of interactivity with the online video Just a Reflektor, where you can control special effects using your phone, Virgin Mobile has stepped it up another notch with Blinkwashing.

Flickr and Getty Images joined forces a few years back to build a platform that would enable the creation of a first class collection of royalty free and rights managed photographs. Photographers can submit their efforts to the Getty Images Call for Artists group and the Getty Images creative team then reviews photos, looking out for images they feel are marketable based on their expertise and inviting new photographers to join. There are now more than 600,000 images (and counting) from over 115 countries available to license (check out the full gallery here) and Getty has compiled the top-sellers globally.

ANZ expects a big rise in the number of its customers using mobile devices for banking, with more than a third already preferring mobile over PC-based internet banking.