Alan Dale, left, and Kelly Addis

When he was growing up, Kelly Addis dreamed of being a rock star. His first job as a butcher’s apprentice at Onehunga Foodtown was pretty much diametrically opposed to rockstardom. But now, almost three decades on, he’s living the dream, heading up award-winning Melbourne ad agency BoilerRoom. And last weekend he was honoured by his alma mater as one of three inductees into the Onehunga High Business School Hall of Fame.

Since April, Positively Wellington Tourism has been on a mission to lure more of our Aussie friends across for a visit and smash a few misconceptions. And all indicators suggest the ‘There’s No Place Like Wellington’ campaign, which aims to showcase the region and its creative edge, has worked very well so far. But it’s taking things up a notch and getting experiential with WLG, a pop-up restaurant that will be operating in Sydney for two weeks next month in a bid to generate some buzz about the city.

The modus operandi of Eshe, a Kiwi streetwear clothing company that was started in 2008, is to take things back to the glory days of skating counter-culture; to slaughter a few metaphorical sacred cows. And it’s managed to inspire some fairly contrived controversy with a combination of sacrilege and old-school Garbage Pail kids imagery with a new poster campaign in Auckland.

The numbers have been crunched, the Kiwis have been canvassed and the companies that consumers believe are the best—and worst—have been announced, with New Zealand Post coming out on top and Telecom bringing up the rear.

The first, rather large musical instalment of APN Outdoor’s ‘Friends in High Places’ series was a fairly  successful and well-attended venture (particularly given the distinct lack of B2B activity from APNO during the previous year). And the next event in the series is tapping into the Next Top Model phenomenon in an effort to discover adland’s dreamy hunks and smokin’ babes.

StopPress always feels a little bit sorry for Radio NZ journalists, partially because they’re poorly paid bureaucrats, but primarily because they’re not actually allowed to accept free stuff. We sold our journalistic integrity many years ago (on Trade Me) and are firm believers that getting free stuff is easily the best part of the journalist’s job. Still, sometimes we have to wonder why so much of this free stuff is sent to us by PR companies, as a large proportion of it is of little editorial interest. But occasionally something fairly interesting gets delivered, like The People’s Wine, which looks as good on the outside as it tastes on the inside. 

The humans are digitising. And the adspend is following suit. Hell, you can even get fridges that connect to the internet these days. So, given that it’s still considered by many to be a rather intimidating, mysterious realm, it’s not surprising to find that the marcomms community can’t get enough of that educational digital stuff. As such, the Marketing Association/Jericho’s Brainy Breakfast gathered together a few of the country’s successful digital exponents to offer some of their insights and tell marketers how they can convince their corporate gatekeepers to fully embrace digital marketing.

It was less than two years ago that BNZ released its cute, fluffy, cloud-like logo into the wild. Some thought it was fresh, different and looked like toothpaste. Others thought it was too fresh, too different and too toothpastey and, therefore, lacked history and gravitas. And it seems the BNZ brand boffins agreed with the latter, because it’s gone back to its astronomical roots and changed its logo again, adding the classic Southern Cross back in, reducing the fluffiness and chopping that cheeky vestigial tail off the B.

It’s a mysterious realm for most, but in this digital world, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is also an extremely—and increasingly—important one. And New Zealand-based SEO specialists now have a chance to showcase their talents in the inaugural SEO Challenge.

Every winter, New Zealanders suffer from coughs, colds and a host of other ailments. And, as a consequence, every winter the New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) struggles to find enough healthy donors. So, with the help of Insight and Automatic Films, it has launched a new campaign to try and get those who can still donate to open up their hearts, almost literally, and hand over some of the precious red stuff to bump up supplies.

This week on Ads@6, a bravura performance from the smarmy kid in Tower’s ‘Poochi’ spot; Michael Schumacher goes upside down for Mercedes;  MYOB hits the target; Al Brown gets dirty in Persil’s ‘Have a Go’ campaign; Tena has a bit of a laugh at the hilarious realm of female incontinence; the All Blacks get slurpy with Up&Go; and the much-loved Spray and Walk away guy returns.

It opened with a bright young thing and closed with a grumpy old curmudgeon, and inbetween Semi-Permanent once again delivered a host of designy inspiration. Thankfully, for those unfortunate enough not to have been exposed to all this inspiration in the flesh, our friends at Design Daily picked the brains of the stars of the show, a couple of whom had some very wise words for Kiwi marcommers. 

Air New Zealand and Fly Buys have snuggled up together with a new mutually beneficial partnership that creates a range of benefits for members of both the Air New Zealand Airpoints programme and Fly Buys loyalty programme, which together adds up well over half of the country’s population.

The big agencies all seem to be talking about killing off their digital silos and moving them closer to the central nervous system. Yet there are still plenty of new, small digital shops offering their specialist services. And now there’s another new player on the local digital marketing scene after Market United (MU) announced its arrival on Auckland soil, adding to its offices in Sydney and Perth.

Our obviously extremely wealthy, remarkably tech savvy and very trendy stablemate DesignDaily is giving away a fancy new Apple Jabscreen (slightly more commonly known as an iPad) to one of its lucky readers. So simply sign up (with your real name and email address) here to receive the weekly email newsletter from New Zealand’s new design and architecture blog and you’ll go into the draw. And if you’re already a subscriber, tell your friends and family to sign up and, if they win, demand custody of the marvellous device in the weekends.

The yMedia awards are set to be dished out tonight. And Simon Pound is fighting the good fight on the frontlines.