A virtual cornucopia of televisual commercial messages for your perusal. In the tick category, the new ANZ campaign has a bit of a laff at the expense of others (and also gets empathetic, claiming to understand what its embattled customers have to put up with); McDonald’s push into the family dinner market with a lying father; and, advertising a product that’s renowned for fairly boring adverts, Panasonic’s heatpump ad is a breath of fresh fantastical air.  In the cross category, South Australia tourism decides to bore its audience into coming for a visit.

New Zealand brand and design company Interbrand has been recognised for its work on Kiwi luxury cosmetics brand Snowberry after its package design was awarded silver in the Bath, Beauty and Health category at the first ever Dieline Awards.

New independent agency Josh&Jamie will be adding their unique creative stylings to the Premier and Beehive bacon and ham brands after winning the business without a pitch, a victory that may or may not be related to agency co-founder Josh Lancaster’s insatiable passion for swine (speaking of swine passion, this has to be the perfect gift for the pig aficionado that has everything).

With more than a billion video views every day, 400 million monthly unique browsers and 24+ hours of video uploaded every minute, you’ve got to believe that YouTube is a major opportunity for advertisers. Certainly the 300 attendees that packed into the Crown Plaza early Tuesday morning for the Marketing Association’s Brainy Breakfast, exclusively sponsored by Jericho, thought so.

nzherald.co.nz has signalled a strategic change in direction, moving away from page impressions as a predominant measure of a site’s success and towards metrics that provide greater transparency to advertisers.

First McDonald’s was deemed healthy, with a world first endorsement from Weight Watchers in New Zealand. And now its fine dinner fare is set to come in family size.

MediaWorks TV is launching an alternative music channel, C42, to compete against its alternative music channel, C4. It will launch on May 1st on Freeview’s Channel 9 to coincide with NZ Music Month. It’s promising 30 percent local content and will feature no hosts, just the music, ma’am.

The findings of a nationwide survey into how PR-generated media coverage is measured and whether Advertising Equivalent Values (AVE) was an appropriate method to do so contain no real surprises but the industry-wide debate generated has been invaluable, say the CAANZ Marcomms Leadership Group.

Your weekly feast of evening advertising gluttony is served. And, as per usual, the ads on offer range from the sublime, like the new Vodafone Talk campaign, to the ridiculous, like Expol, which continues its run of innuendo-filled groaners.

All the snippets, bites and nuggets needed to ensure your dog maintains a shiny, healthy coat.

Hung Huang

Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) has teamed up with two Chinese VIPs, film-maker Lu Chuan and media personality/celebrity blogger Hung Huang, to try and boost New Zealand’s profile as a destination with the massive Chinese populous.

New Zealand’s marketing and advertising sector continues to feel the effects of the Great Recession, with the latest results from the MYOB Business Monitor survey showing 20 percent of Kiwi firms have cut their marketing budgets over the last six months.

Who’s it for: Glassons by Mojo Publicis

Why we like it: Because it’s a real mish-mash of extremely well shot imagery and sounds that leave you a little bit confused (albeit pleasantly). Plus, it makes the banjo and accordion look raucously hip.  Who knew hauntings could …

If you’re a clever cookie you’ll be sure to take advantage of the economic juices that will come flowing from the sporting fiasco that is the 2011 Rugby World Cup (RWC). After all, the event is expected to bring at least 60,000 visitors and about 2000 media to the country, resulting in an economic benefit for Auckland of an estimated $267 million.

The figures released by Paymark for March read somewhat like a patch-work quilt of spending. While weekly growth was steady nationwide, regional and industry spending was more of a mixed bag.

Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand have paired up and found a couple of clever ways to use the word ‘shout’. The two organisations have just launched another round of the ‘New Zealand Big Shout’ campaign in Australia.

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter arguably rule in internet land. Not only have they resulted in the emergence of overnight celebrities, they have created a new clip culture and a whole new world for marketers to explore. In Fact, YouTube is the number two search engine in New Zealand. So if you’re brainy, you’ll know that utlising their marketing potential is well, the brainy thing to do.